Thoughts on Drafting

It is very important to think about the tips and tricks given to you, whether it be vocally or in a book. In this post, I will discuss how Student's Guide is helpful, or not helpful, for our current project.

Ribichini, Luca. "penso positivito (i think positive)" via Flickr 3/30/08. Attribution 2.0 Generic

Things that I found helpful for this genre:

• The idea of remaining flexible and open to evolved ideas
• Finding new sources and being able to implement them
• Finding new groups
• Anything new when it comes to your writing style 
• Writing Introductions
• For a QRG, an introduction is very different than many other styles of writing.
• Still, it is helpful because we want to grab the reader's attention and encourage them to keep reading
• Paragraph Development
• The importance of breaks and keeping each paragraph with a single main idea
• In this case, a very short and concise idea
• Organization of the text
• With a QRG, I feel that the text should flow well and be well organized or else the reader won't understand the controversy being portrayed. 
• Must be purposeful
• Revision
• Revision is apparent in all types of writing

Things I found that were not so helpful for this genre:

• Drafting a thesis statement
• In a QRG, there is no true claim that the author is trying to portray. Instead, they are simply describing an event in detail to inform their audience. 
• PIE Structure
• In this genre, there is not enough room to have a full PIE paragraph, as one of the conventions of a QRG is to keep short paragraphs.
• Perhaps each section should be a PIE in itself 
• Conclusions
• The conclusion is also very different when it comes to QRGs
• No claims to summarize
• Nothing to circle back to
• Should instead leave the reader with ways to find more information or include some final details

Reflection:

After reading through posts by Lauren and Charles, I feel that we as a class seem to agree on what is helpful and what is not. Lauren's post helped me to see how PIE Structure can be important, even within a QRG. Charles helped to emphasize how different (and similar) a QRG is to a normal essay, just so that I don't fall into any habits that don't work within a QRG. For example, taking a long amount of time to explain one point, or making the text too formal. 

Three things that I can work on:

1. PIE Structure: In my draft I tend to simply list ideas and facts but with no real structure, in each section I should introduce what it will be about and go from there instead. 
2. Revision: Before, I have never really put much thought into the revising process. This time, I would like to really set aside a good amount of time to revise.
3. Remaining flexible: With my controversy, there are many sources available, and I fear that when I find a new one that I won't be able to incorporate it into my QRG because it won't flow with the rest of the next. Now that I can keep this in mind, I should be able to stay open to new sources and ideas .