How To Write a Revision Plan

For this course, your instructor will ask you to write a Revision Plan between the Intermediate Draft and the Final Draft of each project. A Revision Plan is simply a written explanation of a writer’s plans to revise. Below you will find step-by-step guidelines that you can use when you write your own Revision Plans. For this course, Revision Plans should be roughly 250 - 500 words.

1. Explain / summarize the feedback you received on your Intermediate Draft

After writing your Intermediate Draft and submitting it to My Reviewers, you will have received feedback from your instructor and from one or more of your peers. You may have also received informal feedback on parts of your draft in class or in small group meetings. In this first part of your Revision Plan, you should summarize the overall feedback you received on your draft. What did your peer(s) and your instructor think you were doing well? What did your peer(s) and your instructor think you should revise? Was any of this feedback contradictory? If so, how?

2. Critique the feedback you have received.

As an author, it is your prerogative to decide what feedback you will use and what feedback you will ignore. Some feedback is more helpful than others. In this section, you should critique the feedback you’ve received from your peer(s) and from your instructor. What was helpful for you as an author? Why was that feedback helpful? What wasn’t helpful for you as an author? Why wasn’t that feedback helpful? What feedback will you use and what feedback will you ignore?

3. Develop and explain a specific plan you will follow as you work on your next draft.

This section is an opportunity for you to develop and explain the specific ways you will utilize the feedback you have received from your peer(s) and from your instructor. Receiving feedback is one thing; revising your draft in response to that feedback is quite another.

For example, if one of your peers said you need more evidence, in this section of the Revision Plan you would explain HOW you plan to incorporate evidence more effectively: Will you add more direct quotes? Will you change the way you’ve incorporated the quotes you already have? Will you paraphrase your sources more, and thus add more in-text citations? Or will you do something else entirely? In this section of your Revision Plan you should have at least two specific and concrete revisions you plan on making in editing and revising your draft.