A Cool Trick to Help Improve Your Revision Skills

My 7-year-old really enjoys reading. Watching him devour Diary of a Wimpy Kid, Captain Underpants, and all their sequels and spin-off makes me so proud. My favorite (and the one I’m reading with him) is the 39 Clues series.

Like a lot of kids, his love of reading has him writing as well. He staples blank pieces of paper together and writes stories on them or draws comics. He’s even co-authoring a books with his little sister 🙂

It’s really cool. Anyhow, one day, we finished reading something together and he got quite for a little while. I asked him what was the matter and he said he was just thinking about the way the story ended. “Wouldn’t it be better if…”

And I was like, “Yeah! That would have been better.”

It got me thinking…isn’t that kind of what the revision phase of your writing is? You look at the product and try to find something that you could say “Wouldn’t it be better if…?”

So I started doing this with every form of entertainment. A book I finish. A Theme of Absence submission. A movie I watch. A wrestling match. Oh, and my own fiction too.

I hate to sound like I’m only looking for the bad in things; it’s nothing like that at all. It’s simply an exercise to train myself (and my seven-year-old) on finding areas of improvement. And perhaps more importantly, coming up with the thing that would actually make the story better.

Revising can be so difficult. We like to think our story is perfect after the first draft, but it’s not. I know there are stories I felt were totally ready after the first draft. And sometimes they might be close, especially if you’ve planned them out in advance, but I would say at least minor revision is necessary in all cases.

I like this definition of revision from https://writingcenter.unc.edu/tips-and-tools/revising-drafts/

Revision literally means to “see again,” to look at something from a fresh, critical perspective. It is an ongoing process of rethinking the paper: reconsidering your arguments, reviewing your evidence, refining your purpose, reorganizing your presentation, reviving stale prose.

It kind of helps understand why you need to revise a story. After you get the initial idea out of your head and onto the paper, you’re going to continue to mull things over. New ideas will pop in, or like I said earlier in this post, you’ll find parts that could be improved.

So to close out, don’t be afraid to revise, and if you are, do what I do with my son and intentionally look for parts where you could say “Wouldn’t it be better if…”

What does your revision process look like? Do you have any tricks to help along the way? Let us know in the comments!