How to Prepare for Your First GWC Consultation

By Jasmine Stovall, Consultant

Picture it: You’ve been working diligently on a writing project for quite some time and have reached a point in your writing process where you think you could benefit from the feedback of a second set of eyes. You make the very wise decision to reach out the GWC to make an appointment for your very first consultation. You login to the online portal, input all the necessary information, and successfully submit your request. Within a couple days’ time, a consultant contacts you and after a brief e-mail exchange, your appointment is officially set.

So… now what?

Well, I’m glad you asked! If the scenario above sounds like an experience you’ve had or are currently having, you’re going to want to keep reading. This blog post is to serve as a guide for preparing for your first GWC consultation. I will talk about things you can do beforehand to prepare, what you can expect during your consultation, and offer some tips that will be helpful in making you your consultant’s favorite client and ultimately result in a successful, productive consultation session.

Let’s begin by discussing some things to do before your consultation:

  1. Be prompt and communicative – The GWC prides itself on our flexibility and short turnaround time. With that being said, we do operate on a first-come-first-served basis. So, essentially, the more prompt you are in your responses, the sooner you and your consultant can plan to meet. Being prompt and communicative from the first contact is an immediate green flag to consultants because it tells us that you are serious about seeking help, that you want actually want to be here, and that you are intentional when it comes to time and planning. Remember, when it comes to longer documents like dissertations or class assignments with known deadlines, you can make an appointment with a consultant as far in advance as you need to receive assistance in enough time to submit your project by the deadline. Of course, we understand that life happens, and grad student schedules can be unpredictable at times, but generally, communicating with your consultant and being respectful of deadlines (i.e., sending the consultant your document within the requested timeframe) will only help you leading up to your consultation and even after.
  2. Don’t be afraid to make your needs known up front – As consultants, our number one priority is to help you become a stronger, more confident writer, but we can’t help you if we don’t know what you need. So, as you are preparing for your consultation, don’t hesitate to communicate any specific needs you may have or anything you’d like us to pay close attention to as we read. Worried about whether your argument is clear and consistent throughout? We can help with that. Need help organizing your thoughts into an outline? We’ve got your back. Struggling with word choice and transitions in your intro? No worries. Or maybe you want us to focus specifically on the organization and sentence structure of your discussion section and only read the remaining sections if time allows? Can do. This allows us as consultants to be more intentional about how we allocate our reading time. When we can focus specifically on your requests, it makes for a more productive meeting overall and ensures that we are meeting your needs to the best of our ability.
  3. Set goals for yourself and for the meeting – This one is self-explanatory. Make some time beforehand to set goals and have an idea of what you hope to accomplish over the course of the meeting. If you have clear expectations for yourself and your consultant, the meeting is generally more productive. 
  4. Provide your consultant with any supplemental materials – In addition to your document, we encourage clients to send us anything else they think might be helpful in understanding the nature of the assignment. Whether it be a rubric, assignment description or instructor feedback, the more information we have regarding the context of your project before we begin reading, the more tailored your feedback will be.

Now that you are well prepared for your consultation, let’s talk about some things you can do during your appointment to get the most out of your session:

  1. Don’t be afraid to take the driver’s seat – While we are here to help you, we also want you to take ownership of your writing and your GWC experience. You are free to lead the meeting to ensure that you get out of it what you want to get out of it.
  2. Keep an open mind and be open to suggestions – As consultants, we are here to serve you and do what we can to provide feedback that will strengthen your paper. However, keep in mind that our suggestions really are just suggestions, not law. That means you can take or leave them, no harm no foul. Even still, I would encourage you to make it a point to at least be open to new ideas and changing the way you think about communicating your ideas and the practice of writing in general.
  3. Be open to both asking and answering questions – Some of the most productive consultations come from discussion and collaboration. While we are your consultant, we are also your peers. Some of my most enjoyable meetings have been a result of me feeling as though I am talking with my client rather than at them.  
  4. Come with questions – Our job as consultants is to not only help you improve the piece of writing for which you are seeking feedback, but also to make you a stronger writer overall. This means your questions do not have to be limited to your project by any means. We welcome broad writing questions as well with hopes that our session will help you write with more confidence for this piece and all those to come.

Here are some final thoughts and additional tips for success in your first consultation:

  1. Don’t feel like your writing has to be perfect or even complete before you meet with us – Part of our job is to help you get to the finish line (or as close to it as possible) at any point in the writing process. The finish line looks different for everyone. For some it may mean going from an outline to full paragraphs, while for others it could mean reviewing a polished article ready to be submitted to a journal for review. Either way, it is perfectly acceptable to seek help with a work in progress as opposed to a finished product.
  2. Remember that vulnerability is a part of the process – Writing is personal. When you think about big writing projects such as dissertations and theses that often are a result of research that has been years in the making, your connection to it goes deeper than just the words on the page, it means something to you. Therefore, it takes a lot of courage to surrender something you’ve put so much of yourself into to a stranger placing yourself at the mercy of their feedback. Keep that in mind as you go into your consultation and remember that while it may not seem like it in the moment, being vulnerable makes for a stronger, better you in the long run.

As with most things in life, showing up is the hardest part, and if you’ve managed to successfully do that then you’re already winning in my book. The same principle applies to your first GWC consultation. Start by showing up. Communicate your needs, set your goals, take ownership, keep an open mind, and let the rest the unfold from there. I hope after reading this you feel equipped with the necessary tools and confident in your abilities to prepare for a stellar first consultation with the GWC.

Reverse Outlining for Effective Revision

By Reilly Fitzpatrick, Consultant

Perhaps even more than the actual drafting process, revising your writing can be challenging and intimidating. As a writer, I feel pretty confident about my ability to go over my sentences with a fine-tooth comb and correct typos, resolve grammatical errors, or improve my word choice. However, trying to make big-picture edits—things like paper organization, cohesive argumentation, paragraph structure, and the ever-elusive pursuit of “flow”—often seems much more overwhelming to me. Is this true for you?

One of the strategies I have implemented in my own writing process, as well as when I teach revision practices to undergraduates, is reverse outlining. Reverse outlining is exactly what it sounds like: it is the process of creating an outline of your paragraph or paper in reverse, once you have already written it. Most of us use an outline when we write our original draft, but reverse outlining helps you to identify and analyze the specific goal of each paragraph and sentence in light of your overarching objective for the paper and evaluate how effectively you are accomplishing those goals. Reverse outlining is a practice that allows you to revise your writing on both a paragraph and sentence level, but more importantly, it gets you to think about your writing choices, not just what you are arguing.

While the writing process is rarely formulaic, reverse outlining is a strategy that works best with a checklist. Here’s a step-by-step guide to reverse outlining and revising your writing that I’ve created based on my own writing and teaching experiences. You’ll notice that most of these steps prompt you to answer questions about your writing, which means that your progression through the reverse outlining process will vary based on your answers and you will end the reverse outlining process with reflection and revision that is tailored both to your project and your individual writing style.

  1. Choose a paragraph to reverse outline. Usually this process works best if you make your way through your paper chronologically, but you can also jump right to a problem paragraph if you’re short on time!
  2. Start a page of notes where you will answer the following questions. These notes will ultimately constitute your reverse outline and help you identify strategies to revise.
  3. Without re-reading the paragraph you’ve chosen, write down what you think the main idea of this paragraph is. What are you trying to explain, argue, or persuade the reader of?
  4. Next, write down how this paragraph connects to your thesis as a whole. Why is it important to include this paragraph? How does it help you accomplish your overarching goal in this paper?
  5. Now, let’s look at the paragraph itself. Start with the topic (or first) sentence: what does it communicate to the reader? Write this down. Remember, topic sentences need to articulate 1) the main idea/claim of the paragraph, and 2) how it relates to your thesis. Hint: You just identified both of those goals in steps 2 and 3, so make sure they match up with your topic sentence! If they don’t, think about how you might rewrite your topic sentence to more effectively meet these goals.
  6. Move on to the next sentence in your paragraph and identify the goal of the sentence. Remember to think about the goal of the sentence not in terms of content (What am I saying here?) but rather structure (Why am I saying this here?). Here are some possible goals for sentences in your paper. Does the sentence…
    a. Provide context for the main idea of the paragraph to my reader?
    b. State my sub-claim and how it relates to my thesis?
    c. Summarize my stance on the topic?
    d. Explain what a scholar has to say about this idea?
    e. Provide evidence (like a quote, statistic, or example) to support a claim I am making in this paragraph?
    f. Explain how a direct quote or paraphrased idea from a source is relevant to my claim?
    g. State how my claim is different from other scholars’ arguments?
    h. State how my claim relates to an idea I discussed in a previous paragraph?
    i. Something else?
  7. Once you have identified the goal of the sentence, ask yourself these questions:
    a. Does the sentence actually accomplish its identified goal?
    b. Does this sentence directly connect to the main idea of this paragraph as I have identified it in the topic sentence, or does it contain ideas that are irrelevant or tangential?
    c. Does this sentence fully explain an idea, or does it need to be developed further (either by expanding the sentence or adding another sentence)?
    d. Is this sentence necessary in this paragraph, or could it be combined with another related sentence or deleted altogether?
    e. How can I revise this sentence to be clearer, more relevant to the main idea of this paragraph and my thesis, and more persuasive?
  8. Repeat steps 5 and 6 for every sentence in your paragraph, answering each question for the sentence in your notes.
  9. Once you reach the final sentence of your paragraph—the transition sentence—ask yourself these questions. (Remember, sometimes you will need more than one transition sentence at the end of your paragraph in order to accomplish all of these goals!)
    a. Does this sentence sufficiently summarize the main idea of this paragraph and remind the reader of what I have argued in it?
    b. Does this sentence connect the main idea of this paragraph back to my thesis?
    c. Does this transition sentence guide the reader from the main idea of this paragraph to the main idea I will discuss in the next paragraph?
  10. Now that you have finished reverse-outlining your paragraph on a sentence level, answer these questions about the paragraph as a whole:
    a. Is this paragraph accomplishing what I need it to in this paper? Does it clearly connect to my thesis? Is it necessary to prove my argument?
    b. Do I have one main idea in this paragraph, or do I jump around between several ideas? Does my topic sentence reflect this main idea and remind the reader of how this idea connects to my thesis, or does it just generally state the topic?
    c. Do I fully explain, argue, and support my sub-claim in this paragraph? What do I need to add in order for my paragraph to be persuasive—more explanation of my stance, more evidence from sources, or more background information?
    d. Does this paragraph repeat any information or ideas I have already talked about in another place? Which place makes the most sense for me to include that content?
    e. Does this paragraph need to be combined with another paragraph or split into 2 or more paragraphs? Does this paragraph need to be longer or shorter?
    f. Where is this paragraph placed in my paper? Does it work where it is, or does it need to be earlier or later in the paper?
  11. Repeat these steps to reverse outline your next paragraph!
  12. After you have made a reverse outline of every paragraph in your paper, think about the quality and quantity of paragraphs you’ve written. Do you feel confident that your thesis has been effectively explained, argued, supported, and proven? Have you noticed any gaps in your argumentation or methodology? Do your introduction and conclusion accurately predict and reflect the actual content of your paper? Have you considered all the perspectives on your topic and sufficiently surveyed the scholarly conversation related to your claim? As you became the reader (or the audience) of your own writing, what did you notice about your clarity, persuasiveness, and tone? What are some aspects of your writing that you would like to change or improve as you revise this paper and work on other projects?
    Space

Once you’re done reverse outlining your paper, take a step back and reflect on what you learned. What have you noticed about yourself as a writer? Are there specific writing strategies or skills that you are especially good at? Are there patterns in your paper that indicate a skill you need to develop? How might you adjust your writing or revision processes in the future based on what you have learned? While you might want to jump right into revisions, spending some time reflecting on your writing personality and processes will help you become a more competent and confident writer in the future.