The Morphing Face of Marriage

       My rough draft centers upon ideas based on the evolving face of marriage, and how television shows including “The Real Housewives of Orange County” influence perceptions of marriage. The feedback I received on my rough draft was mainly positive but areas I noticed I could improve upon include more precise language and giving more background on the show. Others did not necessarily pick up on my wordiness but while reading through my own draft I felt as though I could cut out several wordy phrases that were essentially just “fluff”. This is definitely one of my tendencies when writing, and I do not notice it until the second or third time I read through a paper. I think that this decreases my credibility, and also makes reading the material a lot less enjoyable. It also makes the text far more difficult to understand and follow, especially because my argument itself is already very conceptual and does not need to be clouded any more. Another issue with my word choice and sentence structure is using words that are not concrete such as “probably” or “somewhat”. I am going to try and eliminate all “wishy-washy” terms such as these so my argument appears more reliable. Other comments I received included utilizing more quotations as I have not incorporated many of my sources yet. I am having difficulties including aspects of evidence and quotes from my sources; to fix this issue I plan on reviewing my notes on them and re-reading the sources to get a better idea of what passages will strengthen my own voice.

            As far as the positive pieces of my paper so far, I have attempted (I hope successfully) to include some playful wording and language to keep this lengthy paper interesting throughout. Also, my classmates commented that my thesis statement had strong ideas, so I will try to stick with these themes throughout the remainder of my writing. I mention in my thesis three main reasons why people marry nowadays according to the television show I am focusing on, so I am hoping to expand upon these ideas in my body paragraphs. I do however need to maintain my focus when doing so, because another critique given to me pertained to staying on topic and not getting too broad with my evidence. The center of my argument is how “The Real Housewives of Orange County” is contributing to the deterioration of what marriage is perceived to be, and so every piece of evidence should in someway pertain to this. Finally, to make my paper as effective as possible I was told to include more background on the show considering many people may not have seen it, and therefore specific examples would undoubtedly be helpful to readers. Hopefully if I take all of these criticisms and complements into consideration, I can mold my paper so that my point of view is obvious and influential!