Sondra Perl's; Understanding Composing

Sondra Perl believes in three basic ideas that are essential when it comes to writing; retrospective structuring, felt sense and projective structuring. Retrospective structuring deals with the order, organization, paraphrasing, sentence order and grammar of the piece of writing. Projective structuring involves the writer being able to take into consideration the views of the readers and predicting how they would respond. As for the felt sense, it can be described as a feeling or intuition that comes to the writer as they are writing. In other words, felt sense deals with being able to answer a question like "Is this what I really want to say?"

I agree with Sondra Perl, and believe that without applying all these three aspects one could not truly compose a successful piece of writing. Each one plays an important role in strengthening a composition, for example, without projective structuring a person might write a paper which is unappealing and uninteresting to the reader. Still it is important to remember that when it comes to projective structuring, one must not confuse the idea of connecting to the reader with writing obsessively and engage in compulsive corrections.

In order to not fall into mistakes like this, one can call on what Sondra Perl called "their felt sense". The reason why this aspect plays an important role is because although it is important to keep your readers interests in perspective, it is also important to keep your own views and ideas present in your paper. In my opinion, I believe felt sense is my favorite of these three aspects because it is the most useful. Felt sense does not only help you by keeping your ideas in mind but it also helps you stay on topic. For example, if during your paper, you begin to feel that perhaps your paper is getting of topic, felt sense can help you get back on track by simply asking "What do I need to do to get back on track with what I originally wanted to say?"

Towards the end of your paper, is usually when the retrospective structuring comes into play. In my opinion I see it as a final polish. Basically, it is used to make sure that all your ideas, and points of views are understandable and organized. There is no point in having interesting ideas and an appealing composition if it cant be understood by the reader, and this is basically what the retrospective structure helps you obtain.