This page has resources to help you understand and practice revision in your writing.

Revision as exploration and play - What would happen if I did this? What would happen if I tried this with this piece? What would happen if I changed or moved this line, sentence, or paragraph?

More Revision & Editing Tips

Revising with Lenses by Bryan Furuness & Sarah Layden in Brevity , Craft Essays section

Poetry Editing Checklist from Welcome to the Writer's Life 

How to Self-Edit Your Novel by Nathan Bransford

Novel Revision Checklist by Nathan Bransford

How to Utilize Feedback to Improve Your Manuscript by Nathan Bransford

Revising My Work One Hundred Words at a Time by Lori Tucker-Sullivan on Brevity website -- play by play of multiple revisions and how critical feedback and deeper questions at each stage helped her develop the piece into its final version 

Editing a novel checklist (how to edit a novel in 19 simple steps) from The Book Butchers

Fiction Editing Checklist from Marianne Ward (PDF)

Ultimate Self-Editing Checklist from StoryMembers (PDF) 

Fiction Developmental Self-Editing Checklist from OneLit Place (PDF)

The Last Editing Checklist an Author Will Ever Need from Dabble

Editing Checklist - Determine the type of editing you'll need - good for nonfiction - from Stacy Ennis (PDF)

Types of Editing from Reedsy

Revising Creative Nonfiction checklist of questions from Roxanne Gay (PDF)

Nonfiction Editing Checklist from The Writers Sherpa (PDF)

Tin House Live: Revision Panel video from Between the Covers podcast (1 hr)

from On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft by Stephen King:

• “Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out. Once you know what the story is and get it right—as right as you can, anyway, it belongs to anyone who wants to read it.” (57)

  • First draft should be written as fast as possible with no help (or interference) from anyone else. (209)

  • Put it away for a minimum of 6 weeks (211)

• Revision & editing - focus on clarifying/developing story elements, grammar

  • Questions to ask yourself: Is the story coherent? What are the recurring elements? Do they entwine and make a theme?”

• Themes & Revision - Identify and develop the themes within the story after you write the first draft: “Good fiction always begins with story and progresses to theme; it almost never begins with theme and progresses to story.” (pg 208) - ask yourself before starting the second draft or while stuck for an idea in the first draft “Just what is it I am writing about? Why am I spending the time?” (207) 

  • Ask yourself before starting the second draft “Just what is it I am writing about? Why am I spending the time?” (207) 

  • You can also ask others to tell you what themes come up for them

  • “Once your basic story is on paper, you need to think about what it means and enrich your following drafts with your conclusions.”

• “2nd Draft = 1st Draft - 10%” (222)

• After revising and editing on your own, ask for feedback from others: “four or five close friends who have indicated a willingness to look.”

• Also think about, “Who is your ideal reader?” (Stephen King’s is his wife; Kurt Vonnegut’s was his sister - wanting to entertain them, imagining their reactions, wanting to make them laugh)

Notes on Revision and Writing Style 

from A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders

On writing as a process of revising over and over again: "Essentially, the whole process is: intuition plus iteration." After continuous revision and multiple iterations over time, your piece "will have had the benefit of the opinions of literally hundreds of manifestations of you; you happy, you grouchy, you stern, you euphoric, you blurry, you precise, and so on. Your intuition will have been given thousands of chances to do its best work. That's how I see revision: a chance for the writer's intuition to assert itself over and over." (113)

On developing style through revision: "Who cares if the first draft is good? It doesn't need to be good, it just needs to be, so you can revise it. You don't need an idea to start a story. Your just need a sentence. Where does that sentence come from? Wherever. It doesn't have to be anything special. It will become something special, over time, as you keep reacting to it... We'll find our voice and distinguish ourselves from all the other writers in the world without needing to make any big overarching decisions, just be the thousands of small ones we make as we revise." (114)

On developing a piece through intuition and continuous work on it: "A work of art... has to surprise its audience, which it can do only if it has legitimately surprised its creator." (114)

Patterns in a Story

notes from A Swim in a Pond in the Rain by George Saunders (119-164) -- using example short story "The Darling" by Anton Chekhov

Specifying character traits can also set up plot: "once a specific person has been made (via facts, characterization), we then know, of all the many things that could happen to her, which would be meaningful... in specificity lies nascent plot... 'good writerly habit' might consist of continually revising toward specificity, so that specificity can appear and then produce plot (or, as we prefer to call it, 'meaningful action')." (142)

Establishing a pattern in a story (with slight variations) is one way to create and use/exploit reader expectations: "the pattern, as patterns tend to do, creates a series of evolving expectations." (148)

Sharing & Feedback

Guidelines for Sharing & Feedback

Share part of your work at the end of class. There are several options for sharing:

• Choose a line from writing to share with your small group.

• Read your poem/paragraph aloud in your small group.

• Post your poem/paragraph on our creative writing workshop discussion board.

• Write your favorite line from your poem/paragraph on the whiteboard.

Give positive constructive feedback to a classmate:

• What did you notice in your classmate's writing? (Be specific) What did you like about it? What line that stood out to you?

• Why did this stand out to you? What did you like about it?

• What did it make you think of?

Revision/Editing Feedback

When giving constructive feedback please try to include:

1. Specific feedback about what you liked - explain what is working and why

2. At least one helpful question

3. Your thoughts on what didn’t work for you and why

Components of revision/editing feedback for pieces you would like to submit:

• Margin Notes (comments) - what’s working & why, questions, what’s not working & why

• Line Edits (suggested edits) - grammar, phrasing, redundancy

• Editorial Letter - synthesis/summary of feedback, grouped into categories

• Individual Conference - schedule a writing conference with Ms. Ntoso

More Tips:

• When giving feedback directly in the digital document, use comments rather than suggesting mode

• Only use suggesting mode for minor grammatical edits as needed

• Respect & protect intellectual property (IP).

• Best wishes to everyone on this journey!

More Revision/Editing Feedback Tips from "How to Edit Someone's Novel" by Nathan Bransford:

• Understand the Writer's Goals. What is the writer trying to do? What does the writer want to do with the piece? Are they planning to submit it for publication? Or do they mainly want praise and encouragement? The more you can focus on what the author is trying to do, the more helpful you’re going to be to them.

• Do NOT tell the writer what to do or how to fix an issue. Identify problems, but resist giving solutions. The writer is the best person to figure out how to fix the issue. (Instead, consider suggesting a mentor text in your feedback.) From the words of Neil Gaiman: when readers point out something is wrong, they’re almost always right. When they point out ideas for how it can be fixed, they’re almost always wrong.

• Prioritize your feedback. Start with the big picture and tailor your feedback to the right level... It’s not really that helpful to point out tiny little things in piece if the whole thing is going to be rewritten. Try to calibrate your feedback to the highest level that needs fixing.

• Be clear and straightforward in your feedback. Try to be as direct as possible, but be gracious. 

More Tips for Sharing & Giving Feedback

"10 Commandments for Editing Someone’s Work" by Nathan Bransford

Revising My Work One Hundred Words at a Time by Lori Tucker-Sullivan on Brevity website -- play by play of multiple revisions and how critical feedback and deeper questions at each stage helped her develop the piece into its final version

See also: Online Discussion Board section for more questions and ideas for writing workshop sharing & feedback

"Five Ways to Improve Student Writing Conferences" ASCD article by Pam Allyn and Ernest Morrell - for K-12, face-to-face conferences with individual students