Good Meaningful Revision

Mary C. Dickson

Greater Houston Area Writing Project

Jackson Middle School, HISD

mdickson@houstonisd.org

Writers on Revision

Rewriting is when playwriting really gets to be fun. In baseball you only get three swings and you’re out. In rewriting, you get almost as many swings as you want and you know, sooner or later, you’ll hit the ball. –Neil Simon

Writing well involves two gifts—the art of adding and the art of taking away. Of the two, the first is more important, since without it the second could not exist. –John Updike

I’m happy when the revisions are big. I’m not speaking of stylistic revisions, but of revisions in my own understanding. –Saul Bellow

Revising is NOT re-copying

After years of just being told “Revise!” without further explanation, my students had become furtive recopiers, adding a few words here and there and using neater handwriting to revise their drafts. – Laura Harper, “The Writer’s Toolbox: Five Tools for

Active Revision Instruction”

Theory of Revision

We need to invite young writers into the world of revision through invitations and tools that make revision concrete and tangible… The point of learning about revision is not necessarily to make changes on every piece of writing nor to write dozens of drafts. –Georgia Heard, The Revision Toolbox

The constant struggle of the writer [is] to find and shape meaning on the page. I found that students, even in schools where the writing process had been taught for ten years, wrote THE END in big letters at the end of each draft and rarely revised their work. Even teachers in these schools viewed revision as simply making a “sloppy copy” picture perfect. –Barry Lane, After the End

Hai-bun

A Haibun is a combination of haiku poems and prose written about a one-way trip.

Trips I’ve Taken…-Write about a trip you have taken, by car, by foot, by plane, by boat, by camel… concentrate on the *journey* and not the destination. Remember to use specific details (remember your five senses!) to help bring your words to life.

-Use only one side of the paper.

-Include two haiku poems as word pictures, or “snapshots” from your trip.

Classroom Culture of Revision

Celebrate “risky” revisions (post works-in-progress around classroom)

Model, model, model Language-intensive classroom. Keep interactive lists

of of types of beginnings, conclusions, active verbs, colors, five senses words, lists of revision ideas, words instead of “said”, dead words

Give them space to revise—butcher paper method Make it a game or contest. “Fright write” (“Mistakes” are OK!! I make a big, big fuss when a

student crumples up a piece of paper)

Word “pools”

Specific Revision Strategies: Barry Lane and others

Slow-motion writing / exploding a momentShow, don’t tell / snapshotsQuestionsThought-shotsMaking a sceneHighlight verbs – eliminate “being” verbs

Heard, Georgia. The Revision Toolbox.

Lane, Barry. After The End. Teaching and Learning Creative Revision.

Murray, Donald. Shoptalk: Learning to Write with Writers.

Willis, Meredith Sue. Deep Revision.

Writers in the Schools: http://www.writersintheschools.org

Works Cited / Additional Resources