Revising Essay Draft

Once you’re finished with the first draft, it’s tempting to stop right there and avoid reviewing that draft, especially if you’ve been working on the draft for a long time. However, any professional writer will tell you it’s essential to go back and revise that first draft to polish your ideas and make sure the essay is as effective as possible. Many first year students make the mistake of thinking that revising simply means going back and changing a few words or checking for commas. When you revise, however, you must look at your essay with fresh eyes and consider whether the content is suitable to your writing context.

Revising Essay Draft: Tips and Checklist

It is important to use a comprehensive revision checklist, and it would be wise to go through each step with every essay that you write. First, you’ll want to check the thesis statement, since that is what will be guiding the reader throughout your essay. Second, look over the introduction and ask yourself whether you have effectively established your subject and the main idea. Third, check the supporting details in each paragraph and decide if each one is both relevant and adequate. Fourth, check the conclusion to make sure you end on a strong note. Fifth, evaluate the essay’s expression to check for wordiness or vagueness. Finally, take a close look at the title.

Essay Conclusion

The conclusion is the last paragraph in your essay, and it should provide closure and end with a strong concluding statement.

Some techniques for the conclusion include:

1. Summarizing your main points, especially in a longer essay
2. Introducing a new but related idea. The key word here is “related.” The idea has to be clearly relevant to the subject at hand or you’ll lose your reader.
3. Offering a solution to the problem presented in the essay.
4. Giving your readers a call to action. Inspiring your reader to take some sort of specific action, such as contacting their political leaders or writing a letter to the editor.
5. Looking to the future. Offering your readers your vision of the future. How do you picture events unfolding?