Serious Best-Reader Dialogues

        Until this point in the semester, we have used the concept of a paper's "best reader" to help sharpen its thesis.  Until we know to whom a paper is really directed, we don't know whose mind we are trying to change, what that mind already believes/knows/feels, and what we must do to change something about those beliefs, knowings, and feelings.  Remember that the goals of academic prose most often are limited, tactical goals, designed to improve the situation by making allies of those who might oppose us, rather than to achieve a knock-out, total victory over an opponent.  Only rarely, in a rhetorical mode called "polemic," does academic rhetoric call for the destruction or repudiation of everything about an opposing view of the evidence.  Usually, academic prose tries to persuade readers to modify some behavior or belief, persuading them by instructing them with information and reasoning they were not likely to know about.  For our papers to succeed, they only have be good enough so that we can predict that information and reasoning would budge the best readers toward agreement with your thesis.

        To take this "best-reader" concept a step further, we will use it to develop the introduction, body and conclusion of fairly well-developed drafts.  Exchange papers and come up with at least three questions, and the principles that would make them important to the best readers.  Concentrate on improving how the paper first introduces itself to the readers, how it completes paragraphs or transitions between paragraphs, and how it deals with readers' perceptions of the consequences of the thesis.

I.  Work with the author for five minutes to describe more thoroughly the paper's best readers in greater detail.  What kind of people are they?  What basic beliefs do they care most about and why do those things matter to them?  What kinds of evidence will move them most successfully?  (Are they "number" people or are they "value" people or are they "pathos" people or etc.?)

II.  Best Readers Encounter the Thesis.

        What do the best readers for this paper currently (before reading the paper) think about the main points the author is making in the entire paper?  When they have finished the introductory paragraphs, what question or questions might they think the author is leaving unasked, and why do those questions matter to them?

Question:

Reason why it matters:

III.  Best Readers Encounter the Body of the Argument.

        Find a paragraph in the body of the paper that the best readers will find incomplete because it does not refer to something they would care about at a time when they would think it natural to refer to it.  What question would they ask and why would it matter to them?  Or, find two adjacent paragraphs without the right kind of transition to take the best readers from one to the other.  What question would the best readers be asking about the relationship of these two topics, and why would it matter to them?  Either change the paragraph order or leave them the same, but work out the missing piece of the "bridge" between their main ideas.

Question:

Reason why it matters:

IV.  Best Readers Encounter the Conclusion of the Argument.

        What would be the best readers' impression of the consequences of this thesis?  Remember to think about "unintended consequences," those things the author does not plan on happening, but which a reasonable person might expect to happen anyway.  Why would they worry about that?

Possible consequence:

Reason why it matters: