Adapting mentoring to, and with, the developing writer

Tips for changing how you help writers as they get better at writing independently

It is important (and actually not too difficult) to shift how you help a writer as they gain independence. (Image: wocintechchat.com)

A couple of weeks ago, we offered a tool for calibrating your comments to be relevant and useful for a developing writer you’re working with, depending on the stage of development of a given draft text. But there’s another dimension along which mentoring might (should!) change over time, and that’s the development of the writer.

The topic is far too large for a single post, but to give you a head start, we can recognize two very different components of mentoring a writer:

1. working with them on a particular piece of writing, and

2. working with them on their development as a writer.

Each should change as a writer builds skill and experience, but today we’ll concentrate on the former – you can expect a future post dipping into the latter. (You’ll find all this fleshed out more fully in our new book, Teaching and Mentoring Writers in the Sciences, especially chapters 5 and 6.)

Every writer, of course, goes through a long developmental process that begins as they fumble to grip a crayon in preschool. It’s key that you and the developing writers you mentor recognize that this process never stops – we’re still learning and developing as writers, and we’re sure you are too. For scientific writing in particular, though, the grad-school years are a special period of intense mentoring and (we’d hope) rapid growth. The way the typical developing writer thinks and works as an undergraduate, and the way that same writer thinks and works as a senior PhD student, are strikingly different. The same should be true for the way you (as a writing mentor) offer comments on their drafts.

When you first engage with a new writing mentee, it helps if you ask, and think, about their prior experience with writing. Unless they’re very unusual, that experience will come from their undergraduate courses, and it will largely consist of assessment and correction: they had writing assignments that were one-and-done. They’ll have written something, handed it in, and received a grade (assessment) along with some rationale for that grade in the form of notes on what was done wrong (correction).

Unfortunately, none of this has much resemblance to the way scientific writing actually happens! Typically, we identify an idea for a needed document (a research paper, a policy brief, etc.), discuss and develop the idea with collaborators, assign writing process responsibilities to various co-authors, work out an outline, and then create and revise a multitude of drafts. Developing writers are often startled and frustrated when they first encounter this lengthy writing process because it differs starkly from their previous one-and-done experiences.

Our mentoring needs to acknowledge this changing approach to writing and help writers grow through it. Mentors’ instincts, though, often work against what developing writers need to understand about their growth. If your tendency with a student draft is to mark or correct grammatical errors, strike out words and replace them with “better” ones, or more broadly point out “errors” or what you see as bad writing choices, you’ll be reinforcing the assessment-and-correction model. And yet many of us (our hands are both up) instinctively do exactly those things any time we see a draft. It’s just so hard not to line edit!

The solution is twofold.

First, help developing writers to understand and remember that just like manuscripts go through stages of development, so will they as writers. As their skills and independence grow, ensure they know what changes they can anticipate in the feedback you’ll provide them.

Second, as students need your directives less and less you can consciously shift towards feedback as questions,. Rather than “Rewrite these Methods using active voice”, try “I write my own Methods sections in active voice. You’ve probably been taught the passive, but do you think using the active would make your writing more engaging? Please read the argument for that in The Scientist’s Guide to Writing and we can discuss the choice”. Rather than “Cite Heard and Kitts 2018 here”, try “There’s some literature that might back up this claim – have you tried a Google Scholar search for ‘gallmaker impact evolution’ or something similar?” Will it take longer, this way, to get this draft to a finished product? Yes, considerably! But while getting the draft in front of you to a finished product may be the easiest goal to focus on, it’s not the one that matters most. Instead, the time you invest through these additional drafts helps move the writer along their developmental pathway.[1]

Over time, as you work to mentor a developing writer, you’ll see them gain in both ability and confidence. That’s welcome evidence of your mentoring success, but it’s also an invitation to change the way you work with that writer’s drafts. At some point, it will no longer be necessary for you to mark something as needing revision; you can simply revise it (with ‘Track Changes’ on). That doesn’t mean you’re stepping back into “correction mode” – far from it. Instead, it means that you’re recognizing the confidence and skill of the writer you’re working with. You’re recognizing that they needn’t see your revision as a correction – instead, they can see it as a suggestion, one they’ll consider and adopt or not as they see fit. In other words, they’ve grown as a writer to the point where they can glean writing advice even from your direct line edits.

Things will go more smoothly when you’re explicit and clear about how your approach to mentorship shifts as a writer develops. As you move from asking questions to direct editing, you might try something like this:

“It’s been rewarding to see you develop as a writer – you’re so much more skilled and confident that we both remember! So, on this draft I’m going to use Track Changes to make edits. That’s me working with you the way I work with colleagues – knowing that you’ll see those edits as suggestions, not demands. I’m happy to talk about any of my suggestions, and I expect you’ll often counter with something even better.”

This transition of a developing writer from a student to a collaborator is one of the most wonderful things that happens to a mentor. It’s a great idea to identify this target for your mentee, that so you can both work towards it and then celebrate together when the mentee achieves writing independence.

Of course, we’ve ignored something big here – or rather, we’ve just assumed it. That is, we’ve assumed the progress we’re talking about: the progress of a mentee from a naïve writer expecting correction to a full-fledged collaborator and coauthor. But you shouldn’t just count on that progress happening organically as the writer gains experience and absorbs lessons from your comments on their writing. Yes, most mentees will figure out how to write independently regardless of how you attend to their development. It’s even probable, since writing well isn’t optional in grad school. But it will happen more quickly (and humanely, for the students) if you’re a more deliberate facilitator of that progress. More about that in the future post we’ve promised.

Bonus for reading to the end

We’ve started posting downloadable resources and excerpts from our book on the book website: helpingstudentswrite.com. Follow that link to download your copy of a two-page hand-out that maps out a lot of the skills you can explicitly help students identify and pursue!

How about you?

What kinds of writing feedback can you picture approaching differently, now that you’ve considered these developmental stages of a writer working towards independence? What opportunities and challenges do these suggestions present to your workflow and goals for helping developing writers?

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This post is based on material from our new book, Teaching and Mentoring Writers in the Sciences, especially chapters 5 and 6. Use the code UCPNEW to get 30% off orders from the publisher.

© Stephen Heard and Bethann Garramon Merkle January 20, 2026

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[1] Sharp-eyed readers and pedagogy experts will notice something strange here. What we’re recommending is a shift from direct feedback (“do this!”) to indirect feedback (“do you think you could find an alternative here?). But direct feedback is clearer to students, and they may feel that it’s more useful – in fact, they may resent being asked to interpret indirect feedback. Not only that: direct feedback is a far more efficient way to drive a student to make a particular change. So why are we pushing you away from direct feedback (for more mature writers)? Because direct feedback may be an efficient way to get a particular change to a manuscript, but it’s a terrible way to get the student to take responsibility for thinking about the kind of change they should make. That’s why “it takes longer, this way, to get to a finished product”. The key consideration for you is to make sure you’re using indirect feedback (1) when a student has developed their writing independence to the point where they can productively use it; and (2) as a technique, well communicated to the student, for pushing them towards that kind of development. Otherwise, either they, or you, or most likely both of you, will be frustrated.