the craft. what to keep and what to throw away.
You may know by now that I’m a big fan of revision. Worlds open up in your writing process when you stop getting analysis paralysis before you even put a word on the page and learn how to let the first draft of something be shitty. Excuse my French. But if you can convince yourself to start writing, whatever way it comes out, you’re already 50% of the way to actually completing something. I can’t tell you how many times I completely rearrange these newsletters and if I had more time, I would probably revise them three or four more times before sending them because I know they could still be better. But you have got to get going at some point.
My debut experience helped me understand the gravity of this. Your work is not so precious that it cannot be revised and frankly, it will be better for it. But that can lead us to wonder, how do we know what to throw away and what to keep? That is a good question, and I, like Sway, do not have the answers, but I can at least share a few questions that can be helpful to ask yourself in your revision sessions.
Does it move your piece forward or is it simply beautiful language? You took hours to craft the most irresistible prose and when you go back in your revision process, you find the same artful language lags a bit. Pacing is so important in whatever we’re writing whether it’s fiction, nonfiction, or an article, especially now with limited attention spans. Can I be honest? Sometimes, I start reading something longform and if it’s not gripping, I just quit. You want to make sure people aren’t quitting on your piece and that will take asking yourself the tough questions. Now, you don’t have to fully scrap your elegant language, you can put it to the side for safekeeping and maybe it makes sense somewhere else down the line.
Is it backstory? Or is it action? Now, we all know great storytelling does include exposition which will give us insight into the backstory of a character or event. But learning how to differentiate what you’re telling yourself about the character or event vs. what the audience needs to know is key. Stories are about action. I say this with an asterisk because we know literary fiction can sometimes play by different rules, but overall, something needs to be happening. If you find yourself in complicated weeds and nothing has happened in fifteen pages, you may need to tag a family tree to the beginning pages of your project and keep it pushing. Find ways to eradicate unnecessary backstory that can clog up your pacing.
“Your work is not so precious that it cannot be revised and frankly, it will be better for it.”
Is it telling instead of showing? Hear me out. I think many of us agree that sometimes you have to tell things, right? So, this is not to be that staunch English professor who is trying to make you feel terrible with an outdated writing cliche. It’s to say that sometimes you can leave a little to the imagination. Sometimes you should make the reader work a little to infer or be sure that you are writing in a way that the reader can understand what’s happening without you saying it implicitly. Most simply, sometimes I will literally end a paragraph with something like, “she was longing for him,” when I could use better language and description to infer the same concept. Like, “she hung on the door frame as he disappeared down the hall, still enveloped in the scent he left on the nape of her neck when he kissed her there.” I don’t know, I’m making that up as I go, but you get the point. It’s like, paint the picture for us vs. putting this descriptor language that sounds more like script direction than literature.
Is it concise? Now, this can be tricky in literature because it’s supposed to be detailed, thoughtful, and introspective which can lead to a lot of words. But being deliberate and intentional with your words doesn’t mean brief. Get to it. Say what you mean, describe what you’re describing. Remember writing essays in school and you knew you made your case a couple pages in, but you threw some fluff in there to make the assigned page count? Your teacher could tell and so can we. Don’t be afraid to get to it without meandering on the page.
And then, even with all these things to consider, sometimes you may ask yourself, do I love it? Let me tell you, occasionally all the rules have to go out the window when we love something. When it feels integral to the story or the characters/subject or simply to us as the writer. I tell you all the time that edits are suggestions, even when they’re coming from you. If you love it, keep it. At times, I have gone back to something I loved and thought, “yeah, that was not all that.” Like my whole poetry book from college. But hey, you may fare better than me in that area.
Anyway, I hope this helps in some way and feel free to share some other questions with me that you ponder in your revision process.
Tin House is accepting applications for their 2024 Summer Workshop. Deadline to apply is Jan. 31. Application fee waived for Palestinian and North American Indigenous writers.
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