Zen and the Art of Revision

'some retarded code
public sub main()
dim CheeZtitle as string
dim nerdOmeter as integer
CheeZtitle="Zen and the Art of Revision"
nerdOmeter = 0
nerdOmeter = IncreaseNerdPower(CheeZtitle)
msgbox("Nerd it up to the power of " & cstr(NerdOMeter) & " nerd points.", vbInformation, "Nerd Power")
End
end sub
public function IncreaseNerdPower(byref BlogTitle as string) as integer
return BlogTitle.length
end function

I think that perhaps, I do need to stop coding so much. Anyway, over at my friend, Val Gryphin's blog, recently there was some discussion on Revision. I thought I'd take a few minutes and lay out my approach to an often groaned about aspect of writing.

Personally, Revision is my favorite place to be. I'm infinitely more comfortable fixing something I already have than trying to make up something new. As such, here are some tips, methods I use to help organize and get the most out of my revision process:

1. Give the story some time. Seriously. Once you're finished with a draft, forget about the story for as long as you can. Given the hectic nature of my life, 10 minutes usually works for me :P, but two to three days of non-attention is always better than going right into revision after placing the last period.
2. Start all Revisions as a new filename. I use a sort of Programmer's versioning pattern. I'll start a story out as Story 0.1, and with each pass, I'll Save As and increment the Version number. That way, I never lose any prior edits. Some programs have integral Versioning, but after playing with Open Office's Version handling, I found that making my own versions is much easier. Doing this will also free you up to taking bigger chances and changing things more drastically, because you can always go back to an older version if this particular fork fails on you.
   
3. Revise in layers. Don't try to do everything at once. You'll get bogged down after two or three pages. Pick a layer and do a full pass doing nothing but that layer. If you see something else that does need to be changed, make a note and keep going. Try not to break out of your current process.
   
4. When using layers, save the nitpicky grammatical bits for last. Your last two passes should be. 1. Read for grammar and 2. read aloud.
5. Find yourself a Sue. Sue, love me as she may, has no problem telling me EXACTLY when something I've written has turned to shit. This is important for two reasons: 1. it knocks the ego-maniacal bullshit out of your head, and 2. It helps you hone in on what isn't working. This is especially important for people like me who do write in experimental/postmodern forms because weird shit tends to piss off readers easily, so it absolutely has to pass the bullshit test. I'm sure that Sue would be your Sue if you pay her in chocolate and sweet cool drinks (maybe).
6. (Layer) Break your story down to its structural roots. Analyze how your story fits to the Freytag triangle of Dramatic flow. Plot out exposition, rising action, climax, denouement and make sure it all balances right. Rough approximations are Exposition up to 1/3, and very very very little denouement. This is especially important in postmodern/experimental works. If you aren't adhering to a Freitag triangle for your story progression, you have to have some sort of structural flow, and that flow has to balance out. If your structure is failing, your reader will either become lost or bored due to lack of tension and/or lack of an idea of what the hell is going on.
   
7. (Layer) Once you've analyzed your structure, start asking Why. Why doesn't Clare paint anymore? Why can't she stay in a relationship? Why does she hate her job? These why's should come directly from the characters' struggles in your story. If you can't answer any question with the text, do some freewriting in the voice of your character--see what comes up. This is a great tool for helping you figure out areas to cut from the story, because you can look at a particular section and say, "Why does this need to be in the story?" And if you can't find a need, then you know it's time for that section to go. I've used this method to cut several stories from 40+ pages down into the 20ish range.
   
8. (Layer) After Structure and analyzing for necessity, take a look at your characters. What are their core struggles in the story? How are they communicated through tension? How have you used elements of the story to make the reader care/not care about your characters? And are they balanced? No one should be black and white good/evil, so how have you added humanity to your villains and darkened your heroes?
9. (Layer) Take a look at the length of your story. Is it too short, too long? Most literary journals anymore seem to want stories under 8000 words. That's hell for longer story writers like myself. In this pass, look again at cutting unnecessary pieces, but also look at cleaning up language a bit.
10. (Layer) The language layer. I'm a HUGE advocate against passive voice and adverbs, and I dedicate at least one layer pass to clean up as much of it as I possibly can. Anything with "has, had, is, was, were, have, will, would" modified verbs is up for the chopping block as far as I'm concerned. I also really hate sentences that start with "It." But your language pass could be different, and don't just focus on grammatical faux pas, also take a moment to think about the story's narration. Who is telling/writing the story? Is the voice of the story consistent with this teller's voice? How can you make that voice stronger. In my case, each story in my collection is "written" by the central character, and as such, each character has his/her own writerly quirks. Clare tends to lean towards thicker more fluid language, heavy in alliteration and a sort of poet's mindset, while Johnny is all postmodern fuckery with a particular interest in pointing out every cliche that he uses. The narrator character takes a sort of middle ground between the two, since he's more or less a combination of them. Even if you don't name or have a narrator in your story, think about the language of delivery, think about diction. How can you amp up your presentation by improving the language?
11. (Layer) Look for repeated story strings. This is where you go through your story and make sure that all the things that your characters see and do have a chance to reflect throughout the story. If your character is a painter, this is the pass you use to ensure that somehow you work her painterly mindset into her daily actions (paint crusted fingernails, warped canvases in the corner, etc). Add in several small details throughout. Also look for things at the end of your story that have significance, and make sure that that significance is weighted throughout the story. Don't drop a bomb at the end without vaguely hinting towards it all along. Also, if you have any Red Herrings, kill them now.
12. (Layer) Do a grammatical hard edit. I've never been able to do this, but I've had former CW professors suggest that you try reading the story backwards--this will help break your mind away from the story so that you're actually looking at the page instead of reading from memory. It's a good idea, but I've never been able to keep my attention focused long enough to do that. This kind of edit is best done when the story is completely out of your head, otherwise it's hard to keep your mind focused on low-level stuff without starting to skim. This layer is also best done on a physical hard copy--current screen resolutions are significantly lower than what our eyes are used to when we read a printed text, resulting in as much as a 25% slow down in online reading speeds (I read that somewhere, but don't have a direct quote, so trust me that it's true-ish?). Because of slower online reading speeds, we tend to skim a lot more. So when you're doing the hard edit, do it on paper.
13. (Layer) Read your story out loud from start to finish. I can't tell you how many times I've found grievous problems by doing this. It really helps improve the flow of your language, and also it gives you the opportunity to hear and adjust the aural side of the story. While oral presentation isn't as common for fiction, I think it's just as important as it is for poets.

That's about all I can think of right now. Next time you do a revision, give a couple of these steps a try, and see if they work for you. I'd love to hear if any of them helped/failed for your situation.