A Writing Tip by Barbara Daniels
REVISE ONE STEP AT A TIME
This is the third and final installment in Barbara Daniels’ three-part sequence of tips for revising fiction. In her introduction to this series, Daniels wrote, “Rewriting a story can be even more interesting and gratifying than writing a first draft.” New strategies and fresh perspectives, such as those suggested on this list, can help sustain that energy all the way through the process.
Part 1 – Start Revising Your Story appeared in Cleaver’s June 10th newsletter & Part 2 – Revising Your Story: A Second Look appeared was our June 23rd newsletter.
Part 3: Finishing Touches
If you’ve moved through the previous stages of revision, the step-by-step tactics on the list below will bring your story to a satisfying conclusion and give it some extra polish.
- Is the story a vivid, continuous narrative unmarred by distractions you do not intend?
- Make two big lists of possible titles, one quoted from the story and one not. Live with several of your best titles for a while, possibly taping them up near your workspace. Before you make a final choice, check online to be sure other writers haven’t used the title.
- As a rough rule of thumb, do you have conversation on nearly every page? Consider using direct quotations instead of summarized dialogue if the dialogue is crucial to the plot.
- Check your punctuation of conversation. Give each speaker a new paragraph.
- Have you used a blank line to indicate that time has passed or to signal a transition from one section of your story to the next? Are there too many space breaks or too few?
- Search for the word “you.” Is it confusing? Might readers react against it?
- Condense. Test to see if the words “that,” “just,” “suddenly,” “somehow,” and “very” can be deleted. Are your repetitions meaningful? Can some of them be cut?
- Try the past tense (“Herb coughed”) rather than the past perfect (“Herb had coughed”) to tighten your prose.
- Don’t use ALL CAPS and !!! marks in ways that detract from your story.
- Do your intentional sentence fragments and run-on sentences contribute to characterization and pacing or do they look like mistakes?
- Did you proofread carefully for errors? If you think you might be missing mistakes, try working on paragraphs out of order, starting at the end of the story. Consider asking someone else to help double check for mistakes.
Is something still missing? Read other authors until you feel like writing. Look for stories that speak for you but also for some that surprise or annoy you. Based on this reading, you may want to make further changes in your own story.
Read the earlier parts in this series:
Barbara Daniels’ most recent book, Talk to the Lioness, was published by Casa de Cinco Hermanas Press. Her poems have appeared in many journals, including Cider Press Review, One Art, The Lake, Packingtown Review, and The Shore. She has received four fellowships from the New Jersey State Council on the Arts.
Read more from Cleaver’s Writing Tips.
