TECH: Four Step Revision? (Moldy Oldie!)
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writercisesOriginal Posting July 14, 2017
Revision! Just how do you tackle that? Well, Writer's Digest, April 2000, on pages 30-33, as an article by Raymond Obstfeld with the title "A Four-Step Plan." And indeed, Raymond lays out four steps to doing revision. I'm just going to grab the headings from each section, and maybe a little bit of the discussion. If you're interested, look up the article!
Now, Raymond recommends two key things. First, compartmentalize the approach – do it in four steps, and focus on only fixing that thing while you're doing that step. Second, he doesn't suggest revising the whole thing in one great big swoop. Instead, he recommends tackling short, self-contained sections – scenes or chapters. Unlike many, he actually discourages writing the whole draft and then starting to revise. Instead, he likes to do short pieces and revise them. Your mileage may vary?
Step one: Structure
Goal: Develop a clear and compelling plot.
Look for: too passive, talking head characters; no plot buildup/anti-climactic action.
How to fix: basically, you're looking to see that the events are in the right order, and that if they are, the scenes build toward a satisfying climactic payoff.
Talking heads happens when nothing's going on – make the scene more active. Every scene should have a beginning, middle, and end! Conflict, complications, and resolution. Now, you may also need to revise the overall structure. Easiest is to create notecards for each scene or chapter, who is in the scene, what happens, how big is it? Then look at the notecards, move them around, add or subtract as needed.
Step two: Texture
Goal: Sharpen descriptive passages to make characters, setting, and action more vivid.
Look for: too much or too little description, research info dump, too many adjectives, info in the wrong place.
How to fix: this step has a lot to do with defining your own style.
How much description? If there's so much that it bogs down, you need to cut. If there's so little that we can't imagine the characters or settings, you need more. Poetic, wonderful stuff that makes you admire the author – probably cut, maybe use later? Watch for word choice, and use strong, rich, evocative terms. Imagine adjectives are $100 bills – don't waste them.
Step three: Dialogue
Goal: Elicit character personality through conversation.
Look for: Too many taglines, too few taglines, taglines in the wrong place, bland or melodramatic lines.
How to fix: Taglines are the "he said" and "she said" parts of dialogue. When there are only two speakers, several lines can go on without telling us who the speaker is. The reader already knows. [Also, the dialogue should be identifiable!]
Make the character voices individual, cadence, tone! Try rearranging where you put the taglines, and vary your use of speech tags and action tags. Keep your tags simple.
Step four: Editing
Goal: Tighten pace and continuity.
Look for: Repetition through implication, slow passages.
How to fix: Cut. Cut. Cut.
Cut. And then make sure your transitions are clear.
Go through all four steps. Now, are you comfortable sending it or publishing it? If not, start again. But at least you know you have looked at all aspects of the work!
There you go!
Practice? Sure. Take a piece you have written, and try walking through the four steps. Now, did your piece end up improved?
Good time to submit it to Writers@mit.edu and see what happens!
tink
Revision! Just how do you tackle that? Well, Writer's Digest, April 2000, on pages 30-33, as an article by Raymond Obstfeld with the title "A Four-Step Plan." And indeed, Raymond lays out four steps to doing revision. I'm just going to grab the headings from each section, and maybe a little bit of the discussion. If you're interested, look up the article!
Now, Raymond recommends two key things. First, compartmentalize the approach – do it in four steps, and focus on only fixing that thing while you're doing that step. Second, he doesn't suggest revising the whole thing in one great big swoop. Instead, he recommends tackling short, self-contained sections – scenes or chapters. Unlike many, he actually discourages writing the whole draft and then starting to revise. Instead, he likes to do short pieces and revise them. Your mileage may vary?
Step one: Structure
Goal: Develop a clear and compelling plot.
Look for: too passive, talking head characters; no plot buildup/anti-climactic action.
How to fix: basically, you're looking to see that the events are in the right order, and that if they are, the scenes build toward a satisfying climactic payoff.
Talking heads happens when nothing's going on – make the scene more active. Every scene should have a beginning, middle, and end! Conflict, complications, and resolution. Now, you may also need to revise the overall structure. Easiest is to create notecards for each scene or chapter, who is in the scene, what happens, how big is it? Then look at the notecards, move them around, add or subtract as needed.
Step two: Texture
Goal: Sharpen descriptive passages to make characters, setting, and action more vivid.
Look for: too much or too little description, research info dump, too many adjectives, info in the wrong place.
How to fix: this step has a lot to do with defining your own style.
How much description? If there's so much that it bogs down, you need to cut. If there's so little that we can't imagine the characters or settings, you need more. Poetic, wonderful stuff that makes you admire the author – probably cut, maybe use later? Watch for word choice, and use strong, rich, evocative terms. Imagine adjectives are $100 bills – don't waste them.
Step three: Dialogue
Goal: Elicit character personality through conversation.
Look for: Too many taglines, too few taglines, taglines in the wrong place, bland or melodramatic lines.
How to fix: Taglines are the "he said" and "she said" parts of dialogue. When there are only two speakers, several lines can go on without telling us who the speaker is. The reader already knows. [Also, the dialogue should be identifiable!]
Make the character voices individual, cadence, tone! Try rearranging where you put the taglines, and vary your use of speech tags and action tags. Keep your tags simple.
Step four: Editing
Goal: Tighten pace and continuity.
Look for: Repetition through implication, slow passages.
How to fix: Cut. Cut. Cut.
Cut. And then make sure your transitions are clear.
Go through all four steps. Now, are you comfortable sending it or publishing it? If not, start again. But at least you know you have looked at all aspects of the work!
There you go!
Practice? Sure. Take a piece you have written, and try walking through the four steps. Now, did your piece end up improved?
Good time to submit it to Writers@mit.edu and see what happens!
tink