Chapter 3: The Reader as Writer: Drafting and Writing

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Welcome back.

We are so glad you could join us today for this deep dive.

Absolutely.

Thanks for having me.

We've got something incredibly practical lined up for you today, especially if you've ever found yourself, you know, staring at a blinking cursor at two in the morning.

Oh, the absolute worst feeling,

just total paralysis.

Right, feeling entirely paralyzed by that blank screen.

So today, we're basically stepping into the laboratory of academic writing.

We're pulling directly from the 12th edition of a textbook called A Short Guide to Writing About Literature.

Specifically, we're focusing on a real powerhouse of a chapter.

It's titled The Reader as Writer, Drafting and Writing.

And think of today's deep dive as your own personalized one -on -one tutoring session.

Yeah.

Our mission here is to completely demystify academic literary writing for you because it can seem like magic, but it's not.

It's a process.

Exactly.

We're going to walk you step by step all the way from having that very first kind of messy unstructured reaction to a piece of text right up to crafting a tightly structured persuasive essay.

We are looking at the psychological friction of writing, really, and how to overcome it by trusting this very specific process.

But to really show you how this works in practice, we need a test subject.

We need a laboratory text, if you will.

We absolutely do.

And the text the chapter uses to anchor this whole analytical process is a brilliant,

genuinely shocking piece of short fiction by Kate Chopin.

Called The Story of an Hour.

It's incredible.

It really is.

If you aren't familiar with it, let's give you a really quick summary of the plot just to ground our discussion because everything we talk about today builds on this specific narrative.

Right.

So the story centers on a woman named Mrs.

Mallard.

And we are told right in the first sentence that she has a delicate heart condition.

Which is a very important detail.

Crucial.

So when news arrives that her husband, Brintley Mallard, has been killed in a horrific train crash, her sister and her husband's friend, they have to break this devastating news to her as gently as possible.

Right.

And her immediate reaction and what follows is what makes this story so famous.

Exactly.

She doesn't have a paralyzed inability to accept its significance like some people might.

She weeps wildly, just sudden wild abandonment.

But then it shifts.

It shifts dramatically.

She goes up to a room entirely alone, sinks into this comfortable roomy armchair, and experiences this profound physical exhaustion.

But as she sits there, staring out the open window at the patches of blue sky, the new spring life.

Something completely unexpected happens.

Yes.

She is suddenly overcome by a massive sweeping sense of freedom and joy.

She realizes she will mourn him when she sees his dead body.

But she also realizes her life is finally her own.

It's such a wild pivot.

She starts drinking in what the story calls the elixir of life through that open window.

She just starts whispering, free, free, free.

It is such a radical shift in tone, just going from deep grief to total euphoria in minutes.

It is.

So she finally emerges from the room, carrying herself like a goddess of victory, walks downstairs.

And the front door opens.

The front door opens.

Her husband, Brentley Mallard, walks right in.

He had been far away from the scene of the accident.

He didn't even know there had been one.

Oh, man.

And upon seeing him alive, Mrs.

Mallard instantly collapses and dies.

Just drops dead.

Yep.

When the doctors come, they diagnose it as heart disease, what they call the joy that kills.

It is such a wild ride of a story.

The irony is just razor sharp.

And it's perfect for what we're doing today.

Okay, let's unpack this.

There is a brilliant quote from Robert Frost featured right at the beginning of our source text today.

Oh, I love this quote.

Frost said, all there is to writing is having ideas.

To learn to write is to learn to have ideas.

What's really fascinating here is that Frost is completely dispelling the myth of the waiting muse.

No, sitting around waiting to be inspired.

Exactly.

Getting ideas doesn't just magically happen by staring at a blank page and waiting for inspiration to strike from the heavens.

Having ideas is an active muscular process.

It takes work.

Our text basically breaks the prewriting phase into a few broad strategies to generate those raw thoughts.

The first overarching strategy is what I'd call breaking the blank page.

Getting messy.

Getting very messy and totally uninhibited.

Because we all know the terror of the blank page.

The text suggests you start by just getting your hands dirty with the material.

And this starts with annotating.

Reading with a pencil in your hand.

Literally.

You read with a pen or pencil actively in your hand.

If you own the book, do not hesitate to mark it up.

You highlight, you underline, you make aggressive notes in the margins about what puzzles you.

Or what pleases you.

Or even what displaces or bores you.

It's your immediate visceral reaction recorded directly on the page.

And those initial marks are seeds.

Later, you'll look back and ask yourself, why did I aggressively cross that sentence out?

Do I still feel that way?

Right.

You build on that with brainstorming.

Now we all know what brainstorming is generally, but the text makes a really crucial point here.

Yeah.

The goal isn't to find the right academic answer immediately.

Don't censor yourself.

Exactly.

It's the free completely uninhibited jotting down of thoughts to accidentally expose your own hidden biases or doubts about the reading.

You don't worry about spelling, complete sentences, making sense.

Just let one thought lead into another.

The text actually gives a phenomenal example of a student's brainstorm on the story of an hour.

The student just jotted down a raw doubt.

They wrote that they genuinely doubted a woman who got news of her husband's death could realistically move from profound grief to ecstatic joy within a single hour.

It's such a great observation.

It is.

That simple, unedited conversational doubt is the perfect starting point for an essay.

It's authentic.

Which leads right into focused free writing.

This is a bit more structured than brainstorming, but it still relies on momentum.

Take one specific issue or question that puzzles you from your brainstorm.

Like, why does Mrs.

Millard whisper free, free, free?

Perfect example.

You take that and you write nonstop for five or ten minutes.

You do not pause to edit.

You just keep the pen moving or the keys clacking.

There is a fantastic example in the chapter of a student using this exact technique.

They started exploring that whispering of free, free, free.

And through the sheer physical process of just writing continuously, they had a massive realization.

They realized it wasn't just about marriage.

Right.

They realized that her feeling of being trapped wasn't strictly a issue about 19th century husbands and wives.

It was a broader, more universal issue about power.

And the blind persistence with which human beings impose their will on one another.

Yes.

They arrived at a deeply nuanced insight just by refusing to stop writing.

It's a highly effective technique for bypassing your inner critic.

Now, the second broad strategy in pre -writing is what I'd call finding the pattern.

This involves listing out traits or chronological events, asking pointed questions, and keeping a reading journal.

Now, listing sounds dangerously close to just summarizing the plot, doesn't it?

If I just list everything Mrs.

Millard does, how is that helping me analyze?

That is the trap right there.

We need to make a crucial distinction for you here.

Listing the stages of Mrs.

Millard's psychological changes is a tool for finding hidden structural patterns in the text.

It is absolutely not meant to be a summary of the plot that you just drop into your essay.

By seeing the items listed out visually, isolated from the narrative flow, you start to see how the author assembled the pieces.

I see.

So it's taking the engine apart to see how it works, not just describing the car to someone.

That's a great way to put it.

And asking questions or keeping a journal does the same thing.

You write down things like, what does that spring day outside her window symbolize?

And the text points out that a reading journal isn't a diary of your daily life.

It's a dedicated workspace.

You use it to argue with a classmate's opinion from a seminar, or track how your feelings about the ending change on a second read.

So you view these pre -writing tools.

You have messy workspace full of annotations, lists, and brainstorms.

Now you have to transition to the next phase.

Critical thinking.

Yes.

You are moving from the random play of the mind to rigorous logical thought.

This is essentially the deeply uncomfortable process of arguing with yourself.

Uncomfortable is definitely the right word, because brainstorming is free and easy, but critical thinking means skeptically scrutinizing your own ideas.

You really have to put your own notes on trial.

If we connect this to the bigger picture, critical thinking means testing your underlying assumptions.

Let's say during your brainstorm, you wrote down that the story of an hour is a fundamentally bad story because the events are improbable.

Like the husband surviving a train crash he supposedly died in, heard dying of shock exactly as he walks in.

Right.

A critical thinker has to pause and challenge the root of that assumption.

Is improbability always a fatal flaw in literature?

The text uses great counter examples for this.

Think about Alton Wonderland or George Orwell's Animal Farm.

Those are highly improbable stories.

Pigs don't talk and run governments.

But they are universally recognized as classics.

So you have to withdraw that blunt assumption that improbable equals bad and refine your thinking.

Maybe the improbability in Chopin's story serves a specific thematic purpose.

Precisely.

You have to elevate your argument.

And testing your evidence is just as important as testing your assumptions.

This means you must reread the text specifically looking for counter evidence against yourself.

Yes.

Let's say your brainstorm labeled Mrs.

Mallard's sister Josephine as an annoying busybody.

You can't just run with that label in your essay because it feels right to you.

You have to go back to the text, look strictly at every single one of Josephine's actions, and honestly ask yourself, does the text actually support that label?

Or is she just offering welcome necessary assistance to a woman with a known heart condition?

You have to be totally willing to prove yourself wrong.

And this rigorous process of interrogating your own notes, discarding the weak points and elevating the strong ones is what finally leads you to the holy grail of the academic paper.

Arriving at a thesis, the foundation of any good academic essay is that it must have an argument,

a definitive point you are making that is supported by textual evidence.

You have to be able to state your main point in a clear, arguable thesis sentence.

Let's play this out so you can see exactly how the logic works.

Our source text provides a few examples of how students try and often fail to build a thesis.

Okay, let's do it.

So, let's say a student looks at their notes and writes, Mrs.

Millard dies soon after hearing that her husband has died.

Is that a thesis?

My verdict.

That is a complete failure as a thesis.

Why?

Because it is merely a stated fact.

Yeah.

Totally unarguable.

Nobody who read the story would disagree with that sentence.

And if you use a simple fact as your thesis, it will lead you straight into the trap of just summarizing the plot to fill up pages.

Which is the absolute last thing your instructor wants to read.

The very last thing.

Okay, so a fact doesn't work.

What if the student goes massive to make sure it's an argument?

What if they write, the story is a libel on women?

Okay, that one is definitely an argument.

But it is way too massive and abstract to prove in a short academic paper.

Right.

You can't generalize that much.

Even if you can successfully prove that Mrs.

Millard's behavior is selfish or despicable, you cannot logically use one fictional character from 1894 to prove a sweeping point about all women everywhere.

It's an untenable, structurally weak position.

Makes total sense.

So what about something a bit more focused?

Like, the story is clever but superficial because it is based on an unreal character.

Now we are getting closer.

It is definitely arguable.

But to pull this off, the writer has created a massive burden of proof for themselves.

Because of the word unreal.

Exactly.

They are going to have to clearly define what makes a character real in the that Mrs.

Millard does not meet that specific definition.

It's a tough hill to climb, but it is a valid thesis.

So what's the gold standard here?

What does a winning thesis actually look like?

A winning thesis connects specific parts of the text to the overall whole.

The text gives this example.

The irony of the ending is believable partly because it is consistent with earlier ironies in the story.

That's good.

That is the ideal thesis.

It is firmly based in the text.

It is highly arguable.

And best of all, it provides a clear roadmap for the essay.

It naturally dictates that the writer will need to analyze the specific earlier ironies and show how they build up to that shocking ending.

So what does this all mean for you?

It means you have your thesis, you have your notes, now you transition into the drafting phase.

Right.

You start transforming those preliminary ideas into a rough draft, arranging your evidence to support that winning thesis about irony.

The text provides a sample student essay called Ironies in an Hour to show this framework in action.

But let's be real.

Once you have that messy first draft on the screen, how do you actually know if it's any good?

That is where the text introduces what I consider a truly game -changing strategy for you.

It's the concept of outlining after you draft.

Wait, wait.

Outlining after the draft is finished?

Doesn't that just double your workload?

Why not just get the outline right the first time and save yourself the headache?

Because writing is an act of discovery.

You rarely end up writing exactly what you outlined initially.

Your brain makes connections on the fly.

So reverse outlining forces you to look at what you actually wrote, not what you hoped you wrote.

That is fascinating.

And there are two distinctly different ways to do it.

The first way is to outline what a paragraph says.

You go through your draft, and for every single paragraph, you jot down the topic sentence and a few key details.

Like paragraph one, the story is ironic from the start.

Friends think the news is sad, but she finds joy.

Exactly.

This quick outline checks your sequence.

Are you repeating yourself?

Are your points developing logically?

I see.

So it's basically an inventory of your ideas.

Precisely.

But the second way is where the real magic happens.

You outline what a paragraph does.

Instead of looking at the content, you identify the paragraph's structural function.

This raises an important question you have to ask yourself relentlessly.

Is your paragraph actually advancing your thesis, or are you just summarizing the plot?

Oh, this is brutal, but so necessary.

If you look at your third paragraph and realize its only function is to describe the train crash in detail, then what is it doing for your argument about irony?

Nothing.

Its structure is weak.

Wow.

And we've all been there.

You spend three hours polishing a beautifully written, eloquent paragraph.

It flows perfectly.

But when you subject it to the dose test, you realize it serves absolutely no functional purpose for your argument.

It hurts, but if it doesn't pass the dose test, it needs to be heavily revised or cut entirely.

Which brings us smoothly to the revision and editing phase.

You've diagnosed the draft.

Now you have to fix it.

The text breaks this revision checklist down into three really accessible steps for you.

Step one is unity.

This sounds incredibly academic, but it really just means being ruthless and eliminating absolutely any information that is irrelevant to your specific thesis.

Step two is organization.

You need a logical sequence, but you also need clear transitions.

You have to guide your reader's hand using phrases like, for instance, furthermore, or however, so they know exactly how your ideas connect.

Don't make the reader guess your logic.

And step three is clarity in Polish.

This is where you elevate the writing from functional to persuasive.

You ensure you are using concrete, specific examples from the text to back up your broad generalizations.

And you hunt down passive voice and mercilessly change it to active voice.

So instead of writing the sonnet was written by Anne Sexton, you write Anne Sexton wrote a sonnet.

It makes your prose much pundier and gives agency to the subjects.

You also need to scan for and remove sexist language, replacing outdated words like mankind with neutral terms.

It's all about respecting the reader's time and intelligence.

Which is exactly why the text strongly advocates for peer review.

Because let's face it, writing in a vacuum is incredibly dangerous.

You know what you meant to say, so your brain fills in the gaps for you.

It truly is dangerous.

Peer review provides you with a real live audience.

And here's the secret value of peer review.

Your classmates will inevitably misread your work if it isn't clear enough.

Having your intentions misunderstood by a peer isn't an insult.

It is the most helpful feedback you can possibly get.

Because it tells you exactly where your writing is failing to communicate your ideas on the page.

As the author Truman Capote is quoted in our text, good writing is rewriting.

You have to embrace the messy iterative process of revising based on that feedback.

So let's assume you've done all that.

You've brainstormed, thought critically, formed an arguable thesis, drafted, reverse outlined, and revised.

What does the final successful academic essay actually look like?

Here's where it gets really interesting.

Let's talk about the secret handshake of academia.

The little formatting signals and core principles that instantly tell a professor you know exactly what you're doing.

The text walks us through the final submitted version of that student paper, Ironies in an Hour, to point these out.

And the most vital principle we need to clarify for you right now, the absolute cornerstone of a successful paper is the strict difference between summary and analysis.

We've touched on this, but it definitely bears repeating.

Summary is just retelling the plot.

Analysis is carefully examining the parts of a text to see exactly how they relate to the whole.

A successful academic essay assumes the audience has already read the story.

You only provide the briefest plot reminders necessary to anchor your argument.

You never, ever waste time retelling the whole story.

Exactly.

The final essay also models some key academic conventions you need to internalize.

First, you must use an informative, interesting title that hints at your thesis.

Do not just title your paper The Story of an Hour.

Second, you have to explicitly name the author and the text in your opening paragraph, so the reader knows exactly what you're analyzing right out of the gate.

Third, your quotations must be brief, accurate, and integrated directly into your own sentences as evidence.

You never just dump a massive block quote into a paragraph as padding to hit a word count.

The quote should serve your sentence, not the other way around.

And finally, and this is a rule that trips up so many students encountering literary writing for the first time, you must always use the present tense when narrating literary action.

Yes, the literary present.

You're right.

Miss Mallard dies.

Not Mrs.

Mallard died.

The events of a story are always happening right now in a perpetual present as the reader experiences them.

It's a small detail, but using the literary present tense instantly makes your paper sound professional and analytically mature.

We've covered a tremendous amount of ground today, walking through the entire life cycle of an academic essay, from that first messy brainstorm to the final polished draft.

And I want to remind you why these steps matter so much.

Even if you are listening to this and you aren't currently writing a college literature paper, this entire process is universally valuable.

Absolutely.

Learning how to interrogate evidence, how to mercilessly question your own assumptions, and how to structure a logical persuasive argument that is a masterclass in critical thinking that applies to absolutely any field, profession, or even personal argument.

I couldn't agree more.

It's about structuring thought itself.

And I want to leave you with a final thought to mull over.

We live in an age where AI can generate a perfectly structured,

grammatically flawless essay in about three seconds.

So why bother going through this grueling, frustrating process of drafting and reverse outlining?

Perhaps the true value of this human drafting process isn't the final paper at all.

Then what is it?

Perhaps the strict, demanding structure of an analytical essay is simply the neurological workout required to form your own worldview.

Writing forces you to synthesize your messy thoughts into a coherent stance.

The machine might be able to mimic the output, but can't experience the cognitive growth that happens when you are forced to figure out what you truly believe about a subject.

Wow.

Writing isn't just the final product.

It's the cognitive workout of discovering who you are and what you think.

I love that.

It's powerful stuff.

It really is.

Thank you so much for joining us on this journey through the writing process.

On behalf of the Last Minute Lecture team,

keep reading actively, keep questioning your assumptions, and we will catch you on the next deep dive.