Revising Writing

Some of these revision strategies apply to many writing situations.  Some are personal-writing specific.

Peer Review:  While there are various strategies that work with peer review, here is one:

Responders need to avoid good/bad responses.  Rather, right after reading, give an honest but not abrupt response:

1. What the writer made me feel?

2. What will I remember most and why?

3. What did writing remind me of?  What moved me?

4. What about the language was powerful?  What about the voice was powerful?

--Haines, 121-125;126-128

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Day:  Once you have some events of interest to you, decide which day would be right for the events to happen.  Focus in on that and write about it in detail in order to put the reader in both the time and place of your memoir.

--Roorbach, 48

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Reading Dialogue for Revision:  Read the draft of the dialogue out loud.  Tape it and listen to it, and even transcribe it in order to learn the rhythm.  Read other examples.  Think about the non-verbals that would be in play in a face-to-face conversation.  What about the silence?  What background activities would be going on?  How are all of these showing up in the dialogue?

--Roorbach, 86-88

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Re-seeing Organization and Structure:  Use index cards or post-it notes in a variety of colors to give shape to your essay.  Lay cards out on a table or post notes on a wall and re-organize to see the potential.

--Roorbach, 170

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Letter to Find Audience:  Remember this suggestion on the Writing Memoir screen?

Write a letter to someone you haven't seen in a long time to explain yourself.  This letter isn't to be sent.  Instead, remove the salutation and initial "small talk" from the letter. Then read the rest?  It should be the beginning of an essay with a solid audience because, as you have been writing you have been thinking of someone else.

Flip the task around for revision.  If you are having trouble finding your voice, insert a letter opening and closing to check for how you are connecting to your audience.  If the newly created letter "flows" well and reads as a letter you would write to a person you respect, you probably are communicating clearly.

--Roorbach, 94, 99

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Metaphor:  Take a scene from your draft and use a metaphor to make readers see it in a new way.  For example, what if you described your marriage as a carnival or a classroom as a dance?

--Roorbach, 135

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Repetition:  Select objects or places that took on meaning in your draft.  Use those objects or places again in the essay to use reader's ability to make unconscious associations.

--Roorbach, 135

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Edit for Vagueness:  Look for words like "about" (...about seven years...) when precision is possible; "a" (...a grocery store...when an exact item could be named; "late" or "good looking" (...late at night... or ...a good looking person...) when detail would add to the picture.  Look at the paper as the readers do--what's clear to you in the draft may not be clear to them, because they don't have the images in their mind's eye.  You have to put them there.

--Roorbach, 154

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Toss Out Garbage:  Cut your draft in one half, and/or have someone do it for you.  Re-type AND then revise without referring back to the original.  Chances are that this version will be leaner and meaner.

Another possibility:  Tell a story in exactly 250 words in order to see what must stay and what can go.

--Roorbach, 158, 178

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Chart Your Essay:  Use a sheet of paper or self-adhesive notes to chart your essay in order to see what is dynamic and what is static.  Create a flowchart, in other words.  Look at the movement of the draft.  Toward what is your essay flowing?  Where do individual sentences fit in the flow toward the end?  Do any sections seem to be going in circles?

Diagram your paper thinking of a ladder:  Does it move along the incline or does it veer off?  Are there gaps?

--Roorbach, 147-148, 166-167

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Collage:  After an initial draft, select the good stuff and put those chunks on the table.  Play with the chunks, allowing them to arrange themselves.  Then add meaning with scenes and portraits rather than merely explaining.

--Elbow, 148, 152-153

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Ten Questions:  When writing about a scene, take a passage of interest or that's problemmatic.  Ask:  What is this trying to do? (Or what is this about?)  Write down 10 answers.  Then, write a paragraph that analyzes your scene.  Work to make it not only true, but also elegant.

--Roorbach, 68

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Be a Poet:  Make a free-verse poem and of a section of the essay.  (You many have to take out some points and add others to end up with a coherent piece.) This is a useful strategy because in order to get the words into lines, you have to think of shapes of words and relationship in addition to meaning. 

--Roorbach, 157

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Beginnings and Endings:  Start reading your draft at a random spot.  Think of that spot as your first paragraph.  How would you change it to make it the first.  Try a couple more spots, keeping your mind open to the possibility of a better beginning.

Where does the story really begin?  Where do you stop it?  See what story is really there by (temporarily) deleting the beginning and ending.

--Roorbach, 28,157

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Cut and Paste:  Scrutinize parts of the paper that need special attention by cutting the good passages of the paper from the rest.  What makes it good?  What thread or shape of story is emerging?  Then put the good pieces in the best order. Clean up the writing, and review for what needs to be added to develop the paper thoroughly.

--Elbow, 147-148

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Sentence-Level Issues:  Assess the paragraphs (and then the sentences) for length.  Where do odd lengths end up within the paper (the paragraphs).  Is there a reason?  Experiment establishing a pattern different from the current one.

--Roorbach, 27

Works Cited

Elbow, Peter.  Writing with Power. New York:  Oxford UP, 1981.

Haines, D.  Writing Together.  New York: Perigee Trade (Penguin), 1997.

Roorbach, Bill.  Writing Life Stories:  How to Make Memories into Memoirs, Ideas into Essays, and Life into Literature. Cincinnati, Story P, 1998.

Resources for Teaching