revision tips part 1

Take it out, let it go

What to remove or replace in your work:

Repetition

--in ideas

Her mother hated me. “Get out of my house!” She threw a lamp at me. I ran out feeling like garbage.

-- information

My sister was three years older than me and she bossed me around and told me what to do. I hated being her younger sister because she bullied me so much.

àtake out the obvious and explicit (keep details)

àkeep it clear and concise

Remove the Irrelevant- doesn’t belong, reader doesn’t need to know it, it’s implied elsewhere, it contradicts your point and distracts from your message

Example: He looked like a gangster but really he was a good guy who never hurt anyone, except once he kicked a cat, but the cat was attacking him so it made sense that he kicked it but he was usually really nice to cats.

*Combine any sentences that can be combined

She was bored in class. She hated class. The teacher talked too much. Nothing the teacher said was important. She wanted to sleep.

She hated class because the teacher talked too much.

à”Blah blah blah…” the teacher droned on as the student’s eyes drooped and her friend elbowed her to keep her awake. God she hated this class.

Adding detail

Step 1: What is the point/ focus/ message of your piece? What makes it interesting? What’s the mood?

Step 2: Look through your piece for the following:

-Areas where you “tell” the reader what happened, explaining how you feel, how a character feels or spending more than a paragraph on background – (obvious, explicit information)

For example:

 I felt bad when he hurt me

We fought and then we broke up and I never got over it.

I liked him a lot and he didn’t like me.

They thought the house looked weird and they didn’t want to go in.

à make this more implicit (subtle, SHOW don’t tell)

-Areas that are vague or too abstract

For example: “I felt sad”

“She looked at me in a cute way”

“the house was scary”

“It was important”

è Make these more concrete

Step 3: Use the “Description Tips” below for help in how to add detail

Description Tips

When writing descriptions, don’t forget to do the following:

Use specific detail to describe how it happened so the reader can experience it and understand it. Try asking and answering the following questions:

-How did they do it? Describe they way they moved as if it were in slow motion or as if you were a director telling an actor what to do.

-What did they say?

-How did they say it? What did their voice sound like?

-What did it look like? Describe it to someone who has never seen it before.

-If you answer with adjectives, can you use more descriptive or “juicy”  ones or can you compare it to something else w/ a metaphor or simile?

-Describe the specific steps of the action.

-What were the other people doing?

-Describe the setting?

-What is the narrator or character feeling or thinking? What are their exact thoughts/ feelings?

-If you used an emotion- how might that emotion look or sound or otherwise show on that person?

-Is this a positive or negative experience or what is the mood or tone of the story? Does that show in your description? What can you add/change to show this?

-Does the description you’ve added provide anymore information about the subject being described or even the narrator than a summary would?

Use juicy adjectives (look at JA handout), adverbs, (“she said nervously”) and active verbs (“she stuttered”)

Use dialogue (instead of the friends argued write out what they actually said)

Use figurative language like metaphors (comparison saying something is something else “the kitchen is a shadowy cave”) and similes (comparison using like or as “The kitchen was as dark as a cave” or “The kitchen was like a cave, filled with shadows”

àLook back to “The Family of Little Feet” and the metaphor/simile activity

Use imagery (paint a picture with words “she breaks an egg into the volcano crater of flour” instead of “she used eggs and flour to make the dough”)

Sensory detail- Use all 5 senses:

What do you see, hear, smell, taste,&  feel?