This week we’re going to talk about REVISION. When we revise our drafts, we look for ways to make our writing even better than what it already is.
Ralph Fletcher is the author of many children’s books and also writes little books about the writing process for kids. In his book, How Writers Work, he says that revision is like “story surgery,” a time when he rolls up his sleeves and makes the dramatic changes necessary to make his words sing to the tune he wants.
He says: Revision isn’t boring. It is life or death surgery, and it can look messy or downright bloody. That creature who is struggling for breath on the operating table is Your Writing, a patient who will live or die depending on what radical amputations, grafts, stitching, or other changes you perform during the operation.
It’s up to you, Doctor.
You need to be the world’s greatest expert on your own writing. And the way you do that is by rereading the words you have written down. If you learn nothing else about writing this year, learn how to reread your words.
Here’s what I’d like you to do:
1. Reread your draft.
2. Decide on ONE specific thing you LOVE about your draft and thoroughly explain why you love it.
3. Decide on ONE specific thing you think you can revise/work on more this week. (You could also choose something you revised/fixed this week that you worked hard on and are proud of.)
This should be at least two paragraphs. (One paragraph on #2, one paragraph on #3)
I'm looking forward to reading your drafts and your responses!
37 comments:
One thing that I love about my draft is the words that I use. I think that I have never used such big words ever in my righting. I think that the words that I used in this story are a lot bigger and more writer-ish than any other story I’ve written.
One thing that I think I should revise is the length of my sentences. I think I should work on this because in school, when we were reading each others stories, my partner said my sentences were short, when I looked back at my story I realized they were short.
One thing I like about my realistic fiction draft is that it doesn't have a title. I say this because I still have to finish revising and editing it. When I'm finished with that, I'll reread my story again. That gives me a chance to capture the full meaning of the story, thus prompting the title choice.
One thing I think I need to work on is the showing and not telling. My story gives a lot of obvious information, and maybe I could hide it more subtly. For example, I could show and not tell by portraying the character’s feelings connected with the plot (my character loves snowboarding, and snowboarding is the plot). Or, I could show how the setting affects the plot or the character (my character is at a winter skiing and snowboarding place in the winter, so my character can snowboard in a contest).
My realistic fiction story Walk Off has some ups and downs. I real like the beginning of my story. I feel like it has a lot of suspense. I also added a metaphor in the first couple sentences that I think helps the reader visualize the situation. I like the way my introduction feels. It brings action to a part that usually does not have any.
I’m not so happy with the part when Jason gets back from the hospital. It makes the reader feel like he did nothing for the rest of the day and the next day at school. I think to make this part better I could bring the minor character more into the story. I could also add a part about what he did in school.
I’m a big fan of comic books and I liked how I put in that the kid named Bill likes comic books also. He likes a lot of comic books, some I like and some I don’t like. But the cool thing was that I could write something I related to, so that was very easy. Sure, all my older cousins are very nice; so the older cousin was not actually pretty easy to come up with, But I have had my sisters be mean to me so that was not hard. It was a very easy story to write about and all of the characters were fun to create, so it was very easy writing the realistic fiction story.
I have reread my piece, finding a few things I disliked and wanted to revise. Nothing was perfect, but isn't that the whole point of this? Mostly, I saw things that I was pretty proud of.
Most things were good, but there is one thing I LOVE in my story. (SPOILER ALERT!) When Eileen and Juliet are texting, Eileen texts, “SOS.” By this, she means “Sister Over Shoulder”, but Juliet doesn't know that. Juliet is dramatic and sometimes overreacts. She also exaggerates and doesn't read carefully. So Juliet thinks she means “SOS” as in “Save Our Ship” or “I'm stranded on an island!” or something like that that doesn't make much sense at all. Juliet is freaking out, only to find that Eileen's sister just wanted to borrow a curling iron. I like that part a lot because it is funny, and kind of strange. It really shows my main character, Juliette’s personality, and how she is. She is crazy, and funny, and I might have based her off my self a little bit without realizing it. So, that's why I like this part the best. But, besides having awesome parts like this, I've had some not-so-good ones that I revised.
I revised one part that I think without revising, it would have been really confusing. (BIG-TIME SPOILER ALERT! LITERALLY, THESE ARE THE LAST FEW SENTENCES!)
***“Come on. Let's go,” Juliet urged.
Aphrusa and Juliet were sitting on the wooden fence next to her house.
Juliet barked questioningly like she didn't know where they were supposed to be going.
“To pack of course!”***
As you can see, this is confusing. In my story, she can either go to a sleepover with her friend or go to New York City for vacation. It just says, “To pack!”. Not, “To pack for New York!” or “To pack for Eileen's house!” so I changed it like this:
***“Come on. Let's go,” Juliet urged.
Aphrusa and Juliet were sitting on the wooden fence next to her house by the blossoming apple tree.
Aphrusa barked questioningly like she didn't know where they were supposed to be going. Juliet gulped, hoping Aphrusa would understand that she could do things other thank hang out with her dog in, Merriam, Kansas.
“To pack of course!”***
I think that makes more sense. It's easier to understand, and I also added more of a scene in there, that gave you a picture in your mind. That definitely was a smart idea to make that change.
Although I had something I loved in my story, there was also something I needed to revise. This is true with everything, because not everything is perfect. Everything needs to be revised a little bit, just until you get it right.
catfish said...
in 6th grade humanities, our class is doing a realistic fiction project. The project is to create a realistic fiction story, type it up, print it out, and then read each others. When we are done, we grade each other based on a rubric our teacher Mrs. McManus handed out in the beginning of the week. I made a story about a family winning the lottery and blowing all their money. There are many things I like about my story. One thing I like is my word choice. I like my word choice because if a man or woman in sixth grade is able to use vocabulary such as naive in an everyday life, his vocabulary is advanced. There are some things in my story that I don't like. One thing is my response or beginning words in a sentence. I don't like my response because I do not like words after dialog such as said. Especially said. OOOOOOOOOhhh that word brings me back. Anyway Those are reasons why I like and do not like those things. Well, bye!
My Favorite part of my draft is when Brooke (the main character”) realizes that friendships are more important then cheerleading. I love that part because it reminds you that friendships are so important that one activity you do cane makes your friends uncomfortable. Brooke quits the team, which she thinks, is bad but on the other side she still has her two best friends.
This week when we were doing revising I was very proud of me because I was rereading my draft and there was a part of my story that didn’t need to be there. I deleted it and came up with a whole new paragraph of why my character liked cheerleading. After I was revising my story I had eight pages and before I had 11. I think ths week I revised a lot and worked hard.
In my realistic fiction story I liked my suspense towards the end of the story. I really worked hard on making the action part intense and wanting the reader to feel what my main character Timmy was feeling. I liked this part of the story because I had an experience almost like this and the memory was strong so I could use details. Every time I read it I smile and have a tiny flashback.
One thing I think I need to work on in my story is going into more details with characters. I need to work on fleshing out minor characters. Also, I think I need to improve on gestures for my characters. I think details for a character is important and will make my story better.
What I like about what did in my realistic fiction story was I had a better story idea then I usually do. I normally just write my story, but I don’t think about how the story is going to be is written or what does the story really is going to go. This time, I did. I came with a whole idea of a story when I used a plot mountain. I came up with a few characters, and for the main character, I made his really bad situation get worse, and at the end his problem is resolved. I liked that I did better on my story idea because it is usually a basic story.
The thing that I would like to work more on this week is organization and structure. I want to make sure that my story has a developed beginning, middle, and end. My resolution is good enough. I think I need to work a little more on that for my story.
When I was reading my draft I saw a good thing about my story and a thing that I could work on.
The good thing about my draft is that when I was resolving the problem in my story I switched off characters every sentence to make it more tense then it is. For example I said Jake was walking out of the dough out heading for second base. Jakes dad was getting out of his car heading for the house. Jake was almost at second. Jakes dad was inside listening to jakes message. Jake was on second with the ball in his hand and his mitt in the other. Jakes dad was running to his car putting his foot to the ground. See how I building tense by switching off sentences to make you want to read faster and faster.
One of the things that I need to work on is spelling. When I am writing I have to go back and respell most of the words. For example today when my friends were reading my draft the where telling me my draft was good but that I needed to spell correct and that I miss spelled words that I use in my everyday life. Also in a spelling am I got 10 correct out of 35. The way I could spell better is by spending more time on sounding out the words.
That is my draft good parts like tense and bad parts like spelling.
What I love about my draft is my main character’s inner thinking. I love this because my main character has some interesting thoughts about what’s happening on her birthday. Although my character doesn’t say these things to her friends, I think they make my piece come together and make my main character more like a real person. I think that the inner thinking my character does really shows her personality and feelings.
One thing I think I need to work on this week is making background characters seem more real and less two-dimensional. I want them to seem like they are real people that encounter this problem. I think I need to work on this because three of my characters just blend in with each other. They talk together saying the same thing at the same time when they answer important questions that conclude my story.
My story has many different parts that I loved. The one I LOVED was about a paragraph.
The next morning I wake up to my mom tapping and calling my name, I look up and Diana is all ready to go.
“Where are you going?”
“To my house with my dad we’ve been trying to wake you up for a while now.”
“NO I DON’T WANT YOU TO GO!”
“You’re the one that’s leaving.” I get up and give Diana the best hug I ever gave someone. This will be our last one for a while.
“I’ll miss you” she whispers in my ear.
“I’ll miss you too.”
“Here is one of my charms for you so you can put it on your bracelet, and so you don’t forget me.”
“Thanks here’s one for you too. I could never forget you in a million years even if I tried.”
“Bye.”
“Bye.” She walks out the door.
That’s the part of my story I LOVE! I love that because its sweet. If I was moving, I would want it to be exactly like that.
The part I think I could work on is…
We got to the funeral and Diana was crying, I couldn’t blame her I would be devastated. After the funeral we took her home and she was sad for a while, then we took her out for ice cream. That cheered her up a little. We got a good night sleep. When we got up we had Rice Crispys, we watched T.V.
That is really bad. There are various things wrong with this. It’s just listing things.
The thing i love on mine is that is the seting and story on it and this is a cool story. I love it because the seting and story is a good thing on a story. And it is alot bigger then all other story i did and this i a better one. And the thing i need to work on is spelling because i am not that good at it and thats makes the story thats hoe you can read on the story. And it looks better when it is being read.
I thought my first draft was pretty good. There were some parts that I didn’t like and some parts that I did like. The way I started some of my paragraphs was one thing I did like.
Here is an example: “Tension was running through her veins instead of blood.” I like the way it sounds when you start a paragraph off like that. It just gives me a kind of image in my head that makes me feel what my character is going through at that moment. It kind of gives you a bit of suspense without knowing the suspense is even there.
One of the things I revised was the time gaps that I had between almost every paragraph. I put three diamonds between the paragraphs to show time change. I have never really done time gaps in my stories but without them this particular story would be very long.
I'm a writer. Not any different than any of you reading this. I, too, can make mistakes. But making mistakes helps me grow as a writer, and lets me understand my piece more. I can also create an un-real world that thrives inside my head in a vast country called Imagination. The people that live in my imagination move to other towns that I make up. They also make relationships, celebrate holidays, play sports, and sometimes even get hurt, like the main character in my story. I love my story for so many different reasons, but if I had to choose one specific feature that I like the most, it would have to be the emotion that I scattered throughout Dawn’s story. I sprinkled lots of information in the piece, and I described her observations to the audience with maximum detail. I attempted to make the reader feel like they were in her place, overwhelmed with her life. According to my partners, my attempt was successful, I put just the right amount of feeling into my story, and I am very proud of that.
There were many errors in my piece at first, but I corrected them and kept revising and editing my story. I’m still doing that, and I have noticed one attribute that occurs often in my realistic fiction story. It is that I stretch things out too much. I try to define with detail, but sometimes, it’s a little too much. The descriptions took up over half of my story. When I realized this, I cut out a lot of it, and added in some dialogue to fill up the blank spaces. My story is looking pretty admirable, and I can’t wait to see the finished copy.
This week I’ve made many changes to my writing piece. One thing I like a lot better now is the entry. My lead made no sense and I changed it so now it has a lot more detail describing what I meant here and there. I like it better now that people can read it and not go, huh? But just because I made so many revisions doesn’t mean I don’t like things about my story.
My favorite thing about my story is that my characters are weird. Like, mental issue weird. Specifically my favorite character is Teddy he’s the little 6-year-old brother. He’s really pretty smart but not as smart as my main character that skipped 4 grades and went strait from pre-k to 4th grade. Teddy only skipped the last year of pre-k and went to kindergarten. My main character Ethan thinks he’s pretty stupid which besides academically they all kind of are.
The one thing that I love about my draft is that my character, Riley, is talking to the reader like the reader would be right next to him the whole time. I think that this is fantastic is because I can write what he is thinking without worrying were I should put it. I think that this is one of the three or four of the stories that I have written that have the character talking to the reader. I still need to revise a little because I have some iffy parts that need to become good parts. That is what I love about my draft.
One thing I like about my piece is the suspense. I especially like how my story starts with suspense and how it ends with suspense. I think that it will keep my reader on the edge of their seat. I think that I could add a little suspense in the middle though because it will make my story balanced.
I think that I can work on developing my secondary character. Right now my secondary character is sprinkled in my story. I think my main character is developed well but I have to develop another character. I think that my secondary character could have his own plot mountain. I think that’s what I have to do to get to the next level.
Posted by giraffe
One thing I loved about my story is that I took something that was actually happening to me at the moment and wrote about it for my story. I picked this because it seemed like if I was the character that would actually be me. I think this because I would be acting the same way my character is acting in the story.
The thing that I don’t like and I want to and want to fix is narrative devices. I want to fix some of the narrative devices and I think I lack a lot of things in narrative devices. I especially want to work on action and suspense because there isn’t a lot in my story.
One thing I love about my piece is the last football game of the playoffs. I love it because the team is playing their rivals, the Seahawks, and they win for the fist time against them in awhile. Also, Jeff gives them extra strength to his team to let them win.
One thing that I think I can work on is the last foot ball game of the playoffs. I don’t give much detail on the setting. I think I could make it better by giving more detail and describing the setting better.
One thing that I like in my story is that I only had to use the word “said” one or two times. I like that about my story because I always use the word said about every time in my other writing. Instead of using said, I used other words such as, raged, explained, or asked.
Something that I need to revise is that I didn’t put much suspense into my story. I need to write more suspense and make it feel like time was slowed in that particular time. In most of the parts, the suspense was very limited or there was none at all.
One thing I love abut my draft is my title. My title is Not So Lucky. I love it because it makes sense in the beginning, and really makes sense at the end. I also love because it does that without giving away the entire ending.
One thing I think needs a little work is my ending. I think I need t revise my ending because it is a little short and isn’t entirely clear. I think I can fix both of these problems by adding more information on what’s happening and why it’s happening.
One thing I like about my story is the beginning. I like the beginning because I didn’t use something original. I started off with something new and something I probably not use last year or earlier in the year. Like I didn’t start off with “one day…” like I usually would. And that’s one thing that I like about my story.
One thing I wanted to work on a little bit more was my paragraphs. I wanted to work on that because when I’m writing I don’t really pay attention to them that much. I worked on it and figured out where I had to put them and my story was much more organized. And that’s one thing that I wanted to work on and I did.
One thing that I love about my draft is the words that I use. I think that I have never used such big words ever in my writing. I think that the words that I used in this story are a lot bigger and more writer-ish than any other story I’ve written.
One thing that I think I should revise is the length of my sentences. I think I should work on this because when looking back at my story, I jump to things really quickly, so I might want to make my sentences longer to make my story flow a little more fluently.
One thing I love about my draft is at the end I made the enemies best friends. I like that idea because they have so much in common but they don't notice it because they are too busy hating each other.
One thing i need to work on in my story is Punctuation. When I read over my story I noticed a few punctuation mistakes. I let someone read my story. The next time i read my story i noticed some more. i was surprised no one stood up and told me.
Something good I did in my writing was the humor. I put some humor in to make it less boring. It apparently worked. It makes my classmates want to read it again and again, which lets me read their stories. It also worked for someone else’s story, because everyone wanted to read theirs also.
Something I need to work on is slowing my parts down. I talk like this, and then this. I also rush the exiting part. See what I am doing. I am using short sentences. I am also speeding it up. It makes the story go faster. Ok, back to normal long sentences. I need to slow it down, so that you can actually read the exiting part.
Every story has their positive and negative moments. I personally know i have a lot of positives and not so much negatives. Every story has to be revised. My story is that story.
I had a lot of favorite parts in my realistic fiction story.The part I love is when the little 8th graders were stumbling on their word and Hannah Jones (the mean girl) screamed SHUT UP !!! I love this part because she is thinks that she is in charge of everyone. It makes me think that Hannah has to have everything her way. I think this because other people where talking and Hannah just has to have the center of attention. As you can see Hannah is mean.
What I need to work on is my choice of word. What I mean is that
I have to make my words more complex. Kind of like stretching out of my vocabulary range. I think in my story i use simple words like said, good, words like this.
Every story has the positives and negatives. I'm confident in my story as a writer. I do have negatives though.
Wolf said...: )
One thing that I love about my realistic fiction story is the part right after Alzy got stung by a jellyfish. I loved that part more than any other because Alzy realizes that Anna was just trying to help her get over her fear of the ocean. She knew Anna was only doing this because she is a real friend and wanted her to know what she was missing. Anna did not know that Alzy was going to get stung by a jellyfish. So I thought that part really tested their friendship and brought them closer together, so that is why I picked it.
One thing I can improve in my story is, making Alzy have more inside thoughts and Anna having less because it is not fair if one person gets more voice than the other. I also wanted to work on more emotion when Alzy gets stung by the jellyfish. There should be a little more panicking. Other than that, I think my story is very good!
The one thing that I LOVE about my story is how I used a symbol based on my main characters life. I used flowers as a symbol, once wilting and now as alive as ever. I know, I know, very cheesy, but I still love it.
One thing I think I need to work on is to be more descriptive with my minor, and maybe even my main characters. I want to make them as alive as you or me.
The one thing I LOVE about my draft is the plot. I LOVE my plot because I didn't go of into little bits that aren't really important.
The one thing I think I should revise is my punctuation and grammar. I picked this to revise because when I was reading my story I had to always fix me and Ariana to Ariana and I. I also had to fix periods into exclamation points.
One thing I love bout my story is the moral of the story " you can do anything if you try" because It any every day thing that people have to face every day.
One thing I want to work on is my editing because usually i don't edit that good and i Want to work on. So my piece is readable.
I love, the way I used the similes and metaphors. I have never done such a thing this good in writing. To me it was a new door to releasing my writing spirit. That is what I like about my story.
I want to work on my grammar this week; I also want to work on my transitions between paragraphs. I think this will be a pretty easy step to making my writing better. So hopefully this will be a great part in my writing.
There is a piece of my story that, no matter what, I would never revise it out. That piece is the beginning and end sentence. You see the beginning starts with a tear. I love this because it instantly grabs you, causes you to think and want to know more. The concluding words also end with a tear but, this tear is different. This tear instead of a destroying one, is a healing one. Wrapping up the story in a satisfying way intermixed with emotion. And that explains why I would never erase those parts from my story.
As Ralph Fletcher said “[is] a patient who will live or die depending on what radical amputations, grafts, stitching, or other changes you perform during the operation.” I believe that, that stitch is less detail. Why? I have had a detail problem before so I understand that too much off it like anything is revising-worthy. Too much detail would provide a non-grasping story that readers will turn away from after the first paragraph. So that is why I think too much detail would consequently lead to an uninteresting story.
I love the one part when Emma thinks her father gives her an idea when she is on the roof. I love it because it shows what kind of person she is. She is a sensitive, intelligent, loving, and passionate person. I put it in the story because I wanted a way to tell how she came up with the idea for what to paint. I wanted the painting to have 2 stories. And readers can’t tell what the 1st story is (her dad giving her the idea) just by reading what the painting was of.
I think one thing I should add is more humor and happiness. I think that because when I kept reading it seemed like the story needed more laughter and fun. It shouldn’t be a depressing story (i.e. Tiger Rising.)Most of the happiness from Emma was only with chef Michael and when she got her A.
One of the thing I really love about my story is that there is a lot of action and there is very few times there isnt action. some things that I dont like about my story is the writing conventions like punctuation capitalization and the organization. But the thing im worst at is punctuation because when im writing for a while i gewt lost and I dont like to stop.
The thing that I love with my story is the end, the end keeps you thinking what happened, is there more, why did it end, stuff like that. Also I don’t know if you got this when you were reading the story, when Ryan told Elliott that he always hits the ball in a line that means in the story it represented the life cycle. Like life always is a cycle, somebody is born. That person makes a new baby, then that person dies and it goes on for eternity. Also the main thing that I worked on in my story was voice and gaps in the story.
Well after I read my journal I liked how I added a lot about jobs. Like how I was talking about jobs throughout the story. One sentence that I liked how I said that my servant saw such a nice necklace and when I was eating she would not stop talking about the necklace and it was driving me insane.
I am working on editing know and was not in school for the revision. I started before I was supposed to do the blog sorry
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