Learning to ask good questions of your own writing and making changes according to your own reading are two skills you need to develop.
Use this handout to get started. Ask yourself the following questions and answer them in writing as thoroughly, as honestly, and as specifically as you can.
After you have answered the questions, you should then REVISE your work based on the answers. You may need
to add detail,
delete detail,
change the tone, or
restructure the piece.
Be sure to keep all the work you do!
1. Who are you when you are writing?
Are you a person who seems to know what she is talking about?
someone with experience who wants to share?
Try to characterize yourself with nouns and adjectives.
How do you come across to the reader?
Is this the way you want to come across?
Does the writer’s identity stay consistent within the piece?
2.(Audience) Whom are you writing for?
Can you see your reader in your mind’s eye?
Try to imagine a real person reading your piece in a magazine. What does the person look like? What is he/she doing?
Which magazine would the piece be in?
3. (Purpose) Why are you writing?
What do you hope to accomplish? (Besides getting a good grade!) You need to answer these questions for yourself. You may not be aware of a reason to write, but given all the topics you could have chosen, you chose this one. Why?
4. (Aim) How do you want your reader to react, feel, behave?
What do you want your reader to see from your writing? Think hard about this.
Do you want your reader to change his/her mind about something you are saying?
Think about the topic in a particular way?
Remember his/her own experience?
What would you want your reader to say to a friend about this piece?
6. (Point) This one is very important: What do you want to say?
Try to sum this up (to yourself) in a sentence. “I want to say that________________.”
7. Try to find the “tense moment” in what you have said, the contradiction, the opposition, the place in the essay where the experience turns. Can you identify it? Is the moment in the piece? is it between the piece and the reader? or is it within the writer? Do you think it’s clear to the reader?