10 Surefire Tips for Revising

For Writers and Teachers of Writing

I’ve been writing professionally for nearly 40 years, and can tell you that NOTHING, including AI, takes the place of good revision. If you can revise, you can write, and you won’t need AI to do it for you.

Here are 10 ways to make your revision stronger.

1.      Leave your draft alone for a time. Overnight isn’t enough. This is one reason students struggle so much to write in school. They get an assignment one day, turn it in a day or two later. Serious writers don’t work like this. Three days or more, and you will see your writing with fresh eyes. But here’s another roadblock schools put up: They do not give students revision time IN CLASS. Very few students revise on their own, so what they turn in is ALMOST ALWAYS a rough draft. Even if they correct spelling and punctuation, that’s light editing, not revision. Give students one or two class periods in which to work while you, the teacher, can be there to confer. And if you’re a writer, leave your work for a minimum of three days before revising. Possibilities will literally scream at you.

2.      For Teachers: Ask students who confer with you to come with a question. Reading whole pieces aloud and offering general advice is a waste of everyone’s time. You cannot teach a master class in writing during a 15-minute conference. This is why many teachers give up on conferring—and that’s unfortunate. You can help students who raise one specific issue, such as . . .

·         I don’t like the beginning.

·         I can’t find the right words to describe my dog.

·         This dialogue doesn’t sound right. What do I do?

·         I don’t get where new paragraphs begin.

·         You said I need more detail. What’s a detail?

·         I’m worried this is boring.

·         What’s an example of a strong verb?

·         I couldn’t think how to end this, so I just stopped.

3.      Take it a chunk at a time. If your piece is more than a page or two long, revising the whole thing can feel overwhelming. Pick one scene, one chapter, one page, or a couple paragraphs at a time to work on. But—here’s the thing—when you come back, don’t start over. Push on. Reread your revised copy, but start serious hacking/rewriting wherever you left off. Otherwise, you’ll have a well-revised lead and first scene, but it’ll all go downhill from there.

4.      Read everything you write aloud. Every word. You’ll not only pick up little editorial things like missing or repeated words, but reading aloud also helps you identify things like

·         Lifeless passages

·         Overdone language

·         Generalities that say nothing

·         Flat copy that just doesn’t sound like you

·         Dialogue that sounds robotic

·         A weak ending

5.      Ask yourself specific questions. Don’t just hope for an epiphany about what to do. Give yourself an advantage by looking for specifics. Here are questions I ask myself all the time as I write:

·         Does this make sense?

·         Is this getting too long?

·         How will someone feel reading this? Excited, enlightened, amused, bored?

·         Where does this really begin? (Most of us write a couple paragraphs before we ever come to the real beginning. Scrap the fluff.)

·         Is every sentence here essential? Could some be deleted?

·         Did I overdo adverbs? (Stephen King says adverbs are not your friends, and he’s right. Delete as many as possible.)

·         Are my verbs strong and specific enough to make movies in a reader’s mind? (He vaulted over the fence vs He went over the fence.)

·         Does this sound like me? Or some half-baked AI imitation of me?

·         Can a reader follow this? Am I going off-message?

·         Does this make a point? Or am I just writing to fill the page?

·         If someone else had written this, would I bother reading it?

6.      Read. Next time you read something you REALLY like, make a point of putting it near your computer or wherever you write. When you get stuck, take it out and read a page or two. Ask yourself what this author’s doing to keep you hooked. Here’s an example. I’m reading a mystery right now—Something in the Water by Catherine Steadman. I love how Steadman makes something happen in every chapter. She keeps the pace fast and tense. Here are some lessons I learned reading Steadman: Keep things moving. Most description is unnecessary. Surprise the reader. Let characters sometimes make bad (but ye gods, interesting) choices. Make dialogue honest and unflinching—because that’s how people speak.  If you spend an hour or so a day reading what you love, your writing will improve automatically. Some of the best writing teachers in the world are sitting on your bookshelf. Check out what they’re showing you.

7.      Share your writing with a trusted listener. I’ve taught classes where we broke into writing groups of three to share our writing (I always participated). Sometimes this works brilliantly, but not always. Don’t give up. When it doesn’t work, it’s usually for one of these reasons:

·         Writers don’t know how much to share or when “time’s up.” Usually, 5-7 minutes a person is ideal, which means writers may not have time to share a whole piece, and need to choose part to read aloud. It could be a part the writer is proud of—or even better, one the writer is struggling with.

·         Groups are too big. After experimenting a little, I found pairs of two could work, and so could groups of three. Groups of more than three get unwieldy and the process drags on too long.

·         Listeners aren’t listening. They’re doodling, daydreaming, talking to each other, looking at phones or other distractions. If you’re a teacher, get a volunteer to read aloud to you in front of the class, and model good listening. Be quiet, tune in, don’t interrupt, look at the reader. Ask good questions of the writer. That’s what good listening looks like. Many students honestly don’t know because they’ve never had anyone really listen to them.

·         Listeners don’t have one clue what to say. That’s because they’re responding to the big, floppy question “What did you think?” No one knows how to answer this. And nothing listeners come up with is likely to be helpful. A writer needs answers to specific questions like these . . . What point do you think I’m making? Does this ending work? What did you want to see happen? Do these characters seem real to you? Which one is the most likeable? Unlikeable? What moment(s) stood out for you? Was there anything that made no sense? What should happen next? What questions do you have for me? 

8.      Assuming you’re working on a computer, make a copy of text that just won’t come together, creating a new mini-file to work on. Most writers have an occasional troublesome passage that needs special attention—and maybe a couple of tries to get things right. When this happens to me, but I don’t want to risk losing my original train of thought, I copy and paste the problem text into a new document. That way, I can test out a couple revision possibilities without mucking up what I first wrote. And I can also compare the two drafts side by side. Once I come up with a revision that works, I copy and paste the new and improved version back into the original document.

9.      Write to/for someone specific. I don’t mean turn your essay or story into a letter. I mean picture a specific reader in your mind, and write something you think that person would enjoy. I am working on a new book that features a long-distance horse race set in Montana in the 1930s. Most days, as I write or revise, I’m picturing my friend Pam, whom I’ve known for years. I chose Pam because she’s a horse lover, perceptive reader, and brutally honest. She’s also one of those readers who doesn’t read like she’s mowing a weedy lawn; she takes time to appreciate small details. “Pam will like this” I often think as I write.

10. Be fearless. This might be the most important tip of all. If you know Chris Stapleton’s song “Outlaw State of Mind,” you understand the right attitude for tackling revision. Wouldn’t hurt to tune it in before/while you revise. Being timid doesn’t work. Slash and burn, baby. Make big, sweeping, epic moves. Don’t be afraid to start over, delete whole sections, insert new ones, trash any passage you don’t absolutely love, turn a hero into a villain, add a new character—or get rid of another. And above all, for God’s sake, say what you REALLY MEAN. Not what you think someone wants to hear. Revision is your chance to share a little bit of your mind and soul, and if you don’t, nothing else you do will matter.