Revising and Polishing

Wouldn’t it be nice if our stories and books came straight out of our heads onto the paper perfectly?  While there have been a few genius writers who never had to revise any of their writing, most of us are not geniuses.  Revising and polishing a story might seem boring, hard, or unimportant, but this is where a story really comes alive.

Here are some quotations from established authors to help you stay motivated while revising and polishing.  I like to keep these handy to encourage me whenever I’m reworking my own writing.

“Books aren’t written – they’re rewritten.  Including your own.  It is one of the hardest things to accept, especially after the seventh rewrite hasn’t quite done it.”                                                                                                     – Michael Crichton

 

“I’m writing a first draft and reminding myself that I am simply shoveling sand into a box so that later I can build castles.”                              – Shannon Hale

 

“The first draft is just you telling yourself the story.”           – Terry Pratchett

 

“Good writing is essentially rewriting.  I am positive of this.”         – Roald Dahl

Do not feel badly that your stories need some revising and polishing!  Remind yourself that writing a story is a little like making soup – first, you gather your ingredients and put them in the soup pot.  That’s the first draft.  Then you get a spoon and taste your soup to see what it needs.  That’s like me reading your short stories and giving you some suggestions on what to change.  Then you open your spice cabinet and figure out what to add to the soup.  Salt?  Pepper?  Onion flakes?  Chili powder?  You add a little of this and a little of that – that’s revising.  Then you taste it again.  It’s still not quite right, so you toss in your favorite secret ingredient, whether that’s seasoning salt or garlic powder or oregano.  You taste the soup again, add something, taste again, and keep that up until it’s just right.  That’s your polishing phase.

When I shared the first version of my novella The Man on the Buckskin Horse with my writing mentor, she said it was boring and advised me to rewrite the whole thing.  I did.  I rewrote the whole 15,000-word novella from a different character’s perspective – I kept about five sentences from the original.  Then I polished up that new version (over and over) and submitted it to a story contest, and it won!  That was the beginning of my fairy tale retelling series.  If I had not rewritten that story, but submitted the original version, I’m quite sure I would have just received a “better luck next time” response. 

The good news is, I am probably not going to suggest you wholly rewrite your stories.  I’m just telling you that story so that, when you read my suggestions of what to fix or change, you can say, “At least I don’t have to rewrite the whole thing!” and breathe a sigh of relief.

There are three basic steps for revising and polishing any piece of writing, whether it’s an essay or a newspaper article or a short story or a novel.  They are:

1. Macro Revisions
2. Line Edits
3. Copy Edits

I'll explain each of those so that you can feel very confident about this process.

Macro Revisions

“Macro” means “big,” and this is the stage where you make the big changes.  This is where you fix plot holes, adjust character arcs, or even change what happens.

Start by having someone else read your whole story over and make some notes about things that don’t make sense, things that are not consistent or logical, and anything that seems unneeded.  (I’ll be doing this for you with the stories you turn in for this class.)  It’s really important to get someone else’s opinion on your work!  Your writing will make sense to you because you wrote it, so you will have a harder time noticing problems than another person will.

Once you get someone’s feedback, read through all their suggestions and notes, and then don’t touch your story for at least the rest of that day.  Let yourself think about their ideas.  Get used to the fact that you’re going to be changing your story.  Remind yourself that it was not a perfect story yet, just “good enough to start with,” and that you’re only going to make it better.

Next, figure out what you need to do to fix your story.  Maybe you need to practice writing dialog.  Or maybe you need to make your plot stronger, fix some inconsistencies, or rework how a character grows and changes over the course of the story.  Whatever it is that you need to revise, making a plan of how you’re going to do that will make the actual revisions a lot easier.  You can even write down some notes on what you plan to do so you don’t forget.

Once you have a plan, save a new copy of your story on the computer.  If your file was named something like “The Hunt for Happy Hollow,” just save a copy called “The Hunt for Happy Hollow 2,” for example.  Anything that lets you know that this is the file you are revising.  Saving it as a whole new file gives you the confidence that you are not losing anything.  You can always go back to the original and change things to how they were before, if you need to. 

Be sure to do all of your editing in your new file, not the original one!!! 

Line Edits

Once you have your story just the way you want it to be, with the characters and plot all solid and tidy, it’s time to start polishing!  The best way to do this step is to print out your whole story.  Then grab a colored pen, something bright like pink or red or green that you will notice when you are making notes on your printed story.  Then, read your story out loud.

Yes, out loud.  I said it, and I meant it.

Reading your story out loud is the best way to find the small, pesky glitches that you need to polish away so that your story is shining and beautiful.  You will notice the words you’ve used too often.  You will feel whether or not the dialog sounds natural.  You will find all kinds of mistakes by reading your book out loud.  I promise, it’s kind of magical.

Is it also time-consuming?  Yes.  I do this with every book I write, and with a full book, it takes me days and days.  Happily, you aren't writing books for this class, only short stories, so they shouldn’t really take very long to read out loud.

While you read out loud, take notes on your printed copy of things you want to change.  Circle errors, maybe scribble notes in the margins about things you want to fix, however it works best for you.  This is why it’s important to use a colored pen so you can easily find your notes, circles, crossed-out words, and so on.

Once you have read the whole story out loud and made all your notes, save another new copy of your story on your computer, naming it something like “The Hunt for Happy Hollow 3” so you know which file is your newest one.  Go through all your notes and make your edits inside that document.  Don’t forget to save it!!!

Copy Edits

This is the last step of polishing, and it is the least fun.  This is where you read the whole story one more time, word by word, checking for misspelled words, missing or misused punctuation, and formatting problems like forgetting to start a new paragraph every time a new person says a line of dialog.

It's a good idea to get help from a parent or sibling or friend with this step!  It is always a good idea to have someone look over your manuscript with fresh eyes to find any small typos or misspellings you might have overlooked.

Once you have fixed all your glitches, mistakes, misspellings, punctuation errors, and anything else you can find, you are DONE!!!  Save your story, print out a copy, and share it with the world.

Your Turn!

Take the notes I send you with your story and use this lesson as a guide for how to deal with my notes, and then to go beyond them.  You should try to be done with Macro Revisions and Line Edits by the end of this coming weekend, so Sunday, March 8.  Then you will have head space to write your next short story.  You will turn in your revised version to me that day so I can make any final suggestions and give you a grade.  IMPORTANT CHANGE: You now have until the end of Easter Break to revise both this story AND the next one you write.  I realized that it was unrealistic to expect you to revise them in just a week.