Revision Advice from My Summer Reading

by Jacqueline Jules

"Ultimately, the quality of a good piece of writing is determined by the amount of revision a writer is willing to do." —Marcia S. Freeman, Teaching the Youngest Writers: A Practical Guide.

Personally, I enjoy revision. It’s writing the first draft that feels like cutting the lawn, one blade at a time. Lots of authors agree with me on this. However, many students find revision extremely painful. How can we help?  In my last post, I shared two famous revision stories and one of my own in the hopes of encouraging young writers that revision is well worth the effort. Now, at the beginning of the school year, I’d like to share some advice about revision from my summer reading. I read three books: Reflections by Ralph Fletcher from the Richard C. Owen Author at Work series, Drop Everything and Write: An Easy Breezy Guide for Kids Who Want to Write a Story by Linda Leopold Strauss, and Teaching the Youngest Writers: A Practical Guide by Marcia S. Freeman.

Ralph Fletcher in Reflections readily admits that sometimes he gets defensive when editors suggest revisions to his work. He wants to shout like a four year old, “I’m not going to change a single comma!” But after he settles down, he tries to find a way to “own the advice” as he works on the suggested changes. Fletcher says that more often than not, “seeing my story through another person’s eyes has helped me untangle a tricky plot or story structure.” Calling his editors “co-creators” of his published work, Fletcher says that his editors have strengthened his writing and taught him many things. Page 44 of Reflections has a nice example of an edited page from Fletcher’s memoir, Marshfield Dreams, complete with crossed out lines, suggestions, and sticky note that would be great to show to students.

Drop Everything and Write by Linda Leopold Strauss has a number of exercises that can help young writers add sensory details to their writing. One activity is a “Listening Walk,” in which the writer records all the sounds heard on the street such as shoes on the sidewalk or a car driving over a manhole. Her example of her own “Listening Walk” would be a great read aloud model in the classroom. With entertaining anecdotes, Strauss warns against letting subplots or minor characters overrun a story and distracting the reader’s attention. She defines many important writer’s terms such as flashback, transitions, black moment, and voice. In a chapter entitled, “Show, Don’t Tell,” Strauss explains the advantages of including details rather than summarizing the action. She encourages young writers to spice up their writing by describing an angry character’s actions rather than simply saying he was angry or setting a scene with images from all five senses. Finally, she says that stories benefit from “drawer time” and gives a checklist for polishing a draft that teachers and students should find very useful.

Marcia Freeman’s Teaching the Youngest Writers addresses the kind of revisions done on the primary level. She provides concrete advice on what teachers can reasonably expect from kindergarteners and first graders, accepting that emergent writers are more capable of adding material than reorganizing a narrative told out of chronological order. Young students are encouraged by the opportunity to share their work. This in turns leads to a consideration of the reader and incentive to revise. “A writer’s first responsibility is to his reader,” says Freeman. Teachers can word compliments with this in mind. For example, “Your readers will like the way you told about your sister.” Reinforcing the reader’s needs can also be used in suggested revisions, such as telling young students that the repetition of a word “puts the reader to sleep.” Freeman defines the important distinction between revision and editing. Revision helps the writer make sure his message is “clear and interesting” while editing is focused on conventions like grammar and spelling.  But the reader is still important in the editing process, since punctuation helps the reader understand the text. Finally, while Freeman advises teaching the youngest writers to avoid seeing their work as something that can be finished in one sitting, she cautions against expecting perfection.

All three of these summer reading books enriched my own approach to teaching and writing. I hope they will be useful to you as well.

http://www.jacquelinejules.com/

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ENDINGS AND BEGINNINGS

by Pamela Ehrenberg

Last week I led a teen writing workshop in which participants--and the grownups who paid their registration--were promised that each writer would finish the workshop with a completed short story.  The experience of looking over their shoulders all week (literally and virtually, using the document-sharing feature of Google docs) has me thinking a lot about endings--and about the helpful piece that Jacqueline Jules wrote about endings this spring.

One writer in my group stared at her screen for long periods of time between sentences, without apparent frustration but also without adding much to her story some days.  Another writer began typing the minute she walked in the room, never stuck for ideas--but with each new character, nuance, and plot twist, I worried whether she would finish in time for the celebratory reading at the end of the workshop.

Teachers of reluctant writers face one set of challenges in helping their students complete a piece.  But teachers of dedicated, lifelong, even gifted writers face a different set of challenges.  These writers have so many ideas for their characters, and such high ideals for what they want to accomplish, that their story grows richer and more elaborate, in their mind or on the screen, without finding its way to an end. 

To help the group along, I found myself gaining inspiration not from famous writers or notable teachers, but rather from my friend Holly who recently helped me plan and implement a kitchen renovation.  We began by brainstorming from the big wide universe of possibilities, but to narrow down our ideas we had to look at what we could realistically accomplish in this particular space, on this particular budget, with this particular two-year-old living in the house.  Limitations forced us to make choices, and choices helped us to break past indecision toward a soon-to-be realized goal.

So, did those two students finish their stories?  I vote "yes," though both say they want to edit and polish more before their work appears in the workshop's online publication.  As I think of the blinds and seat cushions yet to arrive in the kitchen--but more importantly, as I think of my novels, especially the ones already published--I can identify with the urge to tinker just a little more, and a little more, off into the sunset.  But as another Holly, science fiction writer Holly Lisle , describes in her One-Pass Manuscript Revision, "Your career lies in writing a book, and writing another book, and writing a book after that. " For our students and for us, it's time to get finished so we can really get started.

http://www.pamelaehrenberg.com/

REVISION STORIES

by Jacqueline Jules

            Did you know that in the first version of Charlie and the Chocolate Factory, Roald Dahl wrote a story about a little boy who fell into a vat of chocolate and became a giant Easter present for a little girl? He rewrote it several times before coming up with the character of Mr. Willy Wonka and his distribution of The Golden Tickets. But then he got sidetracked by too many nasty children. His first draft had ten children taking the tour of Willy Wonka’s marvelous chocolate factory. Realizing that too many characters would make the story confusing, Dahl had to cut out five of them to make the story work.

            Eric Carle’s The Very Hungry Caterpillar was originally titled A Week With Willi Worm. A savvy editor suggested that a caterpillar would be more endearing than a green worm who did not change. This prompted Carle to transform his story into the best selling classic it is today. 

            Sharing revision stories with students is an excellent way to demonstrate the power of rewriting. While A Week with Willi Worm might have been an okay story, The Very Hungry Caterpillar has been loved by several generations. The five child characters in Charlie and the Chocolate Factory are all memorable. Would they shine in the same way if they had to compete in a crowd of ten?

            During school visits, I like to talk about the revision process for Duck for Turkey Day, my Thanksgiving picture book about a Vietnamese-American girl who is worried her family is breaking the rules for Thanksgiving by having duck for their holiday meal instead of turkey. I show them my favorite scene in the book, a two-page spread set in an Asian market in which the protagonist, Tuyet, unsuccessfully tries to buy a turkey for her family’s dinner. This scene was not part of the original version of the story sold to Albert Whitman. My editor suggested this addition because she thought it would add more tension and action to the story. At first, I was afraid of inserting a whole new scene. Picture books have to be short, less than 1,000 words. Adding a new scene meant taking out an existing one. It was a challenge. But I am so glad I made the effort. The Asian market scene creates “the black moment” of the story—the point at which readers worry how Tuyet will resolve her conflict. Every time I read Duck for Turkey Day aloud, I think about how much better I like the story with this added scene.

It is not easy for any writer to go back and rework a story they have already spent hours writing. But that is what most published authors do. And most of them, like Eric Carle, use comments from friends, teachers, and editors to help them transform their worms into butterflies.

http://www.jacquelinejules.com/