Revising

For part two, we come to revising. If editing is about polishing a final piece, then revising is about turning a rough piece into a final piece. To a degree, revision takes place at all times throughout the writing process, sometimes even after the work gets published. However, let's stick with more significant revision.

When we write, we create worlds and fill those worlds with people and things. We make our creations do things and sometimes we let them do things on their own. When we revise, it's like we hit the reset button on our world and do it again. It might be subtle, as simple as changing a shirt from blue to green. It might be massive, like allowing the protagonist's mom to survive the car crash. No matter what the scale, revision is changing the world. The important question is why you decide to change the world.

Revision should always be done to make a story better. You changed the shirt from blue to green because he was wearing jeans and he didn't need to be wearing all blue. You let the mom live because the protagonist needs to see the world in shades of gray, not just dead or alive, but what quality of life.

Sometimes, revising isn't so drastic. The kind of revision I talked about is the stuff that may be happening from a rough first draft to a second draft. Sometimes revision is simply about consistency. It's a lot like editing, but for what the words are saying, rather than the words themselves. When a character says or does something out of character or when events happen in an order that is physically impossible, then revision is needed.

I wrote these posts because a friend (who is a math and physics major) asked me how a person can teach a class on Revising and Editing. The best answer I could give him is that you can really only teach the process and the stepping stone techniques. The rest comes with experience and with getting into a person's head to figure out what they're trying to do. In short, if you want to be a good reviser/editor, do it for your writing soulmate.