1. The Art of Revision English 8

2. 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

3. 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.

4. 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!

5. Big Things to do for Revision Adding material ◦ Details ◦ Description ◦ Plot background ◦ Character Development Cutting material Repetitive, or random information Information that slows the pace of your story Irrelevant information Words you tend to overuse “realize”, “noticed”, “obviously”

6. Example First paragraph: “I want to go home!” Karen said. “But you can’t,” said a rough voice from behind her. “It’s not fair.” “We will let you go when we are done with the experiment,” said the voice. Karen sobbed. First paragraph: “I want to go home!” Karen screamed! “But you can’t,” said a rough voice from behind her. The person obviously didn’t want to be seen. The lights were out and their voice had been electronically changed. “It’s not fair.” she whined. “We will let you go when we are done with the experiment,” said the voice hesitantly. Karen sobbed. She could tell they would never let her leave this place alive, even though they went through the process of hiding their identity.

7. Word Choices Replace common words ◦ things, good, stuff, cool can change to words that are more unique. Eliminate 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. Eliminate phrases like “it looked like / it seemed like” to make your statement stronger. Change some of your “saids” to another verb that communicates your meaning better ◦ for example: yelled, sobbed, or grunted

8. 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