10 THINGS: REVISION PROMPTS FOR THE RBA (or any essay)
1- Box (or underline): Do you have an informative conversational thesis as well as a specific and focused argumentative thesis? Do they work well together? Do you transition effectively into the start of the “conversation”? These moves are all absolutely crucial for the introduction. Mark your conversational thesis and your argumentative thesis with a single and double box, respectively. They should offer a kind of map for your entire paper. Make sure they flow adequately into one another.
2- Mark with a “*” (or highlight red): All unique / innovative sentence patterns (sophisticated use of em-dashes, apt uses of the semicolon, elegant sentence structure, etc.). If you don’t have eight stars in your paper, add more interesting sentence structures. Mix it up!
3- Mark with “T-Work” (or highlight yellow): Seek out the weakest bridges / transitions in your RBA. Fix the weakest link.
4- Bracket with a “{ }“ (or highlight green): Find every moment in your paper where at least three sentences in a row begin with a noun and that replicate a simple and static subject-verb-object sentence patterns. Use our Patterns to very sentence structure and length.
5- Bracket with a “[ ]” (or highlight purple): Bracket any paragraph where you have at least 6 “to be” verbs (is, are, were, being, etc). Introduce more active voice and verbal energy, and convert present participles to simple present verb forms where fitting (“runs”). Reduce the number of “to be” verbs by at least half.
6- Mark with a L (or highlight orange): Change at least two passive verbs to an active verb—unless the passive serves a purpose.
7- Bold (or italicize): Identify a quote that requires more effective “framing,” whether than involves setting up the quote or source more thoroughly, introducing a signal phrase, or following up more dynamically. Frame it!
8- Choose your WORST sentence and underline it. It can be the most convoluted one, the most unclear, the most lacking in verbal energy, the most repetitive. Rewrite it and make it strong—if not your strongest.
9- Bracket with “#” (or highlight blue): Find a sentence with at least three prepositional phrases in a row and rewrite the sentence to avoid this pattern. Strings of prepositional phrases in your papers on top of other bad things in them tend to sap the energy!
10- Choose your BEST sentence and double-underline it or underline it and highlight it yellow)—this should be a sentence that makes you proud every time you read it.
BONUS: Go back to our style readings from Writing Tools and They Say / I Say and incorporate one what you took to be one of the most useful suggestions.
