Month: October 2017

The ‘Craft of Research’ is a comprehensive tool and the bible for every researcher who wishes to publish a robust yet crisp paper. It gives an detailed insight on how researchers or students should go about writing, editing, revising papers. Chapter 13 of the craft of research focuses on the importance and tips for essay revision, organisation and structure. Although as a student I had my own methods of revising essays, the professional way of writing is very different from high school writing.

The venn diagram below represents the clear difference between revising and editing. The craft of research altered my methods from being very random to actually creating a proper analysis.

The various tips that I gathered from this Chapter surely helped me revise a lot of essays and papers. The chapter focuses on viewing the essay from a readers perspective which is when I realised the importance of being clear enough while trying to explain things on an essay. It becomes necessary to proofread as a third person as it helps develop an idea as to how one might perceive the essay and whether or not the message is being portrayed clearly.

After completely going through this section of the book I came up with a exhaustive set of methods I could follow for revising and editing my essays.

1. Know what is to be delivered to the reader. Is the claim clear, are the evidences convincing, is the text self-explanatory or does it raise questions ?
2. Understand the prompt before getting into anything.
3. Instead of randomly stating thoughts, divide the essay into a structure where different thoughts can be segregated and added on.
4. Remember to link claims with the argument and keep reminding the reader what he should expect. Support argument with facts and evidences.
5. Make sure that the ‘so what’ factor is clear and exciting enough for the reader maintain an interest to continue reading.
6. Keep shifting paragraphs around in a systematic way so as to make the flow of the essay clear.
7. Lastly, remember to link the conclusion of the essay with the main claim and convince the reader to choose his stand on the topic.

All these methods, in my opinion, when put together surely make a well rounded essay.

Every writing portrays heroes as the “good guy” and the villain as “the evil guy who is completely tearing apart the entire universe.” In the episode of “advanced dungeons and dragons”, the tables completely turn around when the hero discovers that the villain is actually good and doesn’t mean any harm.

Although everyone takes the hero too seriously, a hero isn’t a hero without a villain. The villain brings out the best in the hero. Every single power of the hero is challenged when the villain ruins the hero’s plans and causes mass disruption. There are several movies and book series that have turned around the plot by revealing the goodness of a villain. Severus Snape in the Harry Potter series, for example. It took JK Rowling 7 books to ultimately reveal that every single evil and suspicious step that Snape pursued was just a way to save Harry from “you know who.”

Another wonderful example of a villain portrayed in a different light is from the movie “Thor: the Dark World.” Loki, who was always Thor’s jealous brother, ultimately reveals his soft side by rescuing Jane and giving up his life for Thor. Though his death is unclear, he did indeed turn out to be transformed.

From previous discussions about the journey of a hero, I would like to cite a fact that we all tend to ignore. Although the hero has an adventurous side, a motto, and other qualities that make him the star, a villain is also intelligent, competent and daring enough to fight someone as tough as a “hero.” Every hero has a villain inside him which is one main reason he is able to fight the villain, which is why I would end this argument by quoting one of my favourite sayings by the Joker, “we stopped checking for monsters under our bed when we realised they were inside us.”

Is the term ‘hero’ cliched ?

What is the journey of a hero ? Are they extraordinary people doing different things or are they ordinary people doing the same work daily? In my view, they could be anyone of us. Most of the comic and hero based movies are very predictable. The main characters are just regular people who had a group of people who were a little less capable than them and they, together fought one single villain and the main character turned into a hero. Is this what heroism is all about ? I don’t think so. The hero journey cycle is a theory that, to me, cannot be implemented in our regular life. To begin with, most heroes in this real world are people who faced massive hardships and overcame those difficulties to succeed in their field. They did definitely had a call to action and they most certainly faced failures in their road to success. But all those are the qualities that made them heroes. Name any person who is successful or famous. They all have one thing in common, they were very ordinary people who dared to dream.

Every ordinary man is a hero. Cliched heroes are good but they cannot be role models in real life. Life is way more difficult than having a bat mobile and expensive gadgets (like iron man) and saving cities from alien invasions. True heroes are the ones who do not stick to any such stereotypical theories like “the hero’s journey.” They are the ones who don’t wish to fit into any mould and are their own self irrespective of how people categorise them.