It’s easy enough to tinker with existing sentences, find stronger word choices, and delete a line here and there, but we should not be calling that kind of work revising… What we are doing when we are making tiny (even if important) changes is editing.
While editing is important—especially in the later stages of drafting as it marks the difference between a polished story and one that may be lacking—we first need to spend time on the more substantial aspects of our stories: content, conflict, characterization… etc.
Jack Hodgins in A Passion for Narrative: A Guide for Writing Fiction suggests that when a writer is “working on top of a previous draft” they have not “freed [their] imagination to re-see the scene completely and with undistracted confidence.”
The Revision Exercise: Start From Scratch
Try this:
1) Select a story scene you’ve been working on (whether it be a stand alone scene at the moment or a section from a story).
2) Read the scene over a few times. Ignore the parts that you are unhappy with (things like word choices or clichéd phrases; there will be plenty of time for fixing things up later).
3) If you write on a computer, open a new document. If you write by hand, flip to a blank page.
4) Now, set the scene aside. Move it out of sight (close the original document or flip the page over.)
5) Re-write the scene from memory. Do not let yourself look back at the original.
6) When you are finished re-writing from memory, take a break. Go do something else and return to the revision a few hours (or days) later.
Now, remember, both of the scenes still exist: the original scene and the scene rewritten from memory. You haven’t lost any of your words, and you can always revert back to he original; this awareness frees you up to make bold changes and re-write from scratch.
Read over the re-write and evaluate it.
You may notice that you’ve solved some of the problems that existed in the original scene since you were no longer locked into the phrasing or order. What remains, often, in the revision, are the concrete, significant images and the most important content. If you review the scene and you are missing a phrase you loved in the original, or an important plot point, work those elements into the revised scene.
I'd love to hear what you think of this exercise and about how you tend to revise your creative work. Do you tinker? Have you tried revising from scratch?