- Looking for a way to start revising any paper? Here's my concept. It's called the three-draft revision process. Yes, after your first draft, you're going to need three more drafts, but it's easier than that may sound. In your first draft, that very first draft you've written of any paper, go in and look at big-picture problems. Make sure, first of all, that you completed the assignment you were actually asked to complete. If you're told to write a paper on your favorite presidential candidate, make sure you didn't write one about your favorite type of cake or dessert. 

Second of all, make sure your thesis is clear, and that the rest of the paper overall works to support your thesis. Finally, make sure the rest of the paper is completely well organized. If there's any paragraphs that need to be rearranged in terms of order, go ahead, rearrange them. Make sure all the transitions are clear. 

Now, once you've done that, move on to your next draft. In this draft, look at what's going on in each paragraph. Does each paragraph have a clear topic sentence. If so, great. If not, you need one. Second, make sure all the other sentences in that paragraph work to support the topic sentence. If one doesn't, get rid of it, or try to figure out what you're really trying to say with that problematic sentence. 

So once you to clean up your paragraphs in another draft, print out another one, and then look at sentence level errors. This is where you're going to find probably the bulk of your problems, if you will, in any revision. You're just going to line edit. You're going to look at each sentence and make sure each one is absolutely clear. 

One great technique that I actually learned last semester was to start back from the back to the front. Look at the very last sentence of your paper, revise it for clarity, and then go for the sentence before it, and then the sentence before that, and the sentence before that, all the way to the very first sentence of your essay. It's easier to do. You're focused more on what each sentence is actually saying and less about its relationship to the rest of the paper. So those are some tips that I would suggest you take to heart and use to become an even better writer. Good luck, and enjoy the writing process.