ENGLISH 8

The Art of Revision

Revision vs. Editing

Revision = changing the content of what you are writing Example: Adding a detail is revision.

Editing = changing the appearance of what you are writing Example: Adding a comma is editing.

Revision is like. . .

Revision is like cleaning your room because it may not be fun while you’re doing it but when you’re finished, you can stand back and see what you’ve done, and think, “Wow! That looks great!”

- Lisa Schroeder, author of I Heart You, You Haunt Me

Revision is like. . .

“Revision is like getting everyone in the choir to sing in harmony because if one voice sticks out, it ruins it for everyone else.”

- Kathi Appelt, author of Kissing Tennessee and

Poems from Homeroom

Revision Takes Planning

Before we start editing in depth, we need to focus on revision.

There are SO MANY WAYS to revise! We’ll show you just a few methods or strategies to making your writing better . . . . But that isn’t all you can do!

You need to have a plan about how you are going to go about your revisions – you can’t just slash and burn for no reason!

Big Things to do for Revision

Adding material Details Description Plot background Character Development

Cut, Cut, Cut!!

You can add. . . but you can also take away.What do you cut?

Repetitive information Information that slows down the pace Irrelevant information Words you tend to overuse (example from my own

writing: “realize”, “noticed”, “obviously”)

Word Choices

Try replacing common words (things, good, stuff, cool) with words that are more unique.

Try eliminating adverbs and describing them instead. Example: Instead of “he walked quickly”, what could you write to describe how he walked? He walked with his head down, arms swinging back and forth, legs eating up the ground.

Try eliminating phrases like “it looked like / it seemed like” to make your statement stronger.

Quotes from Real Authors re: Revision

“I just love to use just. It’s just so natural to just write and write and just let the words flow, you know? I weed most of those justs out in revision.”

- Linda Urban, author of Crooked Kind of Perfect

“I have a few little rules. Never more than one metaphor per page. Never use the same word in the same sentence (other than common words). Try not to use the same word in the same paragraph, and maybe not the whole book. And if you can’t find a new way to express something (avoid cliches at all costs), then just say it straight, i.e. “She was crying.”

- Nora Raleigh Baskin, author of Anything But Typical

Tip from John Green

That really depends on how you define “draft.” I believe that all writing is rewriting–even when you’re writing something down for the first time, it’s still an act of translation in a way because you’re trying to use text to bring life to this thing that exists in your mind. And I’m a big believer in revision: I almost always delete most of my first drafts (often as much as 90%). But there are many mini-drafts along the way, so it’s hard to talk about the process quantitatively. I do try to save the file with a different name each time I’ve made some dramatic changes I fear I might later regret, so that’s some measure, maybe, of how many drafts there are. The final copy of Katherines on my hard drive is called aok284; the final copy of TFiOS is called okay192.

- Author of The Fault in Our Stars