Donald Murray, Pulitzer-Prize winning journalist and professor of English, says, “All good writing is rewriting.  Rewriting helps you say what you mean.  As you rewrite, and only as you rewrite, do you begin to become a writer.”   Apparently other well-known writers would agree. James Thurber told an interviewer that The Train on Track Six was rewritten 15 complete times; William Faulkner wrote The Sound and the Fury 5 separate times.  Clearly, revision is an integral part of the writing process.

So, what exactly is revision?  Often, when we hear that term, we actually think of the process of correcting—getting rid of surface errors like misspelled words or misused punctuation—the things that English teachers delighted in red-penciling.  While it is important to correct these distracting flaws, revision is a process that plunges much deeper in the work of writing. Revision is, literally, “re-seeing,” a second look, at the ideas, the details, and the language of a piece of writing.  When you revise, you look at content, relationships, meaning, and structure, rather than at proofreading, capital letters, commas, or quotation marks.  If you have dealt adequately with the content on a fundamental level, concentrating on whether or not you have clearly communicated your intended message and meaning, readers are more likely to forgive one or two misplaced commas or sentence fragments.

So, where to begin?  We will assume that you have already checked to be sure that your characters are three-dimensional and believable, that you have given the protagonist some faults and the antagonist some redeeming qualities.  We also will take it for granted that you have used dialogue and detail to bring the plot to life and that your story has the basic elements of setting, characters, plot, conflict, resolution, and dénouement.  We will deal primarily with revising the language itself to bring boldness and precision to your work.

Joyce Armstrong Carroll compares the revision process to that of solving a mystery—both involve a logical reasoning out of clues, a process termed “ratiocination.”   For our purposes, ratiocination involves using a system of visual clues to find ways to improve the writing.  Once we have encoded the piece, we will examine techniques to using the “clues” to rewrite and strengthen the piece.

Assignment 1

You will need a copy of a short piece of writing—a short story, essay, or a chapter of a novel—double-spaced, at least; triple-spacing will make the coding even easier.  Revision is best done on work that has “rested” for awhile, so the story/chapter you finished last week, or better yet, last month, is a more useful choice than the one you wrote this morning.  You will also need a set of colored pens, pencils, or crayons—preferably nine different colors.  Finally, you will need a sheet of lined paper, folded into lengthwise quarters.

Take a deep breath, and let’s do a little “text-tampering!”  (Try to use different colors for each of the codes listed below.  If you find that you don’t remember what some of the codes are referring to—like clichés, trite expressions, or sentence subjects—skip them until the lesson in which techniques for improving that coded clue are discussed.  You can then easily go back to the piece and code them.)

What to look for and how to code it:

• “To be” verbs:  is, am, are, was, were, and all verbs that include be, being or been: Circle them.
• Sentence variation: Underline each sentence in alternating colors (1st sentence in blue, 2nd in green, 3rd in blue, etc.)
• Repeated word: Draw a wavy line under them.
• Really, very, good, alot/a lot*: Mark through them with an X.
• Sentence subjects and verbs: Draw an arrow from the verb to its subject.
• Clichés and trite expressions: Put a box around them.
• Imprecise words (some, few, etc.): Place a check on or beside them.
• Personal pronouns (I, you, he, she, it, we, they, etc.): Place them in a triangle.
• Sentence beginnings: Write the first word of each sentence on a line on the folded sheet of paper.

FYI:  “Alot” has cropped up with some frequency of late in a variety of writing; however, it is not correct, at least not in American English writing.  It should always be written as two separate words:  a lot.

Assignment 2

All right!  Now that you have your work coded, let’s re-enter the text and use some of those visual cues.

First, let’s consider the words marked with an X.  Most often, these words are added out of habit, rather than from any need for them; other times, they are used as a substitute for taking the time to find a strong, vivid description.  Treat them like yesterday’s newspaper, and throw them out!

In most cases, you will be able to omit these overused adverbs without changing the flow or the meaning of the phrase.  If you find the sentence vague or weak without the “really” or “very,” drag out your thesaurus, and look for a more specific or more intense verb or adjective.

Weak:  The boy ran very fast.
Better:  The boy raced down the path.

Now, post a 500-word section of your story or novel chapter with and without the changes.