For your final portfolio, you must include one major revision of one of your workshop pieces (essay, short story, or poem). A major revision is more than just editing for grammar and adding a bit of detail. Instead, it requires really listening to feedback, and making big changes and/or expansions–maybe even overhauling an aspect (such as revising the point-of-view from third to first)–where necessary.
Prose
Use the comments that you have received from both your classmates and me to guide you in your revision process. As you revise, consider not only those comments, but also the following:
– Remember that your piece is written for readers who want to connect to your writing. What central problem or question does the story or essay explore? Have you illustrated or developed that problem or question for the reader, so that they understand why you are telling them this story?
– If this is nonfiction, is your allegiance to the exact, precise ‘truth’ hindering the development of your essay in some way (maybe: by causing you to add extra details we don’t need, or causing you to eliminate needed description or information because the memory is hazy)?
– Do you need more description of place or experience, so that your reader can
access the experience with you or your characters? Do you use all five senses in your description of place and experience? Look at each instance of description and determine if it needs expansion (chances are it does).
– Do you give us all the contextual information we need to understand what is going on? Remember that we don’t have access to your brain.
– Are your characters (whether fictional or nonfictional) well developed? Have you introduced them by name, described how they look and act, determined your relationship with them or their relationship with each other, and given them a purpose in the overall story?
– Does your introduction entice your reader right away? You might consider beginning within a specific scene, or with a strong or compelling vocal declaration of some kind that grabs our attention.
– If this is an essay, does your conclusion tie things up too neatly? Or, conversely, does it leave your reader hanging in the anti-climactic dark, waiting for something more finalizing? If this is a story, does your narrative have a plot that moves toward a climactic moment for your characters?
Poetry
Revising can be some of our hardest work as poets, especially if we wrote our first draft in a feverish reverie and now need to imaginatively re-enter the poem to revise it without having that same burst of enthusiasm and inspiration. Sometimes the initial writing of a poem felt magical and we are loathe to touch it, out of our fear of ruining it (a stage fright of sorts). Sometimes we’re frustrated with a poem and can get overzealous in our revisions; we may be too hard on the poem, too eager to cut the detritus (especially if we tend toward over-inflation in the first draft) or add more material (especially if our first drafts tend to be skeletal), and accidentally delete strong material.
If our poem’s first draft seems too controlled or uptight, we may want to get wilder in our revision, and consider ways to loosen the corset strings or surprise readers. If our poem seems all-over-the-place and too unfocused–if the poem features “everything but the kitchen sink”–we may want to look for ways to develop more cohesive thread and establish meaningful relationships between sounds, images, ideas, and metaphors. Note that this does not mean we eschew ambiguity; it means that we consider the atmosphere and images of the poem, and how to make the poem more “inhabitable” for our readers.
Use the comments that you have received from both your classmates and me to guide you in your revision process. As you revise, consider not only those comments, but also the following:
– First, read the poem aloud and mark phrasing that seems “off,’ awkward, weaker than others (etc). Reading aloud before revising further is essential.
– Consider if your poem has adjectives and adverbs that are redundant or otherwise clutter the poem. How many can (and should) you cut? The fewer extra words, the more “lucid’ the imagery in your poem will be for your readers. Think about the clarity sunlight bestows on an object; this is perhaps how your language should be: like sunlight upon the image you’re constructing.
– Likewise, sometimes “big’ or “10-dollar’ vocabulary words can clutter our poem, especially if there are a lot of them in close proximity. Are there places a clearer, subtler word will do?
– Look for cliches, familiar phrasings and well-worn images and think of new phrasings or ways to push familiarity into unfamiliar territory. Have you heard it used before? If yes, revise it out.
– Think about form, especially if the first draft is in couplets or tercets (often default, ready-made formations for all of us if we aren’t feeling exploratory). Place your poem into prose and relineate. Experiment with white space, breaking apart, and sprawling as well as with compression. Make a bit of a mess. Print out several formal variations of the poem and examine the page for visual effects and cues. What seems to be the natural state of the poem?
– Was your beginning a “warm-up’ to ease your brain into the real poem? Does your poem start several lines (or halfway, or three quarters of the way!) in? Pick out what you perceive to be your strongest line, and consider what happens when you begin the poem there.
– Have you written past your ending, or ended the poem too early? Or is your ending too easy, or like the conclusion of an essay? Avoid the ending that explains your intentions for the poem. Let your readers find their way through the poem instead.
– When I’m revising a draft, I tend to write several more than one revision of the poem at the same time. I keep multiple documents open and look at the versions side by side. This is a nice benefit of writing on a computer instead of by hand. Instead of focusing on one draft, you may want to try two or three drafts at once; this allows you to explore the poem’s various possible directions at one time and see how various additions and subtractions affect the whole.