This document discusses strategies for rewriting and revising writing through multiple drafts. It distinguishes between rewriting, which addresses higher-order global issues, and revision, which addresses local sentence-level issues. Multiple drafts allow writers to overcome memory limits, shift ideas, and clarify purpose and audience. Early drafts can prioritize free-writing over correctness. Later drafts involve local sentence edits through revision and global changes through rewriting. Effective peer review focuses on helping the writer by providing reader feedback and suggestions to improve clarity.

2. Rewriting vs. Revision
 Rewriting
 Global level of reworking the text
 Addresses higher order issues
 Revision
 Local level of reworking the text
 Addresses sentences level issues

3. Multiple Drafts
 Obviously allows for rewriting and revision
 Allows writer to overcome short term memory limits
 First drafts have a limited amount they can pull from,
subsequent drafts work from the initial ideas presented
in the first draft
 Allows ideas to shift and change
 You may realize that the end of your paper has a
different argument than the beginning

4.  Clarify audience and purpose
 Gives you a greater understanding of who and what you
are writing for and about.
 Allows you to improve style without initially worrying
about correctness
 First drafts can be almost a free write, but later ideas can
clean that up and make it a polished argument

5. Global vs. Local
 Local changes
 Sentence level edits
 Focuses on stylistic edits and usually involves revision
instead of rewriting

6.  Global changes
 Changes that drive other changes in a paragraph or the
whole paper
 Focuses on big picture concerns and usually involves
rewriting instead of revision

7. Strategies
 Starting completely over
 Rewrite large chunks from scratch
 Moving parts around
 Revise topic sentences and transitions
 Add new material
 Delete new material
 Recast or edit sentences

8. 10 Expert Habits
1. Using exploratory writing and talking to discover and
clarify ideas
2. Schedule your time
3. Discover drafting methods that work for you
4. Think about audience and purpose from the start
5. For the first draft, reduce your expectations

9. 6. Revise on a 2x or 3x spaced hard copy
7. As you revise, think about the needs of your readers
8. Exchange drafts with others
9. Save correctness for last
10. Determine what the best work you can produce given
the constraints is

10. Peer Review
 Being a good peer reviewer will not only help your
classmate, but it will also help you look at your own
work rhetorically

11. Helpful Peer Review
 Making readerly instead of writerly comments
 Basically this means “I-statements”
 Think of how you responded during the How We Read
assignment and use that as a frame to respond during
peer review

12.  Your goal is to help the writer- and to develop
strategies to help yourself as a writer
 Try to focus your comments on helping the writer move
forward- give them ideas to brainstorm or how to clarify
their purpose
 Show the writer where you got lost if you get confused-
identifying the specific spot will help them fix it
 Ask “So What?” to get them to explain why they have
included something

13. Trust and Professionalism
 We are all here to help each other and skirting around
issues in your peer’s paper won’t be very helpful to
them.
 It’s better to say “The way you explored pathos in
paragraph two was particularly effective, but I got a little
lost in paragraph three” than it is to say “Great paper-
the flow needs some work.” One of these comments
gives your peer a definitive starting point.
 That being said, cruel or disrespectful comments will
not be tolerated.

14. Responsibilities
 As a reader
 You are acting as fresh eyes- looking at the paper as
someone who doesn’t have an opinion of it.
 As a writer
 You need to have the physical drafts with you
 You need to be prepared to listen to your reviews-
critique is hard to take but this is only meant to help
 If you are having trouble with any particular part of
your paper- note that so your peer review (or me) can
focus on addressing that issue

15. Responding to Peer Review
 You may get contradictory reviews- either from your
different peer reviewers, or from me
 To deal with this, remember that this is your writing.
Carefully consider the different responses and choose
the one that works for you.
 Develop a revision plan
 We are going through several drafts, so pick the issues
that you absolutely want (or need) to address before you
turn in your next draft and focus on those.