Tl;dr: If you're working with someone on a draft that is competently written but not accomplishing the goal (likely some kind of persuasive text like a grant, cover letter, pitch to an editor, etc.), there are three easy things you can do to help. And none of them involve pulling out your red pen. Read on for thorough advice, or click here to jump to the three things you should do to help.
This week, I gave writing feedback to two people who are not students in any of my classes. Last fall, I did the same for two other people who were also not students in my courses. All of them came to me for writing advice [1] because they were pitching something. Two were drafting funding proposals, one was prepping a writing query (e.g., to a publisher or a magazine editor), and one was framing up a big program idea.
In every case, the ideas these people were building on were great.
Better than that, the draft text they sent me was competently written. The writing was legible. It was coherent. It was not in need of much line editing (in the sense that they had subject-verb agreement, word choices were clear, punctuation was functional, etc.).
And yet, these drafts completely failed to accomplish their objectives.
Every single one was not even close to what the writer hoped to do: persuade a specific reader or group of readers [2] to give them money/say yes to a project or program.
Each of the texts I reviewed for these writers was ineffective for the same reasons. These issues crop up in nearly every writing project like this that I've ever reviewed. I suspect these same issues are familiar to you, too. I'll discuss the issues below and share specific revision feedback you can help offer to writers in this pickle; feedback that will actually help them revise for the better.
Competent-yet-developing writers make inevitable errors over and over
To be clear, the folks I'm helping all have at least one degree. Most have published in the peer-reviewed literature in their fields. They are definitely competent, effective writers. Throughout this article, I refer to writers like this as developing writers: even though they are competent writers, they are not yet skilled at this kind of persuasive, big-idea, or longform writing.
Why do developing writers seem to be getting in their own way?
You've probably asked yourself that question numerous times. You're working with someone you supervise or mentor. While they're junior to your career stage, they do know how to write. And yet, the writing isn't "working." Your experience of this situation likely ranges from frustration to puzzlement to a sense of hopelessness (and you may cycle through these feelings multiple times with a given writing project).
What is actually going on here?
Well, the writer you're working with (and likely supporting) is just visibly doing something that you probably still do in your early drafts, too. The difference is that no one sees this stage of your writing process anymore.
Competent-yet-developing writers reliably write early drafts for themselves, not for the target reader.
When these developing writers send you a draft, the writing is full of everything the writer knows and thinks could possibly matter. There may or may not be citations to back up all the knowledge claims, but the writing makes it clear the writer is knowledgeable and (likely) qualified to be presenting these ideas/doing the proposed work. Drafts at this stage also typically include excessive detail about the process and work the writer envisions doing, but rarely provide concrete detail about logistics, timelines, partners/collaborators, etc. If the text is aimed at a popular readership (e.g., magazine or book), this draft is usually all background info and little-to-no compelling narrative/storyline. And, the text is at least 3-5 times as long as anything anyone would willingly read, and often far exceeds any page or word limit set by the target funder/publisher. (Indeed, you almost certainly dread slogging through it or resent that you already have.)
Usually, when I see a draft like this, the writer has already tried their hardest.
This is the best they understand how to do, at this stage, with this kind of writing task. As a result, the developing writer is in a pretty fragile state. You can easily say something that will fracture their sense of confidence and leave them in a limbo they don't know how to return from.
Why does this awareness (on your part) matter?
Shame is debilitating. The human psyche actively avoids experiences of humiliation, which is a huge factor in how many early career writers stall out with major projects that require intensive writing. And, considerable evidence indicates that negative feedback demotivates developing writers at all stages of proficiency [3]. If you want this person to progress beyond this draft, and any future writing efforts like it, you can't rip into the draft (or them!) like they know any better.
Even though you want to be really candid with them about how ineffective this draft is, you know you can't.
Your awareness of the complexity of this feedback situation likely heightens your own consternation. This is when I hear colleagues venting in hushed voices, or making nervous/giddy, stress-driven, happy hour plans with someone who can lend a sympathetic ear.
Your need for an emotional release valve is understandable. You know that someone can write "better" but you aren't sure how to get them there. It's an especially acute stress point if there's a deadline looming.
The reality, though, is that commiseration might help you release steam, but it won't resolve your own stress about the matter. Why? Because, virtually zero of these commiserations actually help you make a plan for providing feedback that will help the person you're supporting.
So, go have your rant. :)
And then read on for how to substantially move the needle while spending very little time on the text yourself.
Three things you can do when someone's idea is good and their writing is competent, but the text is not "working"
1. Ask the writer to articulate, in a single sentence, who they are writing for and what they want the reader to do.
So far, the developing writer has been writing for themselves. In order for any revisions to make the text more compelling to the reader, the writer needs to now start conceptualizing the task as an effort to reach someone, not an effort to say everything they know or prove their qualifications [4].
Of course, just identifying the reader and articulating a "call to action" doesn't take the developing writer all the way to where you know they need to go.
2. Ask the writer to articulate, in 1-3 bullet points, what the target reader is trying to accomplish in the world.
To actually reach a reader, we need to genuinely understand what motivates them. It is likely that the developing writer has spent the entire drafting (and conceptualization) process so far thinking about what they will do when the reader tells them yes.
This happens because the developing writer is earlier in their career or new to the kind of writing project they're working on with you. And therefore, the developing writer is hyper-focused on being perceived as valid. In other words, the person you're supporting is concerned about presenting themselves as credible, knowledgeable, capable. While they would certainly say they care about the reader if you asked them, when they write, the developing writer is actually not thinking at all about the reader. Their draft isn't working because it's not written for the person who will actually use it!
Making the pivot to writing for the reader can be extremely hard for developing writers. It is a particular challenge when the writer has poured so much of their intellectual prowess (and time!) into the draft you're now helping them wrangle. So, give them an intermediate task that does not involve reworking the draft itself. I recommend you point them to a worksheet supplement in a paper of mine in which I and co-authors detailed an effective process for understanding what an end-user, reader, or collaborator would care about and need from a scientist [5]. This worksheet isn't specifically calibrated to writing tasks, but does prove a step-by-step process by which someone can think about someone other than themself (and other than you, the reader they are most used to trying to please!).
By the end of these tasks, the writer you're supporting should now have clear in their mind (1) who they are trying to reach, (2) what they want that person to do, and (3) what that person cares about. Now, it's time to leverage this clarity to do a whole-scale overhaul of the draft text.
3. Ask the writer to make a revision plan that maps out how their idea can help the reader achieve the reader's goals.
Whether the writer takes ten minutes or two hours to do this, you want the developing writer to next make a revision plan. This step is vital for both efficacy and efficiency. Without this plan, it's too easy for the writer to jump into revisions and slip back into their deep habits of writing to convey their knowledge (and impress/satisfy you). And that focus is what got you both into the dilemma you're facing right now. The writer has to do this revision differently to craft a more compelling next draft.
The initial plan should look like an outline, even if it's quite rough. Then, the writer should look back at their existing drafts and consider how the ideas, citations, and actual content (in that order) can be used to serve the goals and plan of the next revision. (This process is a modification of a revision strategy called reverse outlining [6], which could be a helpful framework for you or the writer.) This process helps honor the work and thinking the writer has already done while making crystal clear the material that needs to be retained and the material that will likely be cut.
4. And a bonus: The next draft can be no more than four pages.
It doesn't matter if the task at hand is a full-scale proposal for the National Science Foundation, and the ultimate document will be 150 pages (including budgets, timelines, data management plans, bios of senior personnel, etc.).
For the writer to pivot fully to a compelling emphasis on how their idea can serve the reader, they're going to need to let go of a lot of the information they thought was vital in the present draft. The most efficient way to get them there is to make it happen all at once. (Of course, you know that the writer will probably later return to those earlier drafts and mine them for individual sentences or citations per task 3 above, but right now, you need to get the writer to a completely different mindset. Tell them to push that earlier draft off the ledge and don't look back.)
There's another benefit to this forced concision - the next draft you review will be short enough that you can efficiently digest it and productively provide nuanced feedback about revision, expansion, etc.
That's it.
Affirm the writer that they've done great thinking.
Point them at a full-scale rewrite that now centers the reader.
Limit this next draft to very few pages.
Get out of the way until the writing is "working."
(Let me know how it goes!)
A post script:
Wait. No editing!?
You likely noticed that my advice does not involve any actual commenting or editing of the text itself. Isn't that a missed opportunity!?! You might be thinking: "This grant is due in 10 days!" Or, "the meeting with the administrator who can say yes to this program idea happens this Friday!" Or even, "the deadline for article pitch submissions is the end of the month. We have to fix up this text now!"
Even so, don't touch the document itself.
Hear me out.
The person you're mentoring here isn't going to learn to be more effective at this kind of writing if you do it for them. And it's not sustainable for you to overwrite their work indefinitely, so let this be an opportunity for the developing writer to grow toward increasing professional independence.
Your mentee is capable of massively and productively transforming this text --with far less input from you than you might think. Give them the chance. Just as an example, the four people I mentioned at the top came back with spectacularly improved drafts after I gave them the same high-level advice I'm recommending to you. I didn't provide a single line edit on their text; they got to the next, more effective drafts on their own. These subsequent drafts were much closer to their goals, which is a far more appropriate time to consider line edits [7].
Good writing takes time. You know that; your mentees need to learn that. Ideally, you're not modeling or approving for your mentees any last-minute-scramble writing efforts that could acutely, negatively impact their career or degree progress. These iterative drafting processes model how writing is thinking, writing is the work of science. Such experiences should happen with enough buffer time that developing writers perceive them as be learning experiences, not trauma. In other words, hopefully your mentees are in a position where they can recognize that if the draft text isn't compelling by the time it needs to be submitted/presented, it probably shouldn't be used yet. They should have the space to just need to keep working on it and/or plan for a longer drafting phase next time.
Need more support?
There are a bunch more helpful hot takes on effective writing feedback in the book I'm co-writing with Stephen Heard: Helping Students Write in the Sciences: Strategies for Efficient and Effective Mentoring of Developing Writers. Our manuscript is due to University of Chicago press in about two months (hooray/gulp)! You can learn more about the book here. You can also sign up for email updates here, so you'll know when we post excerpts and related resources (like this article), and you'll know right away when the book is available for pre-order.
Meanwhile, Steve and I both share a lot of resources to support you and developing writers. And, we both offer trainings that can help you or developing writers get better at this work. Feel free to follow up with us for details.
NOTES
[1] I run a weekly scicomm support drop-in/office hours program. It is one of the services offered by the UW Science Communication Initiative, which I direct. Anyone can come to those drop-in sessions. There are limits to the types and extent of support we can provide, but we can make those clear to you and refer you to other folks who can do more, when relevant. Find more information about the scicomm drop-in here.
[2] When we're talking about specific people or groups of people who determine how resources, information, and access are allocated, we're talking, in a word, about gatekeepers. Gatekeepers “influence entry or access to a particular arena, allocation of resources and information flows, the setting of standards, development of the field and the agenda, or the external image of that arena” (Husu 2004). There have also been arguments made that gatekeeping is actually a core role of academics (Merton 1973; clearly a persistent issue!), and that self-proclaimed allies are frequently complicit in gatekeeping (Dancy and Hodari 2022). (If you can't access these references and want to read them, let me know, and I can send you a PDF.) It's useful to name and acknowledge the function and influence people in these roles have, both because they have the potential to say yes/no to things we or our colleagues or mentees are trying to do, and because we are often these people. The more aware we are of how gatekeeping is imbedded in the work we do in academia, the more consciously we can work to make unbiased, equitable decisions about who has access to resources, information, etc.
[3] See for example Agius and Wilkinson 2014, Hyland and Hyland 2001, and Treglia 2008.
[4] This shift from writing what you know to writing for the reader leverages the difference between the deficit model and communications modes like dialogue, collaboration, or co-production (see this paper of mine for actionable discussion of the differences). While a grant application or a pitch to an editor might not seem like a co-production situation, the outcome of a successful such effort will be much closer to co-generated work than the writer is likely considering.
[5] Here's a complete citation for the paper (which is also mentioned in the previous footnote: Merkle, B.G., S. Bayer, P. Shukla*, and E. Valdez-Ward*. 2022. Sharing science through shared values, goals, and stories: An evidence-based approach to making science matter. Human-Wildlife Interactions 15(3). https://doi.org/10.26077/9wss-av78. For our purposes here, you're looking for the supplemental worksheet that accompanies this paper.
[6] For more on reverse outlining, see this resource from The Writing Center at the University of Wisconsin-Madison.
[7] There are decades of research supporting my advice here to skip line editing. Basically, until very late in the polishing stages of the writing process, line edits are not helpful. Fine-tuning grammar, syntax, punctuation, etc., are late-stage refinements that do not substantively improve the eloquence or efficacy of a text when there are still major issues of coherence, persuasion, clarity, or even questions about the need for the text or the ideas therein. The book I'm writing with Stephen Heard synthesizes all this research (from fields like Writing Studies and Rhetoric and Composition) into a guide for instructors and mentors. For now, you can dig into a classic resource on all this, or you can sign up to be notified when our book is available.