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.
- 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 ?
- Understand the prompt before getting into anything.
- Instead of randomly stating thoughts, divide the essay into a structure where different thoughts can be segregated and added on.
- Remember to link claims with the argument and keep reminding the reader what he should expect. Support argument with facts and evidences.
- Make sure that the ‘so what’ factor is clear and exciting enough for the reader maintain an interest to continue reading.
- Keep shifting paragraphs around in a systematic way so as to make the flow of the essay clear.
- 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.
