How to Write Better Essays

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33 Revising the structure

In this chapter you will learn:

• about the importance of listening to your essay being read aloud, to
  identify those passages you will need to work on;


• how to revise the structural features of your essay, like the intro-
  duction, the conclusion, and the logical structure of the essay;


• how to make sure your arguments and evidence are relevant and
  effective.

First revision – revising for reassurance

This is the lightest of all revisions. After we’ve finished writing an essay

most of us are keen to read it through to see how it sounds. We like to

be reassured that it reads well, so we can give ourselves a mental pat

on the back. This may sound like aimless self-indulgence, that we

should train ourselves to do without, but, in fact, this sort of revision

and the reassurance it brings does have a valuable point to it.

It allows us to set down a marker: not only are we reassured that it

reads well and it’s interesting, but we’re also clearer about those areas

we need to work on to improve it. More often than not these may just

involve a clumsy word or passage that needs tidying up, but they can

be more serious.

They may indicate that you haven’t thought through your arguments

clearly enough, or your ideas have developed further since you wrote

the passage, and you now see the issues differently. This revision is not

just about making sure what you’ve written is clear from the outside,

but also about ensuring that your writing expresses clearly the ideas

on the inside. If you were not entirely clear about them when you wrote

the passage, then your writing is likely to be unclear, too. Either way,

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