Beginning, Middle, End?

I was flabbergasted. I’m sure I looked like an exaggerated cartoonish caricature of astonishment, with my eyeballs popping out of their sockets and my jaw on the floor. Have I mentioned that I was flabbergasted?

The students in my first-year college writing class were equally flabbergasted. All twenty-four of us stared at each other in hushed silence for something that seemed like several hours, but was surely no more than a few seconds. One of the bolder students finally broke the silence with a hushed question.

“So you mean it’s really not cheating?”

Twenty-three pairs of eyes locked perplexedly onto my own bulging eyeballs.

“Who told you that it was?” I responded to my bold student’s question with a question of my own. The sense of bafflement in the room increased to such a level that it almost took shape as a physical object. Twenty-three students looked back and forth at one another, searching for answers in each others’ faces. Finally, another bold student said “No one. No one ever said it was cheating. It just feels like cheating.” Twenty-three heads nodded and the light began to dawn in my mind.

“It feels like cheating because stories start at the beginning and progress through the middle and end at the end, correct?” More nodding.

“But what about stories with flashback scenes?” I shook up the settled order of things just a little bit with this question.

Bold student number three: “Yeah, but the kind of writing we do for classes doesn’t have flashback scenes.” More nodding.

“Do we all agree with that? Is it true that academic writing – the kind of writing you do for class – doesn’t have flashback scenes?”

The murmuring began, with words like “of course it doesn’t” bubbling distinctly to the surface of the pool every now and then.

“Wait a minute, though,” one very bold student took the floor, “academic writing sort of does have flashback scenes.” Twenty-three pairs of eyes locked onto the incredibly bold speaker.

I finally invited her to say more.

“Well, I mean, you give background information in your paper that helps your reader understand your argument, right? And you don’t always give all of the background information in the first paragraph. So, in that sense, academic writing kind of sometimes does have flashback scenes. Pseudo flashback scenes.” The nodding and murmuring recommenced, with words like, “that’s a good point,” or “I never thought of that” bubbling distinctly to the surface of the pool every now and then.

Speaking of flashback scenes, I will now insert one to explain how this conversation with my first-year writing students arose. Namely, we were talking about the “legality” of writing a paper, then revising the introduction and claim to ensure a better fit with the ideas in the middle and at the end of the paper. While I referred to this revision process as a good writing strategy, my students referred to it as cheating.

Our subsequent discussion on this topic revealed, as described above, that students felt uncomfortable with this revision process because they were accustomed to thinking of beginning, middle, and end in sequential order. They reported that it seemed unfair or improper to rearrange the classic beginning-middle-end sequence by writing the middle or end of a text before writing its beginning. Moreover – and perhaps more important – students reported that their previous writing courses had often required them to focus on writing good thesis statements in isolation. In other words, students had been taught to practice writing thesis statements, but not to practice developing four pages’ worth of evidence and analysis around those statements.

This revelation explained a lot.

For example, it explained why the papers my students submitted almost always started with one claim, ended with another, and contained a cocktail of evidence and analysis in the middle that often failed to support either the claim at the beginning or the claim at the end. This phenomenon was clearly caused by the fact that my students, all of whom were quite smart and quite good at writing, believed that it is wrong to revise a paper’s claim after the ideas in that paper have evolved.

It also explained why the papers my students submitted often contained two-and-a-half pages of statements, each of which sounded like a separate claim, then wrapped up with one-half page of evidence that typically supported the last of the claims in the two-and-a-half-page list of claims. This phenomenon, too, was clearly caused by the fact that my students believed it is wrong to revise a paper’s claim after the ideas in that paper have evolved.

Finally, it explained why the papers they submitted almost always ran short on evidence. They simply did not have enough evidence to support the initial claim, but did not realize that it’s OK to change the claim after the ideas in the paper have evolved.

We had a talk (or two) about the concept of a “working claim,” which can – and usually should – be replaced by the “final claim” after the ideas in the paper have come to fruition. We had a talk (or two) about writing as a “recursive” process that constantly circles back on itself, instead of moving inexorably in a direction regarded as “forwards.” We practiced writing multiple ungraded drafts and being OK with lousy first drafts and weak, or even nonexistent, first claims. By the end of the semester, everyone in the class had become markedly more comfortable with the idea of using the initial claim as a placeholder until the paper was done, at which point the “placeholder claim” or “working claim” could be revised to better match the development of ideas in the paper.

Many writers never have a chance to reconsider their relationship with the claim or with the writing process. Many writers never become comfortable with the idea that it’s OK to revise the initial claim after the ideas in the paper have evolved. As a result, these writers never develop into the strong writers that they could be! If you’re one of these writers, try one or more of the following tips for developing a greater level of comfort with the idea that it’s OK to revise the start of your paper once you’ve reached its end.

TIP ONE: On a brightly colored sticky note, write the words “WRITING DOESN’T NEED TO PROGRESS IN A STRAIGHT LINE ‘FORWARDS!,'” or “WRITING IS A RECURSIVE PROCESS!,” or “WORKING CLAIMS ARE MEANT TO BE REVISED!” or any other catchy slogan that helps you remember that it’s OK to revise. Place this sticky note on your computer monitor or on a surface near the space where you often sit to write. For the record, my own sticky note contains the words “A PIECE OF WRITING IS NEVER REALLY FINISHED; WRITERS JUST STOP TINKERING WITH THE WORDS AND IDEAS BECAUSE THE DEADLINE IS APPROACHING FAST! =)”

TIP TWO: Give yourself time to write, read, and revise each text at least twice. (See last week’s post on Time and what to do when you haven’t got any.)

TIP THREE: Invest in a set of highlighters that contains at least eight different colors. Use your favorite highlighter color to identify the claim on a printed copy of your first draft. We’ll refer to this color as “the claim color.” Read through the remainder of your draft, using “the claim color” to highlight every single idea in the paper that is obviously relevant to your claim. When ideas that are not relevant to your claim begin cropping up, as they inevitably will, whip out a different highlighter, preferably one with a contrasting color. Use this highlighter to identify the first idea that is not relevant to your claim. We’ll refer to this color as the “1st irrelevant idea color.” If you see additional ideas that are related to the “1st irrelevant idea,” continue using the “1st irrelevant idea color” to highlight these ideas. If, however, the next idea that you encounter in your paper is completely irrelevant either to the claim or to the “1st irrelevant idea,” whip out another highlighter color. We’ll call this color the “2nd irrelevant idea color.” Continue on in this fashion through the end of the paper, and don’t be surprised if you end up using all eight of your highlighter colors. This is completely normal! Once you’ve finished the task of highlighting ideas, simply look for the largest block of color. The ideas represented in this color block are clearly the most important to you – can you turn them into a claim and build an argument around them? The writing, reading, revision adventure begins again!

Note that you can also use the highlighting tool in your computer’s word processing program for this task. Personally, I find it more helpful to conduct this exercise on a printed copy of my work.

TIP FOUR: Don’t forget that writing is a recursive process….

Tune in next week for more helpful ideas on using highlighters to critique and revise your own writing! In the meantime, I wish you Happy Writing!

Dr. Lori