I am Lucifer DeMorte

Writing Checklist

You've done a bit of writing, and you think you might be ready to submit, but you're not sure. I can't do previews of papers, but I can give you this checklist by which you can effectively preassess your work.

1. Process Check

Did you do an extensive process of prewriting before you set about organizing and finally writing-up your ideas? Or did you simply sit down, open a new document, and start writing a paper with no prewriting? If you didn't do all the proper prewriting, your paper has failed the process check, and should regard what you have now as a "rough draft" that you should not turn in as a finished paper. What you should do if you fail this check is go back, and do prewriting as described in odyssey.htm, using your rough draft only as a source of notes, and write a whole new paper (thesis paper or thinkathon) based on this prewriting.

2. Attention Check

When you did your prewriting, did you take a long time reading and thinking about the precise meaning of the instructions in odyssey.htm, and the prompt for your topic, or did you just glance at the prompt, and then put your efforts into things that had not much to do with the precise instructions given in the prompt? If you didn't carefully study and follow the instructions in the prompt, your paper has failed the attention check, and you should go back, redo your prewriting on the basis of the instructions in the prompt, and write a whole new paper (thesis paper or thinkathon) based on this new prewriting.

3. Vocabulary Check

If your paper passes the two previous checks, compare the important words used in your paper with the relevant words used in prompt, and make sure you haven't changed anything. For instance, if you've been writing "predetermined" instead of "determined", or "simulated" instead of "emulated", or (horrifyingly) "determined" instead of "coerced", or treated different words as synonyms, your paper has failed the vocabulary check, and you should go back, redo your prewriting on the basis of the correct words and concepts given in the prompt, and write a whole new paper (thesis paper or thinkathon) based on this new prewriting. (This is a very strange mistake to make, because I would have thought that students would have a basic understanding that different words mean different things, but, sadly, I see such vocabulary errors in quite a few papers.)

4. Concept Check

If your paper passes the two previous checks, make a list of critical terms, like "mind", "determinism", "coercion", "emulation", and so on used in your paper, and make sure you are using those words exactly according to the meanings specified in the prompt. If you are not doing this, if you have, for instance, written as if determinism is a form of coercion, or (bizarrely) as if "randomness" is a synonym for "freedom", your paper has failed the concept check, and you should go back, redo your prewriting on the basis of the correct definitions given in the prompt, and write a whole new paper (thesis paper or thinkathon) based on this new prewriting. (This is an important check. A great many of the bad papers I see fail because the writer doesn't bother to read the prompt closely enough to grasp the correct definitions of the most critical terms, and thus writes things that they think are clever, but which are actually wildly, wildly wrong.)

5. Evidence Check

If your paper passes all the previous checks, look at the most important and critical claims made in your paper, and ask if your most important claims are logically supported by the available evidence. (If you're writing a conceptual or logical paper, the "evidence" here would be the definitions given in the prompt, or other relevant facts.) If one of your critical claims is not supported by describable evidence, but is in fact some thing you assert merely because you personally believe it to be true. If one of your critical claims turns out not to be supported by actual evidence you can describe, your paper has failed the evidence check, and you should go back, redo your prewriting without assuming that this claim is true, and write a whole new paper (thesis paper or thinkathon) based on this new prewriting.

6. Logic Check

If your paper passes all the previous checks, and you have given evidence in an effort to support your most important and critical claims, you should also check to see if the evidence given actually supports those claims. Whether or not a piece of evidence does or does not support a particular claim depends on whether it's possible for the evidence to be true, even if that particular claim is false. For instance, if it is a fact that the vast majority of reporters are liberal, that fact does not support the claim that the media has a liberal bias because it is perfectly possible that those reporters have professional integrity, and do not let their personal views influence their reporting. Similarly, if it is a fact that the vast majority of media barons, those who have complete control over what their channels do and don't report, are conservative, that fact does not support the claim that the media has a conservative bias because it is perfectly possible that those press barons have professional integrity, and do not let their personal views influence their editorial policies. So, if one of your critical claims could still be false even if your evidence is factual, it follows that your paper has failed the logic check, and you should go back, redo your prewriting without assuming that this claim is true, and write a whole new paper (thesis paper or thinkathon) based on this new prewriting.

7. Structure Check

If your paper was properly prewritten, uses the correct words, and correct definitions, uses evidence properly, and uses good logic, you can check to see if it has a good structure. Make sure that it has no pointless introduction, no repetitive conclusion, and no other unnecessary bits.

  1. If your paper starts with an introduction, delete it and replace it with a proper thesis paragraph.
  2. If your paper ends with a conclusion in which you repeat things you said before, or speculate about the future, delete it, and deeply regret the time you spent writing it.

Structural failure will not really hurt your grade, but it will introduce a degree of emotional pain into my life, and why would you want to do that?

8. Faff Check

If your paper is logically and structurally, okay, look through it for unnecessary bits of writing. If you wasted time speculating about people's motives, or wrote convoluted sentences in an attempt to look clever, or wrote anything else that did not even remotely contribute to clearly and completely explaining your thinking process about your topic, delete all that stuff.

Basically, this checklist is just another way of asking you to do all the things the prompt tells you to do, and to avoid doing things I tell you not to do. If you did what the assignment said to do, and didn't do any of that other stuff, you're good to go.


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