Syntax analysis:

  1. Count the number of sentences in paragraph one. How many are there?
  2. Count the number of words in each sentence from the same paragraph. What do you notice? How can you adjust your sentences to make them more enticing and interesting?
  3. Count the number of words in each sentence in each paragraph to try to vary structure.

Have SOMEONE ELSE read your piece out loud to you. While they are reading, you take notes on your copy about places that sound awkward, feel dishonest, or that your reader stumbles on.

WORDPRUNINGCENTER

Stephen King uses this formula in his memoir, On Writing: “Final draft=Rough draft minus half.”

Read over your piece, looking specifically to cut. Look for:

  • Dialogue without purpose
  • Each piece of dialogue should either have an active role in moving the scene forward or be essential to revealing aspects of character. If the dialogue serves no purpose, cut it.
  • Clichés (“I was blown away,” “It was neat as a pin,” etc. Any phrase that you have probably heard before)
  • Passive voice (formed by a “to be” verb + a past participle [-ed verb])
  • Look for forms of “to be” to see if you can make those sentences active and therefore tighter

Ex: The tin can was crushed by the gorilla.

The gorilla crushed the tin can.

Forms of TO BE

is
are
has been
have been / was
were
have been / will have been
is being
was being
were being

VERBREVISIONCENTER

Circle ALL your verbs. Now go back and see whether you can choose more precise, vivid verbs to replace ones that may be imprecise or common. Shifting your verbs should also shift your tone—notice how the change in verbs shifts the tone in the example below.

Example:

The pencil sharpener makes the pencil into a sharp point and leaves the leftovers out.

The pencil sharpener chews the pencil into a sharp point and spits the leftovers out.

WRITING THROUGH A MAGNIFYING GLASS/CRACKING OPEN CENTER

Magnifying

Find a moment or image in your narrative where there is more to dig out, and expand on that image. Take that sentence in your narrative and write at least half a page about it, adding details, imagery, comparisons, etc.

Example:

Excerpt from House on Mango Street, rewritten:

“My name is Esperanza. In English my name means hope.”

Sandra Cisneros’s version (“magnified”):

“In English my name means hope. In Spanish it means too many letters. It means sadness, it means waiting. It is like the number nine. A muddy color. It is the Mexican records my father plays on Sunday mornings when he is shaving, songs like sobbing.”

Crackingopen

Find at least two sentences in your narrative that need to be “cracked open.” These sentences may be common or usual descriptions, like “It was a nice day.” What does a nice day look like? Feel like? Smell like? Another example: “The couch was comfortable.” Crack these sentences open and rewrite them in fresh ways.

PLAYING WITH TIME

CENTER I

Scissors and Glue

Divide your piece into chunks by highlighting or circling. These chunks may be paragraphs or groups of paragraphs that belong together.

Cut up the chunks and play with the ordering of them. Find an alternative organizational structure for your piece and tape/glue that other possible order down on plain paper.

*Don’t cut up your stamped draft

PLAYING WITH TIME

CENTER II

Stretching and tightening time

Find one moment in your piece to stretch out. With that moment, imagine that time has slowed down. Describe that moment in slow-motion detail.

Find one moment in your essay that is already “stretched out.” Tighten it—put it in fast-forward.

SYNESTHESIA

Synesthesia is using two or more senses in the same image.

Examples:

red hot

“Taste the Pain” (Red Hot Chile Peppers song title)

“yellow cocktail music” (Fitzgerald, The Great Gatsby)

pink-tasting fortune cookie (Ms. Pennock)

You might play with adding color to sounds or odor to colors

Warm up: What does morning taste like? What color is the sound of a drum? What does purple smell like?

Look for one place in your piece where you might use synesthesia.

PEER SILENT READ

Trade papers with someone. Read their paper and mark what you see as their very best passage (this might be one phrase, one sentence, or several sentences). Explain what it is you like about that segment.

GEORGESAUNDERSCENTER

Read George Saunders’ “Thank You, Esther Forbes” from his collection of essays entitled The Braindead Megaphone. Pay particular attention to latter portion of the text, specifically the portion after the break which begins with the sentence “Before Johnny Tremain, writers and writing gave me the creeps” (60). In this section Saunders writes:

“Working with language is a means by which we can identify the bullshit within ourselves (and others). If we learn to what a truthful sentence looks like, a little flag goes up at a false one. False prose can mark an attempt to evade responsibility…, or something more diabolical…; the process of improving our prose disciplines the mind, hones the logic, and, most importantly of all, tells us what we really think. But this process takes time…” (63).

Go back through your piece and find your false prose. Be honest with yourself and what you want to write. Find the B.S. and eliminate it.

ACADEMIC LANGUAGE CENTER

One of the challenges of writing is using the correct words to express your ideas. This can be a difficult task if one does not have a well-developed vocabulary.

Go through your essay and underline five words that you want to change. Then, use the thesaurus provided and find an alternative word that might increase the dramatic effect, develop a point, or add to your mood or tone.

The goal is NOT TO BE PEDANTIC. Instead, we want to use the correct words to express the ideas that you have and to develop our academic vocabulary in the process.

RHETORICAL DEVICES REVISION CENTER

Get this—good writers use rhetorical strategies in their writing; therefore, so should you.

Go through your essay and identify the rhetorical strategies you used to develop your point and note which ones appear most often in your own writing. (Do they add to the text as a whole?)

Go through the attached list and see if you can add at least a couple of more rhetorical strategies to try and develop your ideas. Don’t go overboard here—a couple is enough. =)

IMAGERY STATION

Remember the following about DESCRIPTION ESSAYS:

DESCRIPTION ESSAYS reports the testimony of your senses

They invite readers to imagine that they, too, not only see but perhaps also hear, taste, smell, and touch the objects you describe

The use of imagery is key in description essays

You want to allow your reader to imagine that they, like you, were there

Go through your essay and circle ALL of the IMAGES that you have used. Then, take a closer look: are there any “wasted images”? (wasted images were opportunities that you could have used to develop the SENSORY DETAILS in your essay but you failed to do so).

For example, did you write “all you could hear was the sound of the ball hitting the floor”? This could be enhanced by writing “all that could be heard was the dull thump of the ball hitting the hollow wooded floor.” Notice how the latter develops more exact auditory imagery and, as a result, puts the audience at the scene.

Now, go back through your essay and develop some of the missed opportunities to enhance your imagery. In other words, develop all of those “wasted images.”

SPECIFIC AND CONCRETE LANGUAGE STATION

Focus on SPECIFIC AND CONCRETE LANGUGE– language related directly to the experience you are attempting to explain.

When editing your DESCRIPTION ESSAY, keep a sharp eye out for vague words such as delicious, handsome, loud and short, that force readers to create their own impressions, or worse, leave them with no impression at all.

For example:

VAGUE: Beautiful, scented wildflowers were in the field.

CONCRETE AND SPECIFIC: Backlighted by the sun and smelling faintly sweet, and acre of tiny lavender flowers spread away from me.

Go through you essay and look for vague words. Find them, and eliminate them or develop them by using CONCRETE and SPECIFC language.

Note: CONCRETE AND SPECIFIC does not mean “fancy”: good descriptions does not demand “big” words, but rather the correct words to convey what is trying to be said. For example, writer who uses rubiginous instead of rusty red actually says less because fewer readers will understand the less common word and all readers will sense a writer showing off.

TRANSITION STATION

In any kind of narration, the simplest approach is to set down events in CHRONOLOGICAL ORDER, they way they happened. If that is done, the story is already organized for you. If you are trying to capture the audiences’ attention right away, you can start IN MEDIAS RES. You can also utilize FLASHBACKS to recall an earlier scene. Writers will often use varying methods in order to produce an engaging story. No matter what you choose, make sure your audience can follow along through the use of TRANSITIONS of time, whether they are brief phrases, or whole sentences.

Pronouns can only be used when the antecedent is clear Circle all of your pronouns. Draw an arrow to the antecedent. Do they match? If they are unclear, fix them. If the pronoun is used to frequently change it up. Find ways to eliminate them and use different ways to use characters’ names.

Note in the following sentence how unclear pronouns might refer to more than one antecedent, leaving the reader unsure of the writer's intended meaning.

Lizzy told her mother that her sweater had a hole in it.

In this red sentence above, who has the hole in her sweater? Is it Lizzy? Or her mother? The reader might become confused. The rule of thumb is that the pronoun refers to the the closest antecedent, in this case, the word mother. If the writer intends to indicate that Lizzy is the one whose sweater is ragged, the sentence needs rewriting.

Lizzy told her mother, "My sweater has a hole in it."

Or, if the writer intends the opposite meaning, she might write this version:

Lizzy told her mother, "Your sweater has a hole in it."

Unclear pronouns are particularly dangerous with the pronounit. The best way to fix the problem is to rephrase the sentence in a new way. However, if there is more than one possible antecedent, the result is ambiguous.

When Alexander drove the car through the garage door, he badly damaged it.

WRONG! INCORRECT!If you eat sensibly and watch your caloric intake, most people should be able to maintain their desired weight.

CORRECTED VERSION: If you eat sensibly and watch your caloric intake, you should be able to maintain your desired weight.

OR EVEN BETTER: If dieters eat sensibly and watch their caloric intake, they should be able to maintain their desired weight.

Circle in your paper every time you used the word “that”. Can it be eliminated? If so, eliminate it.

Look at the last word of each sentence. Did you end a sentence with a preposition? If so, reword the sentence to give the preposition an object.

List of prepositions:

  • aboard
  • about
  • above
  • across
  • after
  • against
  • along
  • amid
  • among
  • anti
  • around
  • as
  • at
  • before
  • behind
  • below
  • beneath
  • beside
  • besides
  • between
  • beyond
  • but
  • by
  • concerning
  • considering
  • despite
  • down
  • during
  • except
  • excepting
  • excluding
  • following
  • for
  • from
  • in
  • inside
  • into
  • like
  • minus
  • near
  • of
  • off
  • on
  • onto
  • opposite
  • outside
  • over
  • past
  • per
  • plus
  • regarding
  • round
  • save
  • since
  • than
  • through
  • to
  • toward
  • towards
  • under
  • underneath
  • unlike
  • until
  • up
  • upon
  • versus
  • via
  • with
  • within
  • without

The flow center

Look at the following lists of words. Incorporate at least two transition words other than “next” to show transition. Pick the perfect word or phrase to enhance your transitions.

Addition and Conclusion
and / equally important / in the same way
moreover / much more interesting / then, too
of even greater appeal / next / consequently
in fact / just as surely / thus
likewise / at the outset / again
as a result / as I have said / for
further / more specifically / inasmuch as
also / undoubtedly / so that
therefore / indeed it is certain / hence
too / in truth / for this reason
accordingly / Last[lastly] / under these conditions
in other words / over and above / in addition to
furthermore / to conclude / another
besides / finally / in summary
in conclusion / second[secondly] / to summarize
on the whole / at the same time
Contrast and Comparison
but / rather / or
however / conversely / nor
yet / although / neither
whereas / though / either
on the contrary / as / quite as evident
as if / on the other hand / equally important
much more interesting / as though / still
notwithstanding / in spite of / of even greater appeal
in contrast to / otherwise / likewise
nevertheless / similarly / in the manner
at the same time / just as surely / for all that
despite
Emphasis and Repetition
for / for example / in particular
for instance / in other words / in fact
in the same way / that is to say / certainly
indeed / undoubtedly / as I have said
more specifically / of course / to be sure
on the account / thus / therefore
naturally / obviously / emphatically
most important / in truth
Time
soon / immediately / when
not long after / instantly / whenever
at length / at this instant / next
at last / suddenly / as
finally / now / once
some time / without delay / since
later / in the first place / occasionally
afterwards / forthwith / henceforward
presently / straightaway / then
from this time on / quickly / meanwhile
from time to time / at this point / thereupon
a few minutes later / after / in the meantime
before / formerly / sometimes
until / yesterday / in a moment
at present / later in the day / shortly
all of a sudden / since then / whereupon
in the future / while / during
in future / subsequently
Place
from / where / beyond
over / in the middle / around
here / there / near
in front of / in the distance / farther
here and there / above / below
at the right / before / between
in the foreground / on this side / beside
whenever / opposite
Reason, Condition, Purpose and Result
inevitably / inasmuch as / in order that
as a result / under these conditions / because
for this purpose / in this way / since
hence / if / thus
provided that / so that / for this reason
therefore / granted that / on that account
admittedly / notwithstanding / in case that
with a view to / unless / consequently
on account of / owing to / accordingly
Writers Dictionary | Literary Elements | List of Transitions | Sentance Laws | Grammer Laws