Revising: Hit-List of Problems in First Drafts

The chapters Mechanics, Style and Logic list examples of writing which needs help. Here are some other kinds of waywardness common to first drafts, together with suggested revisions.

1. The You-Gotta-Be-Sincere Opening Number

War and Peace is a great novel by Leo Tolstoy. I am going to write about three things with regard to this novel. The three things are: death, life, and love....

Paying compliments to Tolstoy's skill prevents the writer from saying anything of substance. Here the writer needs to pick a controllable subject and narrow his focus. Otherwise he'll be writing this paper until he grows a long grey beard and looks like Tolstoy.

2. The Ring-the-Doorbell-and-Run-Away Paragraph

Frankenstein's monster is a convenient metaphor for the questionable uses of science in our century. (*) Recombinant DNA, test-tube babies, and genetic experiments such as cloning make us wonder what would happen if any of these experiments got out of hand. Communities in which such research has been carried out have used the town meeting tradition to ask scientists to be more responsible for their creations. (**)

The sentences here approach, but do not develop, the writer's ideas.

* The writer needs to apply her metaphor here. Why is Frankenstein's monster an appropriate analogy?

** Since the paragraph's subject is unclear, the writer needs to knit this sentence to the first sentence, filling in details of the debate between communities and research institutions.

Here is a revised version:

Frankenstein's monster is, in some ways, a convenient metaphor for the troublesome uses of science in this century. Fashioned by a man from parts of other men, the monster gets out of control when its creator fails to be responsible for it. For modern scientists, such responsibility may extend both to their work and to society. 

Recombinant DNA, test-tube babies, and genetic experiments such as cloning raise questions of responsibility and control. In communities near research institutions, citizens' groups have protested experiments whose side effects might prove threatening. Protestors argue that research should be subject to informed inquiry which balances regulation of outcome with support for creative experimentation.

3. The Let-Your-Fingers-Do-the-Talking Paragraph

Rachel Carson's Silent Spring gives very useful observations on the misuses of pesticides when she says:
Indeed one of the most alarming aspects of the chemical pollution of water is the fact that here--in river or lake or reservoir, or for that matter in the glass of water served at your dinner table - are mingled chemicals that no responsible chemist would think of combining in his laboratory. (49)
Carson points out that "radioactive wastes" poured into our rivers, combining with "comparatively innocuous chemicals," might produce harmful effects which are "not only unpredictable but beyond control."

This is fine as note-taking, but it won't do as an argument, since the writer has simply used Carson's words to fill up a paragraph. Asking "what am I using this for?" might help him move his paper forward. Condensing the quote would help restore the balance between writer and authority.

Revised version:

Rachel Carson illustrates the deadly consequences of using rivers as chemical dumps when she discusses the effects of ionizing radiation. In our very drinking water, she say, "are mingled chemicals that no responsible chemist would think of combining in his laboratory." Such results come from the combination of "radioactive wastes" with "comparatively innocuous chemicals." 

Clearly, when we neglect to think of the whole environment as a system obedient to natural and not human law, we make nature dangerous. Without a proper understanding of a chemical's relation to the environment, we cannot see results which are "not only unpredictable but beyond control" (Carson 49).

This revision still includes Carson's quote, but balances it with the writer's observations, first about what the evidence illustrates, and second, about what principles we can draw from it.

4. The Snake-Eateth-His-Own-Tail Ending

Here's the first paragraph of the paper:

Emily Dickinson's poems show how involved she was with the drama of death. In writing the poems she plays all the roles involved in this drama: mourner, dead person, and witness. In some of the poems she even seems to become death himself. The posthumous voice was an experiment with a drama where the main actor was offstage.

And here's the last paragraph, an echo of the first:

Thus, as I have shown, Emily Dickinson was not so much preoccupied with death as she was with the drama of death. Such a drama allowed her to play all the roles: the mourner, the dying person, and the witness. Though the main character was offstage, she allowed death to make his presence deeply felt.

The writer has already discussed this idea and is merely repeating herself. In the last paragraph she needs to push her idea beyond its safe limits, to be provocative and to raise questions she has not already answered.

Revised version:

What did it mean for Dickinson to write "posthumous" poems? Did they make her feel deadly and morbid, or did they give her a new authority? We have seen how dramatic are her death-poems, how intensely they envision what a living person can only imagine. Perhaps this intensity comes from Dickinson's desire to control the uncontrollable while she still could. The sources of Dickinson's power came, however, not simply from her control but from her recognition of a mystery no language could translate from beyond the grave.

5. The Beethoven's Ninth Symphony Finale

Thus the role of the investigative journalism during the Watergate crisis was nothing less than heroic. Had it not been for the brave men who questioned authority, including the authority of their own editors, the infamy might have gone undetected. What these men stood for, and helped preserve, was nothing less than truth, justice, and the American way.

The adjectives are super-adjectives attached to super-nouns. This inflated writing makes a blaring effect, too noisy and windy to sustain ideas. The only thing to do with this is to scrap it and start over.

   Planning for Rewrites
   Hit-List of Problems in First Drafts
   Principles of Revision