By Andrea Lewis //
I. Definition
Psychologically, revision is the part in the production of a publication dreaded by some yet welcomed by most. Dreaded – for we must face our creation, welcomed – for we get to read firsthand the first draft of our manuscript.
From the point of view of craft, in The Art of Revision: The Last Word, writer and teacher of writing Peter Ho Davies defines the process as “the sum of what changes and what stays the same, and the alchemical reaction between them.”
For Davies, it is “a process in flux: […] the journey of a story, the story of a story, and its writer’s relationship with that story.” At the same time, it is a “skill in itself, a technique of its own, a state of mind.”
II. Why revise?
Revision/editing are the way of preparing for the reveal of our work to readers. Peter Ho Davies likens this stage in the life of a manuscript to the rehearsals in music or dramatic arts, or like the sketches of a painter. Only, while sketches and studies of paintings become works of art, the early drafts of a manuscript are rarely available to public.
And, because first drafts are supposed to be “shitty” as we have gathered from Anne Lamott’s Bird by Bird.
Editing brings a story to a new level, making sure it is clear, it has depth, it is engaging, and has meaning. The process is part of the writing process itself. For this reason, writers accept that “writing is revising.”
It applies to all writers, new and long-time established. When teaching revision, Matthew M. Johnson brings his students quotes of famous writers. Here are some, from The Atlantic:
Elmore Leonard: “If it sounds like writing, I re-write it.”
Ernest Hemingway: “I rewrote the ending of Farewell to Arms, the last page of it, 39 times before I was satisfied.” (The Paris Review Interview, 1956)
John Updike: “Writing and rewriting are a constant search for what it is one is saying.”
Colette: “Put down everything that comes into your head and then you’re a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff’s worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.” (Casual Chance, 1964)
III. Approaches and methodology
The Art of Revision: The Last Word by Peter Ho Davies
In a discussion with Grant Faulkner and Brooke Warner on the Write-Minded podcast, Peter Ho Davies proposes that writers envision the entire writing process as revision. This includes first drafts as they are “revisions of our own memory.” Davies embraces the revelatory power, the epiphany of seeing our work “through the eyes of a reader.” First, through our own act of re-reading, then, through the feedback we receive as we share our work in workshops, with trusted readers, editors, agents. The feedback will uncover the facts we did not know about our work.
Along with Davies’ book, all sources explored for this article will stress the importance for writers to see the first or the next drafts of a manuscript through the eyes of a reader or with fresh eyes.
Davies’ approach is one of discovery and exploration of the written work which becomes a “living creature […] always changing shapes.”
From that perspective, writers should:
- See their “initial aim or intent for their story as a hypothesis, and the draft as an experiment designed to test that hypothesis.” For instance, authors may find that their projected ending does not work. In science, “an experiment is not a failure if it disproves a hypothesis […] For a scientist, that’s success – they have learned something.”
- “Revise their definition of progress.” Revision is a way of realizing something new about their story, not always a way of bringing it closer to finish.
- “Welcome complication.” A new detail may bring complication, which means we may need to make changes to the entire story, or to earlier parts of it. However, those complications could add “complexity, depth and texture.”
- Editing is not limited to cutting and contracting. These will come later in the process. Cutting too soon may prevent writers from discovering something they may need to know about their story.
- (Sore) thumbs up! Instead of cutting something that seems unclear, writers should lean into those parts, and “see if there is anything they can do with them.”
- The only wrong choice is no choice. Receiving feedback with multiple options, writers may feel “paralyzed.” The wrong choice could put them farther from finishing. Impatient to finish, they may not make a choice at all.
- Go beyond boredom. Sometimes, exhausted by the process, we get bored, and thus, stuck. However, this should not be the end of the work. Rather than abandoning, Davies advises taking a break, working on something else and coming back to understand the initial motivation of telling the story.
- Revise titles, as they can focus and drive a draft. “Shifting the title may be a shift towards a new goal for the next revision.”
- Doneness. Workshops facilitate the writer’s understanding of their own work. Writers learn they are done “when they finally understand why they tell the story in the first place.”
Intuitive Editing – A Creative and Practical Guide to Revising Your Writing by Tiffany Yates Martin
The book offers a step-by-step methodology of the revision process, meant to “put tools in the writer toolbox.” Like most skills, these too can be learned and used by writers at every level. Her techniques should work equally well for fiction, narrative non-fiction, and memoir.
Her approach focuses on two major steps – “achieving objectivity” and “addressing in a productive, efficient, effective way those areas that may need more development or polish.”
Built upon revising from an objective standpoint, Intuitive Editing invites authors to read their manuscript as if written by someone else. The main way of attaining objectivity is by distance – physical, but most importantly, temporal.
Achieving objectivity. After spending weeks, months, or years on a manuscript, the story lives within the author. Objectivity comes from distancing oneself from the object of creation through:
- Time/distance: depending on deadlines, ideally, writers should step away from the manuscript for as long as possible, for a complete mental break from it. Return to the work with “fresh eyes.”
- Reading it in a new place/environment.
- Reading aloud or having it read to you.
- Using a different font and/or writer name.
- Printing it out and reading on paper.
- Reading it on an e-reader which formats it like a real book.
Revision process
- Read like a reader: the first reading after the mental break should take place in as few sittings as possible to take in the story as a whole.
- Let the story “percolate” after the first read and think of aspects they liked, disliked, what worked and what didn’t.
- Make notes on the first impressions.
- Psyche: remember that this is a first draft, not supposed to be perfect.
- Address the bleeders, or macroediting the character, plot, and stakes. As the “main poles of the story,” the foundation, they need to be solid for the rest of the story to stand.
- Objectivity break (1-2 days) the go back to the manuscript for another cold read.
- Address the support elements, or microediting. Yates Martin advises doing one read or one pass for each element of craft: suspense, tension, point of view, showing and telling, pace, structure, voice, prose itself, line edits.
IV. How writers revise
As with any aspect of the writing process, writers tend to have different approaches and habits. While certain techniques confirm the theories above, others will add to our toolbox:
Margaret Atwood and Neil Gaiman
- Complete the first draft regardless of what writers think of their work. There will be plenty of opportunities to revise after completion (Atwood) and “you learn more from finishing things, from seeing them in print” (Gaiman).
- Print it out and put it away. Quoted by Emily Temple in an article on LitHub.com, Neil Gaiman advises printing out the manuscript and, (depending on deadlines), putting it away for a week or two. We recognize here the ‘distancing.’
- “Fresh eyes.” For Gaiman, reading it from “the point of view of a reader,” will make anything broken become obvious. He would then “go in and polish it up, play with it.” Since it is on the computer, “everything’s malleable, until it’s printed.”
Dan Brown offers three tips in hisMasterclass:
- Create a bio for each character with a “short description and significant events that happen to them in the story.” This ‘reference tool,’ is useful both while writing the story/novel, but also in the editing process.
- Focus is on the “big idea of the story” when editing and rewriting. Even if it seems to be failing, not working, he’d rather reconsider his approach, re-write early chapters, revise characters, but he’d stick to the big idea.
- He works with two types of editing:“as you write” and “after finishing the first draft.”
- “As you write” – on a daily basis, he would tighten his prose, aiming to make it more concise and effective.
- “After finishing the first draft” – he would read an entire manuscript while trying to imagine what a reader will think of it.
Patricia C. Wrede, author of The Enchanted Forest Chronicles, quoted by LitHub.com does a rolling revision. The process is similar to Brown’s “as you write:”
- When learning an unexpected backstory in her work, that would solve a lot of plot problems, she would return to the chapter where he details should have affected a character’s reaction. She would make the change immediately. While there, she would also tighten the prose, all in less than ten minutes. Her ‘rolling revisions’ aim at the major pillars of the story: plot, characterization, setting and backstory.
Joyce Carol Oatesadvises bringing the manuscript into a workshop for a clarity check: to find out whether the story conveys the author’s intention, since “outside readers” will not be familiar with it.
Along with Oates, Gaiman and Atwood emphasize the importance of getting feedback from trusted readers, ideally “not someone in the [writer’s] household; perhaps a nonwriter” suggests Margaret Atwood.
Questions to ask the trusted readers:
- “How quickly they read it” (Atwood)
- “What parts did not work for them” (Gaiman)
- “In what areas they lost interest,” or “where the momentum slowed” (Oates)
Closing remarks
In A Visit with Joyce Carol Oatesby The New Yorker, Joyce Carol Oates calls revision a “very exciting and very relaxing” activity. Taking in the advice from Peter Ho Davies, Tiffany Yates Martin and famous writers, we should look forward to revision in excitement for several reasons: it means we have a first draft of our work, it means we get to take a break from it (however long we can), and then, we come back to read it as if it were someone else’s creation. Gaining objectivity and looking at our work with fresh eyes should be the pillars in revising and editing our work.
Do you have any tips on the revision process that worked for you? Share them here.
Resources:
https://nybookeditors.com/2018/08/self-editing-tips-for-first-time-writers/
https://lithub.com/12-contemporary-writers-on-how-they-revise/
https://www.newyorker.com/video/watch/a-visit-with-joyce-carol-oates
ANDREA LEWIS lives and writes in Huntington Beach. She was born in Romania and moved to the United States at the age of 34, after meeting and marrying her husband. She writes memoir and personal essays, with a recent attempt at freeform poetry. Her work has been featured in the Los Angeles Times.
Thanks for this comprehensive post. The one piece of advice I cannot seem to follow and yet I’ve heard it over and over: when you’ve completed your first draft, however good or bad you think it may be, let it sit for a few weeks without looking at it before tackling revisions. Wish I could do this, but I’m too impatient.
Indeed, Barb! Good luck to us… Thank you for reading.