Writing Goals
More Concise Language. In my college essay, I used very similar paragraphs to describe the same thing multiple times. By saying the same thing in different ways, I was able to take up words that needed to be used, but I think that I could have said new things, adding to my college essay. In addition, saying the same thing multiple times gets boring to read, which detracts from the whole. To solve this crack in my papers, I will go through and color each idea a different color. If I have too much on one color, I will make it more concise.
Adding Variety in my Essay’s. It is a common and easy to make mistake to start every sentence with the same word or idea. As you can see in the following lines, I make this mistake as well. “I will have to want to learn and grow as I am taught and trained. I will need to recognize that I am under another until I have learned what it takes to move beyond that. I will not be the top dog, and as such I will need to plan on growing for myself, not for anyone else.” Pulling these lines from my college essay, I recognized that I could not stop using the phrase ‘I will…’ While this makes sense because I was speaking of what I am planning on doing, it weakens my product considerably. While writing in the future, I can prevent this by having a list of prepositions next to me and starting every other sentence with a preposition.
Showing not telling. A good technique used by the best of writers is the concept of show don’t tell. I used to be excellent at this, but it fell out a bit in my essay. As in the following lines, “I take my glasses off, clean them a little on the sleeve of my shirt, and put them back on. My gloved hand grips the wheel, and my left hand on the stick of my jeep. The sun comes through the open top, heating the seat behind me. My dad is outside the jeep, watching the walls on either side of the infamous Mirror Gulch.” I could have done this with much more discriptive language. For example, I could have said my hand dripped with sweat as I gripped the stick. To make sure that I use language like this in the future, I will think through how I would be feeling each time I write something down.
Adding Variety in my Essay’s. It is a common and easy to make mistake to start every sentence with the same word or idea. As you can see in the following lines, I make this mistake as well. “I will have to want to learn and grow as I am taught and trained. I will need to recognize that I am under another until I have learned what it takes to move beyond that. I will not be the top dog, and as such I will need to plan on growing for myself, not for anyone else.” Pulling these lines from my college essay, I recognized that I could not stop using the phrase ‘I will…’ While this makes sense because I was speaking of what I am planning on doing, it weakens my product considerably. While writing in the future, I can prevent this by having a list of prepositions next to me and starting every other sentence with a preposition.
Showing not telling. A good technique used by the best of writers is the concept of show don’t tell. I used to be excellent at this, but it fell out a bit in my essay. As in the following lines, “I take my glasses off, clean them a little on the sleeve of my shirt, and put them back on. My gloved hand grips the wheel, and my left hand on the stick of my jeep. The sun comes through the open top, heating the seat behind me. My dad is outside the jeep, watching the walls on either side of the infamous Mirror Gulch.” I could have done this with much more discriptive language. For example, I could have said my hand dripped with sweat as I gripped the stick. To make sure that I use language like this in the future, I will think through how I would be feeling each time I write something down.