Writing Criteria, Part Two: Development — the Devil in the Details
How do you develop your writing without resorting to adjectival assault or a peppering of prepositional phrases? The devil, as they say, is in the details.
By Patricia Roy — December 7, 2022
It never fails: I spend several minutes describing the parameters for a complex writing assignment, and when I call for questions, the first one is: "How long does it have to be?"
Students, I love you, but you must stop worrying about this number. Honestly, the page count means almost nothing to me.
I know what you're going to say: "But if we don't meet the page requirement, we won't get good grades."
I hear you. And to a certain extent, your concern is fair. Some teachers who seem to reward longer essays regardless of the content. But, if you are a conscientious student, you want more than a good grade. You want to write well because you know writing is a valuable soft skill, useful in any course or career. Instinctively, you know gassing up your essays just to reach a page requirement is not the way to do it.
How do you develop your writing without resorting to adjectival assault or a peppering of prepositional phrases?
The devil, as they say, is in the details.
What is Development?
Structurally, development refers to the details used to support the focus or thesis. Details support the main idea by narrating, describing, explaining, or arguing. Supporting details can come from facts or opinions and can take the form of personal stories, scenarios, direct observations, expert opinions, quotations, restatement of rules or laws, data, or reasoning. There are myriad details possible for any writing situation, and your job as a writer is to choose which ones to use.
Writer, Reader, and Genre Positions
After supporting the focus, the job of development is to persuade the reader to keep reading. Successful writing relies upon the relationships between writer, reader, and genre positions.
The writer position is the version of yourself communicated by the text. It's your projected voice, level of authority, and position within the conversation on the topic. Since you are in complete control, choose it wisely. You get to determine your tone, your attitude toward the writing, as well as your stance.
Good development reflects more than just your ideas, though. It also responds to the reader position, anticipating their queries, concerns, and expectations. Think beyond the teacher. If this piece of writing were to go out into the world, who would be the most likely or even ideal reader for it? What common ground do you share with them? How might their values differ from yours? Keeping your reader in mind as you write allows you to make subtle but important choices.
Lastly, the details must suit the genre or form. There are many possible genres, but here I am referring to the ones you would be assigned in college across majors: personal and analytical essays, letters, articles, landing pages, lab reports, case studies, research papers, business proposals, blogs, brochures, ad copy, scripts, etc. Even if your writer position and topic remain the same, different genres have different readers and styles. You don't write the same way for a personal essay as you do for a business proposal or a brochure.
Make sure you are certain of the genre assigned, and if you are unfamiliar, ask for and seek out examples.
But First, We Feast
To ensure good development, you cannot save it for later. Start early. Take the time to explore every nuance of the topic in the form of notetaking, freewriting, brainstorming, mind mapping, or any other generative exercise. Do this early enough to give yourself time to repeat or edit the process as needed. Write down any ideas that come to you, revisiting your texts and notes from class as needed, and don't throw anything away or delete until you have received a grade for the course.
Do Your Own Work
Don't go directly to the Internet! Teachers want to read your own thinking about a topic because they want to see what you have learned. No essay in the history of human communication has ever been improved by a dictionary definition of a common word ("Merriam-Webster defines development as . . .") or a quote from a person with no connection to the topic ("As Gandhi once said . . .")
A writing project is an artifact of your learning on the subject. It allows you to present your understanding in a way that an objective exam never will. If the teacher does not signal you to research, don't.
How to Know When You're Done: Developing the Right Details
Not sure if your writing is on target? Once you have a draft, consider these questions:
1. Do the details support your thesis or focus?
The only details you need in your writing are the ones that support your focus. Any tangents not related to the assignment could cost rather than garner points. Moreover, if your writing for the "real world" lacks substance or focus, readers will stop reading.
2. Have you thought of all opposing viewpoints?
A refutation is an argument you make that argues against opposition to your claim. By refuting the opposition, you can show your awareness of all sides of an issue. It is very important to deal reasonably with these views. Too often, pundits color their language with emotional appeals, ad hominem attacks, or other logical fallacies. That kind of tribalism only works when you preach to the choir; to others, it's hostile. If you deal with opposition reasonably and fairly, using language your opponents would use to describe their own position, you increase your credibility and stand a better chance of convincing others of your cause.
3. Have you quoted readings from class?
My students often ask me how many quotations to include in a paper. Any number I tell them is going to be wrong. If I say, "one per paragraph," they will only use one quote per paragraph. But, there is no magic number.
It all goes back to purpose. Since I teach literature courses, I expect a liberal quoting of passages. The purpose of a literature essay is to show that you can analyze a text. To do that, a writer must scour the text, not cherry-pick a few easy passages. The purpose of close reading is not to include every relevant passage but to ensure the textual evidence matches the focus.
Be careful with quotations. They should not dominate the writing. To keep the balance and to develop wisely, make sure you write about every quotation you use. Quotes don't explain themselves.
Even if your essay is not for an English class, a key objective of every writing assignment is to demonstrate your facility with the learning materials, so make abundant use of them.
4. Have you provided a warrant for all evidence?
Each quotation or piece of evidence needs to be explained back to the focus. This explanation is called a warrant. Any example, story, statistic, or quotation needs to become part of your argument. I find that most students struggle to write warrants, which is not surprising because they are harder than regurgitating research. You must really think about how the pieces fit together.
Once you know you have the right details, the rest starts to fall into place . . . and placement is exactly where we are headed next. After development, you'll want to revise your papers for organization, the next step in this series on Writing Criteria.
Patricia Roy
Patricia Roy is a writer and professor who has helped students succeed for over 25 years. She started her career as a high school English teacher and then moved into higher education at Tuition Rewards member school, Lasell University in Newton, Massachusetts. Her practical guidance and enthusiasm motivate and inspire students to fearlessly explore their own passions. Professor Roy is also a freelance writer and published poet.
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