Notes on Teaching Revelatory Writing
By Niall Twohig
Revelatory Writing
I teach students an approach to writing that helps them reveal the depths of a social problem to a reader who does not yet see those depths. This approach is rooted in empathy. One writes to share their view with another who will benefit from it. Writing bridges the gap. It connects one with the other, writer with reader. As an act of empathy, this mode of writing doesn’t approach the reader with hostility or judgment. It meets them where they are. It doesn’t leave them disoriented. It guides them, logically and carefully, through the murky depths. It doesn’t leave the reader feeling alone or without hope. It reveals lineages and communities to buoy them. This is not to say that revelatory writing can’t sting. It can. When it needs to. But it’s the kind of sting that wakes a reader. It stings with love.
The goal of revelatory writing—revealing one’s vision to a reader—is antithetical to the goals of writing in a market-driven education system. In that system, we are trained to write for a good grade, to get admitted or hired, to make a name for ourself. This generation has reached for these goals and come up empty-handed, even when they clutch the prize or prestige. That writing gives them things, but it doesn’t give them a taste of writing’s power, its ability to connect writer and reader in a relationship that can shift the way one thinks or acts in the world. This approach gives them a taste.
It also satiates a thirst I see in this generation of students. For whatever reason, many have a keen awareness of the systemic dimensions of social problems. They don’t accept the old explanations, deflections, excuses. What they haven’t been given is a form, or vehicle, for channeling and expressing their critique. Instead they’ve been told to chase after credentials that will, one day, give them the right to speak. This makes little sense for those who feel, what Dr. King calls, the “fierce urgency of now.”
That form is waiting for them to use. And it has never been the exclusive property of professional writers or academics. As one of my teachers says, secret ways are only secret because people aren’t using them. I teach students this way of writing, so that they can use it. In this way, it becomes less of a secret.
Note: There are many examples of revelatory writing across all cultures. I’m most directly influenced by Dr. Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Letter from Birmingham Jail” and James Baldwin’s essays, as well as by the problem-posing method of Paulo Freire.
Old Habits
Revelatory writing seeks to break two habits that once served students but that ultimately block their ability to write their most meaningful and impactful essays.
The first is the habit of removing oneself from the writing. Students are told to avoid the personal in all forms. Personal pronouns or experiential evidence are a no no. A very valid fear is that when students speak about the personal, they will lapse into personal opinion or biased rants. Another rationale is that students have little to add to an intellectual conversation. They are not experts, so all they can do is accumulate expert evidence they find agreeable and marshal it against other experts they find disagreeable.
The second is the habit of relying upon formula. Students are often taught formula that produces writing easily digested by graders with a high volume of papers and little time (and too little pay!). Models like the 5-paragraph essay and the sandwich-method of paragraph organization make sure the student is grasping the basics; it also makes it easier for the grader to check off those boxes in an assembly-line fashion (A mentor once told me a story about a grader who could spot a high score SAT essay just by seeing its shape from a far off distance).
Those who engrain these habits start off with good intentions. These habits helped students grasp the basics and get through the gates. But ultimately, they turn writing into a mechanical exercise bereft of soul. How can students develop any love or appreciation for writing while reaching for such ends? By the time they get to my class, it’s no wonder that most dread writing.
New Habit #1
This approach to writing breaks the first habit by bringing the writer—that flesh and blood person typing the words—back into the essay. The essay opens space for this person to share their experiences, their sensations, their reactions to what they witness in the world. It asks them to speak as they would speak in life, to use the stuff of their life as grist for the writing mill.
What this method encourages should be distinguished from opinion pieces or rants. It’s not that. In this writing, one’s personal experience opens a window into a larger social problem that is not one’s problem alone.
The course’s writing project, outlined in the syllabus, helps students bring themselves back into the writing. Step 1 gets them writing from experience and observation. It gets them to use a key concept from the course to push beyond opinion. Step 2 asks them to connect a phenomenon they observe in the present with a similar one from history. Step 3 gets them to reflect on their own expanding awareness by writing about a problem they once saw in shallow ways but have come to see in deeper ways.
At the same time that these steps bring the writer back into the essay, they also restore the reader to the writing process. Writers are prompted to write for a flesh and blood reader. I ask them to envision someone they know or a younger self still focused on the shallows. This gives them reader awareness. With this awareness, they begin to write in humane and strategic ways rather than mechanical ways that get the job done. They start to consider what their reader needs to grasp what they grasp, what the reader feels or thinks as they receive the words, what blocks communication and what moves will lift those blocks.
It should be noted that when I read and comment on these steps, I am not looking for argumentation, perfect sources, or correct grammar. Rather, I look to see if the writer can bring themself back into their writing, if they can use the tools to see the contextual forces shaping their experience, if they can develop an awareness of the reader that allows them to bridge the gap. Letting them know where I’m focused often removes old blocks that have stifled their voice and ability to express their visions.
New Habit #2
To break the second habit I introduce a structural approach to writing that gives students more freedom and presence than the old formulae allow. I call this the cohesive essay structure. To see what this structure entails, it helps to understand the limitations of the 5-paragraph essay. That essay is comprised of an intro (with thesis), three body paragraphs, and a conclusion. Here’s a visual of what this essay looks like:
The three body paragraphs all connect back to, and prove, the thesis sentence. This is represented by the arrows pointing back to the introduction.
A thesis statement for a 5-paragraph essay might read: The U.S. legal system promises fair treatment, but it has built in biases. A closer examination shows race, class, and gender biases. Following the formula, paragraph 1 will be about racial bias in the law, 2 about class biases, and 3 about gender biases. These points all connect back to and prove the thesis. The conclusion will sum up the three points as a way of reiterating the thesis.
The limitation I started to notice teaching writing courses is that the model leaves little room for logical build. The three body paragraphs are often interchangeable. In our example, class biases could be discussed last or first. Likewise for the other two categories. In other words, the essay lacks cohesion. Trapped on the surface, the writer cannot build to any real insight.
What I saw in grading sessions was that students would be punished for the limitations of the model. We, the instructors, looked for insight when the form didn’t allow it. It only allowed students to skim the surface of three loosely connected points. It seemed misguided to blame the students rather than the model. It seemed absurd to keep punishing them for not doing without giving them a form to do. This is what led me to the cohesive essay structure.
When building a cohesive essay, we treat writing like architectural design. We build a multi-tiered structure with its inhabitant—the reader—in mind. Here’s the image I use to help students visualize this structure:
The blue circle is the introduction, the ground floor, where we meet our reader. The main claim is a blueprint we share with the reader to help them see what the structure looks like as a whole (it might also hint at the floors we’ll guide them through in the rest of our essay).
The basic building blocks of the structure are subclaims. Sub- because these are building blocks that, when arranged logically, build the main claim. To return to the architectural analogy, we might look at each subclaim as a floor in the structure we are building. We use the word “subclaims” rather than “paragraphs” to show that each subclaim can consist of several paragraphs or pages. This distinction helps students see that writing longer essays, dissertations, or books doesn’t require a new structural plan. It just requires adding more detail, nuance, and analysis to each subclaim—more rooms to each floor.
If you look back to the 5-paragraph model with the architectural analogy in mind, you’ll see that it leads to structures composed of disconnected rooms. The reader wanders into each room, circles back, and then enters another room. They remain on the ground floor. The cohesive structure welcomes the reader into a logical structure that leads them, step by step, toward a higher view. The key difference, then, is logical build. In the cohesive structure, each subclaim builds to the next subclaim (signified by the upward pointing arrows). Subclaim 1 must come before subclaim 2, 2 before 3, and so on, for however many subclaims one needs to work out the main claim. These parts, in other words, are not interchangeable. What comes before leads up to what comes after. What comes after relies upon what came before.
Note: Since the subclaims build the main claim, it’s a good idea to point the reader back to the main claim and remind them how the next step fits into the larger structure. This connection back to the main claim is signified by the downward arrows in the diagram.
Modeling
It might be enough to leave this as an abstract structure for students to use in their writing. I find it more useful to give students a particular model to practice building in my course. This is Step 4: Looking Deeply at a Social Problem. The six areas outlined in Step 4 help students build a logical series of subclaims that reveal deeper views on social problems. Unlike a formula, these six areas help students logically work through problems they face. They provide a shape of a home that students can build and furnish with their experiences and insights.
My hope is that if they use the cohesive structure to build this model, they can use it elsewhere to build different models. This has proven true when I read my students statements for law school, grad school, med school, and jobs. I see them using the same moves to guide their reader through their ideas and toward their deepest insights.
The other benefit of working within a specific model, like a problem-driven essay, is that it brings focus to student conferences. When I know what they are building, I can spot when the structure is or isn’t holding up. When it holds, I’ve been moved and enlightened by the insights they reach and share. When the structure doesn’t hold, we can easily spot where the breaks occur and how to remedy them.
Hospitality
I advise students to envision their reader as a guest in their essays. The reader should feel welcome. They shouldn’t have to work too hard to navigate your house. They won’t feel that hospitality if we are absent or exist as a disembodied voice. They’ll feel they’re inhabiting a ghost house or lost in the clouds.
When we are present, we can guide them through our home. We can point them back to important parts or forward to places we’re taking them. We can introduce them to other friends and guests. We can open doors and unpack treasure chests. We can talk to them as a friend.
As I read this now, I think of childhood visits to my Irish uncle and aunt’s home in Boston. They were the most hospitable folk I met. They’d say things like, “Ah c’mon Niall! Let me show ya something,” as they took me to the garden or led me to the attic. I remember following their voices to mysterious nooks and trinket-filled chests around their house. I felt connected to them, as if by a magic string.
The same hospitality can be shown in essays. If we are there—if readers hear our voice—we extend that magic string. Our readers will want to follow it—follow us—through the homes we’ve built.
Signaling
Writers often have a clear idea of what they are trying to say or do on the page. It’s sometimes so clear, to them, that they assume the reader has the same clarity. This usually leads to gaps on the page that disorient the reader and that require extra labor, on their part, to fill.
Signaling, which I’m adapting from Graff and Birkenstein’s They Say, I Say, makes explicit what is clear to the writer in their mind. Signaling entails using “signal phrases” that let the reader know what moves you, as a writer, are making. For example, you might use a signal phrase like “According to Author X…” to let your reader know when you’re paraphrasing or quoting an author’s ideas. Or you might use a signal phrase like “Here, Author X demonstrates…” to let the reader know when you’re shifting from evidence to analysis.
Building on this, I teach signal phrases as moments when you speak to the reader, in conversational language, letting them know what you’re up to, or where you are taking them. These signals can guide the reader through the macro-level structure and micro-level structures:
On the macro-level, you can use signal phrases to help your reader transition between the floors of your structure (subclaims) or between the rooms (paragraphs) within each floor. These are transitional signal phrases. Think of transitional signal phrases as moments when you and your reader stand on the threshold. It might help to remind them where you’ve been, to point to where you’re going, or do a bit of both.
On the micro-level, you can use signal phrases to guide your reader through ideas in a paragraph. These phrases provide an alternative to the formulaic models of paragraph development. When writers think about guiding their reader with conversational phrases, they often see what logical step is needed to reach their reader.
I’ve include lists of signal phrases in my Writing Slides. Like Graff and Birkenstein, I encourage students to treat these as models that they can play with, modify, and make their own.
Note: Students are good at coming up with signal phrases when talking one-on-one, especially if I ask them questions like: What are you going for here? How does this paragraph (or sentence) connect to the last? What are you trying to get across to the reader in this paragraph (or sentence)? When I ask them questions like this, they’ll usually guide me in ways they don’t do on the page. I tell them to guide the reader in the very same way they’re guiding me in conversation. These words echo: Ah, I see what you’re up to now! What you just said... put that in there! Jot it down before we forget!
Disorientation is a tool for revision
When I read student essays, I try to navigate the structure as myself and as a reader ignorant of the course topics and materials. I tell each writer where I felt disoriented and where this other reader would likely feel disoriented. What I’m doing here is checking the reader-friendliness of the structure the writer has built. The more disoriented “we” felt, the less cohesive, and less friendly, the structure is. When the writer knows where “we” felt disoriented, they might go back to those areas and see what’s needed to bridge the gap. For peer review, I ask students to read each other’s work from this state of split consciousness between themself and the reader still on the surface.
This method of reader-response is also a good balm for student’s apprehensions and anxieties about getting help on their essays. These feelings are shaped by an individualistic ideology (stand on their own feet!) and a punitive model of academic integrity that too often prevents students from seeking out the very thing that can help them improve: readers, responses, conversation.
So I encourage students to get friends or family to read their work. The best help these readers can give is not editing. That will teach very little. It won’t let me, as a teacher, hear the student’s honest voice. And it won’t give me the material i need to help them break patterns that stall communication. The best thing a reader can do is note areas where they felt disoriented, confused, or lost. The more a writer gets this type of feedback, the more they start to internalize their various readers. These readers start to sit on their shoulders as they write, reread, and revise their work. I have a few of my own here with me now!
Note: It might help for readers to track other feelings such as anger or frustration, or even positive feelings. Some instructors encourage this type of reader response, but I find the feeling of disorientation most useful for the writing process.
On Grading
As much as I hate grading, I think it can communicate an important message to a student of systemic analysis. It is an imperfect marker of how well they are using the course tools to reach a deeper view and how clear and impactful that view is for readers. A high grade is a sign that the student is proficient with the tools and that their work is reader-friendly and impactful. Lower grades signify a diminishing ability to handle the tools or communicate one’s vision in reader-friendly ways. The highest grade means the student has built a lighthouse that shines clearly for readers.
“Am I going in the right direction?”
Many writing instructors hate to hear this question. I like it. A student who asks it wants to know if they’re on the right path. There is, of course, no one right path. But we, who know a way (other than just the way to an A), can let them know they’re on it or if they’ve lost the way.