{"id":49,"date":"2015-06-29T12:34:33","date_gmt":"2015-06-29T12:34:33","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/academicskills\/?p=49"},"modified":"2015-06-08T13:45:03","modified_gmt":"2015-06-08T13:45:03","slug":"so-what-part-2","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/academicskills\/2015\/06\/29\/so-what-part-2\/","title":{"rendered":"So What? Part 2"},"content":{"rendered":"<p>In a <a title=\"So What?\" href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/academicskills\/2015\/06\/08\/so-what\/\">previous post<\/a>, I talked about a drafting strategy that helps me resolve issues with muddled paragraphs. I use questions that help me identify things to change, remove, or improve about paragraphs that are causing me problems. In this post, I want to go through an example to illustrate what I mean. The questions I use are:<\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>What is this paragraph really saying?<\/li>\n<li>How does this help me answer the question or problem I\u2019m addressing?<\/li>\n<li>How significant or essential is this point?<\/li>\n<li>How is it related to the material that precedes and follows it?<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Overall, the question is: <em>So what?<\/em><\/p>\n<p>Here\u2019s an example of a paragraph that I used this method with. The text is from my own PhD in English literature, but you don\u2019t need to read it in detail, it\u2019s just an illustration of my approach.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/academicskills\/files\/2015\/06\/1.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-53 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/academicskills\/files\/2015\/06\/1.png\" alt=\"1\" width=\"862\" height=\"772\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/academicskills\/files\/2015\/06\/1.png 862w, https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/academicskills\/files\/2015\/06\/1-300x269.png 300w, https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/academicskills\/files\/2015\/06\/1-335x300.png 335w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 862px) 100vw, 862px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>Of course, I wouldn\u2019t be this brutal on a piece of work that a student brought into the WDC! I\u2019m able to be this critical here because it is my own work.<\/p>\n<p>I wasn\u2019t happy with it because it was trying to do too much at once. When I thought about what the paragraph was really about, I concluded that it was about one specific way that a particular movie was critical of American torture in the war on terror. The really key bit is the relationship between the quote from Cheney in the middle and a bit of dialogue from the film which echoes his words. However, there is other stuff getting in the way: the remarks about the film\u2019s reception don\u2019t add much, and a lot of the beginning of the paragraph is pretty vague. My concluding sentences also don\u2019t really feel like they follow from the evidence that precedes them. I needed to tighten this up.<\/p>\n<p>Armed with these decisions, I started typing.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/academicskills\/files\/2015\/06\/2.png\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone wp-image-54 size-full\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/academicskills\/files\/2015\/06\/2.png\" alt=\"2\" width=\"649\" height=\"670\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/academicskills\/files\/2015\/06\/2.png 649w, https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/academicskills\/files\/2015\/06\/2-291x300.png 291w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 649px) 100vw, 649px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>It looks like a lot of editing. All I really did, though, was reorient the paragraph around the piece of information that I thought was most interesting: the relationship between Cheney\u2019s remarks and the dialogue. I\u2019d looked at each part of the paragraph and thought <em>So What?<\/em><\/p>\n<ul>\n<li>I cut out an unnecessary explanatory footnote and a sentence about the reception of the movie \u2013 I\u2019d only put that stuff in there to show that I knew it, and not to help my argument. When I asked <em>So What<\/em>, I didn\u2019t have a good answer about this information.<\/li>\n<li>Likewise, I removed the term \u201cheteroglossia\u201d. I hadn\u2019t defined it, and it was only there as a bit of jargon that made my argument less clear.<\/li>\n<li>The quote from Cheney is interesting, in fact the key piece of information here. But in the first draft I\u2019d assumed that a reader would just \u201cget it\u201d, and understand why I had included it without my having to explain it at all. I also had not reminded the reader about the connection to the topic of my essay. Asking <em>So What<\/em> helped me identify what was missing from these sections.<\/li>\n<li>At the top of the paragraph I had to tell the reader what the paragraph was about. I had sort of done this the first time round, but actually I hadn\u2019t been as specific as I had thought. By making a decision about doing one thing at a time, and not lots of things simultaneously, I made both the beginning and the conclusion a bit clearer.<\/li>\n<\/ul>\n<p>Here\u2019s the final paragraph without all the red boxes and blue lines.<\/p>\n<p><a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/academicskills\/files\/2015\/06\/3.jpg\"><img loading=\"lazy\" decoding=\"async\" class=\"alignnone size-full wp-image-55\" src=\"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/academicskills\/files\/2015\/06\/3.jpg\" alt=\"3\" width=\"960\" height=\"559\" srcset=\"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/academicskills\/files\/2015\/06\/3.jpg 960w, https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/academicskills\/files\/2015\/06\/3-300x175.jpg 300w, https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/academicskills\/files\/2015\/06\/3-500x291.jpg 500w\" sizes=\"auto, (max-width: 960px) 100vw, 960px\" \/><\/a><\/p>\n<p>&nbsp;<\/p>\n<p>Posted by Alex<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"<p>In a previous post, I talked about a drafting strategy that helps me resolve issues with muddled paragraphs. I use questions that help me identify things to change, remove, or improve about paragraphs that are causing me problems. In this &hellip; <a href=\"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/academicskills\/2015\/06\/29\/so-what-part-2\/\">Continue reading <span class=\"meta-nav\">&rarr;<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":5874,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2,4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-49","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-editing","category-structure"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/academicskills\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/academicskills\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/academicskills\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/academicskills\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/5874"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/academicskills\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=49"}],"version-history":[{"count":4,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/academicskills\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":61,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/academicskills\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/49\/revisions\/61"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/academicskills\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=49"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/academicskills\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=49"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/blogs.ncl.ac.uk\/academicskills\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=49"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}