What methods can I use to revise my writing?

The technique that has been most useful to me is to begin each section, paragraph, and sentence with information that readers already know, and move new information to or toward the end.

I learned the technique from Joseph M. Williams's terrific book Style, which is chock full of ideas about how write with clarity and grace. Similar is Martha Kolnn's Rhetorical Grammar. Despite the scary title, it's not about grammar per se, but about how to use the grammatical structures you already know to create the effects you want to create in your readers.

posted over 13 years ago

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Dale Hartley Emery‭

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All of the answers to date are good. You may also need to review and change your original outline and your train of thought. Its possible that you may simply be attempting to put a quantity of ideas and supporting material in one paper that deserves two or more papers.

posted over 13 years ago

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Carol Miller‭

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It's hard to be too specific without seeing your writing, and I certainly have nothing close to an algorithm for you, but I was caught by your idea of reverse-engineering an outline. Does that mean that you didn't write from an outline to begin with?

If so, and if you're having trouble with organization (as I assume you are, since you mention order, topic sentences and transitions), then I'd strongly recommend that you START with an outline, and THEN write your paper. If you already have all of your ideas, evidence, etc. set up in the outline, then you just need to base your work off that and your organization should almost take care of itself.

Maybe I've misinterpreted, and you outline, write, and then re-outline? I'm not sure, but I'd definitely recommend an outline as the first step for anyone struggling with organization.

posted over 13 years ago

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Kate S.‭

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This sounds like a job for... Scrivener! :D

Building on Kate's question:

• Create your outline.
• Write each section of your outline as a separate Scrivener document. Label them appropriately. (II/A/3, III/B/4/i)
• Once it's all on paper, you can rearrange the sections however you need.
• If you find yourself writing extra analyses, create new individual documents, and then they can be moved around at the end. You can add them to the existing outline structure, or append them in the middle. There's nothing wrong with an outline which goes I, II, IIa, III, IIIa, IIIb, etc. if it helps you keep track.
• Compile the document and read it in order several times as you go. This will help you to see if sections need to be reorganized.

posted over 13 years ago

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Lauren Ipsum‭

2098 reputation 13 1143 397 1

@Kate The first time around, I have a nice outline with a logical flow, the second time around, the flow has been lost, and I am interested in knowing the steps and order of steps required to put Humpty back together again. – David 14 hours ago

For the future: Your problem is that you start editing and fixing your second round with the prose version instead of the outline. That's why you keep getting into trouble. You have an orderly first draft which works from an outline, with nice transitions, and then you start adding things pell-mell without regard for how they fit. Stop doing that.

If you are reading through your first draft and you think of things to add, add them to the outline instead. Keep adding everything to the outline. When you have no more to add, then you start rewriting your second draft.

For now: Yes, you are going to have to reverse-engineer some of your work. Here's how:

Take every sentence or thought — two or three sentences at the absolute most — and make it a bullet point. Do this for the entire piece.

When all your sentences are bullet points, start putting them back into the outline. Add your III/a, IV/2/b/47 extra sections as necessary. Your outline is going to look like this, with the bold section representing something new added in:

I. Gardening
A. Planting
1. Choose your plants
• Decide whether you want to plant flowers, ornamentals, vegetables, or fruit-bearing plants.
1a. Start your own from seeds, or buy seedlings?
a. Benefits of starting from seeds
1) Cheaper
2) Educational
b. Benefits of buying seedlings
1) Who has the time to raise plants from seeds? I work for a living.
2) Seedlings are generally sold when it's time to plant them, so you don't risk getting them into the ground before they're ready.
3) Supports local business
• Buy your seedlings.
2. Read the planting instructions.
3. Choose a location.
a. Considerations
• Sun vs. shade
• Acidity of soil
• Watering: Are you depending on rain, or will you water regularly?
b. Sunlight
• Sunny
• Shady

Do this as many rounds as you need to. Once you're satisfied that you have no more to add, THAT'S when you start smoothing out to prose and adding transitions and topic sentences.

posted over 13 years ago

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Lauren Ipsum‭

2098 reputation 13 1143 397 1

Without going back to an outline, you could do the following:

• Print your draft on paper.
• Take some fluoresecent colored pens and mark all the words that are specific to your paper. Not words like "the" and "research", but words like "unification algorithm" or "eukaryotic cell". Use different colors for different topics in your paper.
• If you see the same words/colors in many remote places, move those sentences closer together (you're obviously back behind your computer now ;-). Ideally, each section talks about a single topic, so it should have more or less only 1 color. Since your paper was a "sea of words" to begin with, you lose nothing by moving things around. Never mind the "flow" for now: just the topics.
• Now that the topics are "sealed" into sections, remove all duplicate sentences. Keep only the ones that give new information.
• Order the sentences so that new terminology/ideas are introduced in a logical order, i.e. new words/concepts are defined before they're used.
• From each group of sentences, make a temporary title and put it in front of the group. It may not make it as a title into the final paper, but it brings an outline back into the paper for yourself.
• Now, and only now, start looking at the grammar and the flow. Turn each group of sentences into a few paragraphs right there underneath their temporary title. Make sure that each group expresses exactly the idea in their temporary title.
• For better "flow", start larger sections with a summary of what you explained in the previous section, and then show the connection to the new section. You can quickly see what you explained in the previous section by going over their temporary titles.
• At the end, take all your temporary titles and turn them into a summary. You can use this as the introduction, the conclusion of the paper, or even both if you rewrite it slightly.
• Then remove most of the temporary titles, keeping only the "big" ones to structure the paper for your readers.

Regardless of which technique(s) you use from the many excellent answers, let us all know how it worked out for you! Good luck.

posted over 13 years ago

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Koen Van Damme‭

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