Welcome to Week 2 of writing camp! Now that you’ve had a chance to settle in, we’re going to roll up our sleeves and get to work in earnest. Today’s session applies to all kinds of writing, but later on we’ll be looking at revision strategies for different genres and forms, and I’d like to make sure we touch on those that are of the most interest to all of you. I’d love it if you’d take a minute to fill out this quick, two-question survey to help with that. It includes an opportunity to ask questions you’d like to see us address!
Reading Aloud
The idea of reading work aloud probably isn’t new to you, but it’s worth thinking about why this revision strategy is so tried and true. Our TW guest authors have some thoughts on this!
Reading our drafts aloud helps the revision process immensely. It’s good for proofreading, because ears will catch mistakes and awkward phrases that eyes will gloss right over; it also helps us notice the flow of our own language. Giving voice to a rough draft will tease out sentence-level rhythms and structural repetitions.
Ursula K. Le Guin has a lot to say about repetition in her slender and essential book Steering the Craft: “The rhythms of prose—and repetition is the central means of achieving rhythm—are usually hidden or obscure, not obvious. They may be long and large, involving the whole shape of a story, the whole course of events in a novel: so large that they’re hard to see, like the shape of the mountain where you’re driving on a mountain road. But the mountains are there.” Revising aloud helps us see and hear the shapes of those mountains.
~William Alexander, author of A Properly Unhaunted Place and The Kids in Mrs. Z’s Class book #4, The Legend of Memo Castillo (coming in October!)
Read your novel draft out loud. The WHOLE draft. I always read my drafts aloud as a part of my revision process. There are some problems you can only catch when you hear them, like when there are similar sounding words in the same sentence, or a line of dialogue that doesn’t sound like anything a person would ever say, but that looked great on the page. Reading aloud also forces you to face those lazy sentences and word choices that were perhaps easy to skim over when reading, and gives you a fresh opportunity to whip them into shape!
~Dayna Lorentz, author of Wayward Creatures
One of the questions we’ve already gotten from campers is “How do you know when you’re done?” Teachers Write guest author Lauren Tarshis shares a peek behind the revision process behind her bestselling I Survived books:
I am constantly revising as I’m writing my I Survived books or magazine articles. Each morning, I open my laptop and read my draft from the very beginning, up to the point that I am working on. In the first phases of writing, these “sunrise reads” with fresh eyes often compel me to make dramatic changes — sometimes scrapping everything and starting from scratch. Weeks can go by and it actually feels that I am moving backwards instead of forwards. But over many years and many books and articles, I’ve realized that this process of ongoing, daily revision is what enables me to build a strong foundation. I get a clear sense of my character — his or her voice, needs, upcoming journey. I plant seeds that will enable my plot to grow, even if I’m not entirely sure what exactly I’m growing. The process can be frustrating for sure, and I envy authors who are able to meticulously outline and stick with their plan. I’ve tried this, but have learned the hard way that this is not me. And if I don’t do this kind of ruthless revising from the outset, I risk spending months plowing ahead, only to have the weak foundation crumble midway through the book.
My favorite part of revising is when the book is done, and I get to dig into the sentence level revisions, polishing up descriptions and dialogue throughout the drafts and the copy edit and the proofs…until finally my patient editor Kate politely tells me to stop. And it is at that point that the work is done.
~Lauren Tarshis, author of the I Survived series (I Survived the Black Death is coming in November)
So what do you look for when you’re reading that draft aloud? In addition to what our authors mentioned above, if you’re working on a novel, you’ll also want to think about how the main character’s emotions change from scene to scene. Guest authors Kekla Magoon and Elly Swartz have some tips for how to approach that!
Revising for Emotional Continuity
Writing a novel takes a long time, which means that the scenes your reader sits down to enjoy back-to-back may have been first drafted months or years apart. Time lags in the creation process lead to natural fluctuations in tone, voice, and emotion from scene to scene. In my own drafts, I tend to write scenes at random then later put them in story order, which complicates matters further. But even if you write in a more linear fashion, it’s important to take time in revision to ensure that there is continuity across neighboring scenes. Go through your novel, scene by scene, and make note of the protagonist’s emotional state at the beginning and the end of each scene. First, consider the emotion within the scene itself. Does it change? If not, why not? Did anything meaningful happen in the scene that pushed the story forward? If so, there should be some emotional change, even if it is subtle. Next, compare the ending emotion in each scene with the starting emotion in the next scene. Are they the same, or similar? If not, why not? What happened in between to change the protagonist’s mood? If you’ve done your job well, the reader will be feeling what the character is feeling at the end of each scene, but they may not be able to follow big emotional leaps from scene to scene. Taking time to catalog the emotional changes systematically will point out discrepancies you won’t necessarily catch by reading the manuscript normally, because the writer’s mind often automatically fills in gaps that are simply not addressed on the page.
Pro Tip: You can use the same technique to revise for other areas where continuity is important–like weather, or setting, etc. Is it snowing at the end of scene 5, and sunny at the start of Scene 6? Did time pass, or does one of those setting details actually need to change? Were your characters in a boat at the end of Scene 7, but suddenly they’re in a coffee shop in Scene 8? Are you missing a scene, or simply a transition line? And so on.
~Kekla Magoon, author of The Secret Library
Embrace the Emojis in Life!
Every great story needs a character that feels all the feels. All happy, you’ve written a giant Hallmark card. All sad, well, no one really wants that.
But how do you get there?
Emojis. I use them. And I promise, I’m not kidding.
To me, revision is all about looking at my story from many different lenses. So once I finish my first draft – that I have lovingly named Swiss Cheese – because it stinks and has lots of holes – I use emojis to help ensure that my character’s journey has the all-important emotional resonance. I put an emoji at the beginning and end of each chapter. What’s the emotion going into the moment and what is the emotion coming out?
Emojis cue me visually to ensure that my characters, like my readers, feel all the feels.
~Elly Swartz, author of Hidden Truths
Your writing camp assignment this week is to embrace the read-aloud and experiment with some of the revision strategies above! Either choose one piece to work on or experiment with a few different ones, and see what you notice while you’re reading aloud. You can do this on your laptop if you’d like, but personally, I prefer to read from either a printout of my manuscript or a pdf on a tablet, so I can mark it up with a pen or Apple pencil. There’s something about being away from the keyboard that helps me focus on the actual words.
Happy writing (and reading aloud!) – and don’t forget to drop any questions you have in the camper survey. Have a great week!
~Kate