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5 Easy Editing Steps to Polish Your Writing

July 30th, 2007 | editing, sentence tips

hand and penThe “writing process” is something that gets a lot of emphasis in American schools these days. And for good reason. A lot of people have anxiety about writing because they think they are supposed to produce Shakespeare after one draft.

Even Shakespeare didn’t produce Shakespeare after one draft. In fact, he probably got a lot of input from the actors and directors and copywriters.

So I liked the idea of the writing process. The problem was it produced even more anxiety for the students. Now instead of worrying about just writing well, they worried about prewriting and revising and proofing and editing and, well, writing too.

So here is the old revision process I taught:

1) Revise.

2) Revise.

3) Revise.

4) Revise.

5) Revise.

In fact, there are a lot more than five steps to this process. It just keeps going until something else seizes your imagingation.

Does that list look too facetious? Think about it this way.

1) Revise the idea from your head to the paper. Reimagine the idea as it might appear if you can only use words. This could look like an outline, a bunch of notes on loose leaf paper, charts and graphs and doodles, a stack of index cards, a series of blog posts, a collection of annotated links…

2) Revise what you have into sentences and paragraphs, fiction or nonfiction, story or argument, poetry or prose or drama. Choose the form and make it with words.

3) Revise the idea again. Read your sentences out loud. See which ones cause you to stumble. Mark them. Change them so they don’t cause you to stumble anymore.

4) Revise again. Look for bad metaphors and cliches. Look for good images and metaphors. If you don’t have any good images or metaphors, add some.

5) Revise again. Look at the verbs. If you have a lot of “to be” verbs cut the number in half. In fact, try to do that anyway.

You see how this keeps going and going and going. Here’s the trick. Each step of the process only looks to make a few decisions. Revise to add better verbs. Revise to smooth out sentences. Revise to add dialogue.

It takes a long time. But so does running a marathon. People love running marathons because of the incredible sense of accomplishment.

I’m not big on marathons, but I like that sense of accomplishment. So I write.

Note: To summarize my riff on Brian Clarke’s 10 steps to Becoming a Better Writer: Revise, revise, revise, revise, revise, revise, revise, revise, until you quit, publish, or die.

This post was also inspired by a conversation that began on Dawud Miracle’s post Maybe the Best Copywriting Tip Ever.

Viewing 10 Comments

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    Great advice!

    Jeanne
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    It's about discipline too, isn't it? Going back over and over the same piece of prose, even when looking for different things, can be tedious. But to make it the best we can, we have to do it. Just like runners have to stick with it to finish a marathon, running a shorter bit one day and longer the next, then shorter again, until they build up what it takes to go the whole distance on race day. Almost everyone can run, but few are marathoners. And most people can write, but few are really "writers". I'm working hard to be able to call myself one and I like the reminder of how simple the process is. That reminder might help me stay focused...and disciplined.
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    It's about love of writing as well-you gotta like what ya do!

    :)
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    Jeanne, thanks for the encouragement!

    AMM, it is definitely about discipline. You have to be a disciple of the craft. That means dedication. That means sacrifice. And ultimately like Eve says, that means love.
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    Hmm, I don't know that I've ever codified my method that completely.

    I look for quirky ideas or better, something that shouts out to me - "write about this"

    I gush and emote for awhile. Then I start hammering into some kind of shape. In that phase I'm working mainly with paragraphs, but obviously doing sentence and word editing/changing as I go. But my goal is a solid structure with the message in place.

    Then it is nothing but polishing. Keep reading it until you can read it all the way through and not be stopped by something that sounds funny, or might be a little out of place, or is a little bit "off" logically, or is repetitious, or trite, or anything.

    How many times to you go through it? If you ask, you're not ready! How many times? As many as it takes. Who counts these things?
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    oooh, I like that. it breaks down an enormous project into what feels more manageable...
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    I like this approach... go outside and lie down, gaze up into the big pine tree, watch the clouds, dream.... (Maybe our classrooms should start growing trees.)
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    RLP, you are exactly right. If we have to ask how many times we revise, we haven't quite committed to the beauty of the work itself.

    On the other hand, I wonder if that question isn't really a way of someone asking if their work is beautiful yet. Not am I done? But do readers recognize the beauty of the work that I want them to see?

    Spaghettipie, I'm a big fan of Thoreau. Simplify, simplify, simplify. If I'm trying to write the Great American Novel, I'm doomed. If I'm trying to make my verbs more concrete, I have a good chance of succeeding. I suppose the trick is to decide which specific tasks worth the time commitment.

    L.L., I definitely like your method of inspiration. I used something similar with my students when we studied American Romanticism. I would tell them, “Wordsworth defined poetry as ‘emotion recollected in tranquility.’ During Walden Week, we are going to experience some emotion in nature. Just like the Romantics. Your class time assignment for the next two days is to experience emotion. That’s it. Then you’ll go home an recollect it. But you can’t recollect what you don’t experience.” (You can read more about Walden Week here.)

    I love gazing at the clouds. But at some point, I have to be very intentional about recollecting my gazing at the clouds or the ideas never get revised into words.
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    I love to revise, revise, revise - but I use a bottom up method, rather like building a table. It needs a top and at least 3 legs to stand up and bear any weight and 4 legs make it sturdier than 3. So, I start with my hypothesis, what I want the take home message to be.

    This, by the way is also how I teach students to teach each other. I ask the students what sentence they want their fellow students to be able to repeat to their parents when they leave and their parents ask, 'what did you learn in Sunday School/Bible study/youth group today?"

    Then, after having determined the table top - I choose the legs, my supporting points. After these statements are done, I begin to fill in the subpoints, etc.

    And last of all, I print everything out triple space and get a red pen with lots of ink and start reading it out loud. I do my very best editing by, as you suggest, reading the sentences out loud to see how they flow - both within the sentence and whether the sentences flow together.

    But, perhaps, scientific writing is totally different than other forms of writing.
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    Susan, I missed this comment somehow, but it's a really great thought!

    It works well for nonfiction and other forms of writing that depend upon a structured argument. Starting a story or a poem or a play with the takeaway message generally leads to didacticism in my experience.

    Instead, when I'm writing a story, my theme has to be a natural extension of the characters, the setting, and the conflict. That means, I can use my theme to choose and develop those three points.... You know what, I'm beginning to find your argument more convincing. Fiction just stands on different legs.

    And I'm not sure the theme is the tabletop.

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