English 151/2/3
Final Fiction Revision
Schedule and Activities for the closing weeks of class
Mon 11/26: Weekly Writing #8 Due. Bring 3 copies. Workshop discussion. For this last writing
group, we will go back to our original method of meeting in groups on the day the
writing is due.
Begin the Final Fiction Revision.
Wed 11/28: Journal #9 due.
Fri 11/30:
Report on a Literary Journal due. In addition to turning in your report, you’ll
present your findings to the class. We’ll go in alphabatical order by the title of the
journal, and you’ll have about 5 minutes each. Therefore, have in mind a quick
summary of the important points you’d like to share with us about the
journal/magazine you studied. I will stop you if you go over. The projector is
available if you want to use it to show us particular things about the journal’s
website, or if you want to show parts of your journal on the ELMO.
Mon 12/3:
If we still have more Litarary Journal Reports, we will hear them today. We’ll also
do some in-class revision activities.
Wed 12/5:
Final Fiction Revision Due.
Fri 12/7:
Last day of class. Presentation of Gifts.
Final Fiction Revision
Due: Wed 12/5 Points: 40
Format and order: The Revision Reflection and the Final Revision should be double-spaced.
Include the following material in the following order:
1. Your Revision Reflection (about 500-700 words) Just like your Midterm Poetry
Revision Reflection, this is a narrative in which you describe your revision process. Talk
about how you developed your piece, what choices you made, what revision experiments
you tried, and what their effects were. Talk about how you decided, after all the
experiments, what your final piece should be. If you decided to use unconventional
grammar or spelling, explain that here. The more detail, the better, as detail reveals your
involvement with the revision process.
2. Your brilliant, wonderful, original, and polished Revision.
3. The three Revision Experiments.
4. Other notes and drafts, if any exist.
The General Assignment: From any of the four fiction pieces you’ve written so far, choose one
to revise. Do three Fiction Experiments from the list provided below and do everything else you
can to revise this piece into something finished and polished. It can remain as a series of scenes,
or you can work toward a finished story.
More about revision: Your revision might end up adding scenes, and making your piece longer,
taking the story further. Or it might not--you might still stay with the same basic scenes. Either
way, the piece will be worked with extensively. In this class, a revision is a piece of writing that
you’ve thought about, re-worked, re-made, and thought about some more until your head
explodes. You probably have some changes that you know you want to make—things that have
come up in your workshop discussion and from my feedback, so your revision will likely make
those changes. But I would also like you to take this opportunity to enlarge your imagination of
what your story might be, and to let yourself create something you couldn't have thought of when
you first started.
What is high-quality writing? What should my revision aim for?
 A good piece of fiction is so original it makes us shiver and tingle. Even if it uses age-old
plot elements, something about the approach is new and interesting.
 The way the words are put together surprises us--the words are really working to get
across something this author and only this author could say.
 The story goes where we wouldn't expect, or it gets to an expected place in a surprising
way.
 Often something about the writing surprises the writer too--the characters took on lives of
their own, or the story touched something deep that the writer didn't know it was going
to.
 Everything in it counts, every word, image, and action.
 Everything in it not only counts, but counts double--for example, description can carry
the plot forward, dialogue can deepen the conflict, etc.
Also, a revision should use the elements of craft we've been learning about it Burroway:
 Show Show Show! Use detail, image, gesture, dialogue, and action to convey the story.
Tell a story in specific scenes that dramatize the main events of the story.
 Use narration and summary where you want to move quickly to the next scene, cover
something that's not a main turning point, or provide some background information.
However, first make sure it wouldn't be better to convey this information by showing.
 Consider all the ways or showing character, and of using fictional place and time.
 Make sure the point of view is consistent and believable. If you shift points of view,
make sure the shift is clear to the reader.
 Clear up confusions readers might have.
 Edit your dialogue tags: Always try to get the dialogue and action to convey what's going
on, rather than the letting the dialogue tag do the work. Compare ""You make me mad,"
he said angrily,' to '"I can't stand this," he said, sweeping his arm across the table so all
the dishes crashed to the floor.' Sometimes you don't need dialogue tags at all.
 Go over every word carefully and make sure you need it. Rewrite and reshape sentences
so that every word adds something.
 Make sure any errors in grammar or spelling are deliberate, serving a purpose, required to
convey voice and character.
Grading of the Revision
Reflection, 5 points. The reflection describes your revision process detailing your experiments
and their results, discussion your decisions, and showing you actively involved with every word
of your piece; it shows how you have urged your piece to find its true being, meaning, language,
tone, imagery, music, and form. If you have purposely used unconventional grammar or
punctuation or formatting, discuss your reasons here.
The depth of the experimentation, 15 points: The three experiments are included, any notes or
drafts are described in your Reflection, and included if available. The drafts and experiments
show you working not only with small-scale decisions of word-choice and sentence, but also
with the larger development of plot, theme or idea. The drafts show you discovering what the
story wants to be and do. Your whole revision package shows that you have deeply explored the
possibilities of your work, tried this and that, adding material, taking material away, evaluating
each change and deciding what to do with it. The revision shows that each word, sentence,
image, and action has been deliberately chosen for its effect on the reader and on the piece as a
whole.
The quality of the result, 15 points: The revision should show that you have worked to
improve the quality of your writing, practicing to
 express yourself by means of image, and action, and the music of language rather than by
generalization; to show rather than to tell;
 use sentence rhythms to help express your meaning;
 make every word count, and count double, using language compactly;
 eliminate clichés;
 consider the elements Burroway addresses: creating believeable characters and dialogue,
establishing the location, managing time with scene and summary, developing conflict.
 clarify distracting confusions;
 create a strong opening and a strong ending;
 surprise yourself
 and last but not at all least, the revision shows that you have tried your best to be brilliant
and original, to say new things in new ways, to get at complex meanings that you may
not have known about when you started, which only literature is complex enough to
express. Take risks with your writing!
Polish of surface, 5 points: The revision has been carefully proofread. It finds and corrects
unintentional errors of grammar and syntax. The revision's appearance on the page is as you
intend. Variations on conventional grammar and punctuation are explainable according to the
demands of form and tone and voice and character. I recommend that if you are using
unconventional elements (for example, sentence fragments, grammar errors, lack of punctuation,
or partial punctuation), explain your reasoning in your Reflection. Otherwise, if they read to me
like mistakes, I will assume they are mistakes, and grade accordingly.
The Experiments
Instructions: Choose at least three of these experiments to work with during your fiction
revision process.
The general idea: During your revision process, you will make a mess. You might have one
paragraph of the original followed by several pages of freewriting that expands on some nugget
in that paragraph. You might try adding sections, developing fragments or images. You might
urge a scene toward a whole story, making characters more real, adding scenes, developing
conflict. You might insert motifs here and there. You might free-write on an image in a story and
see if you come up with things you can use in the revision. You could rewrite the same scene or
fiction piece, but this time with more knowledge of where it's going and what it's about, so that
every detail is focused toward a central theme or conflict.
At several stages of revision, your piece will probably be in shreds and bits. You will feel like
you’re starting over and the whole thing is crap. You will have no idea if you’re making it better
or worse. That’s how it is. Just keep on going!
While you probably already have ideas about how to revise, these experiments are to help you
make more of a mess, and thus more discoveries.
And here they are, in no particular order:
1. Do everything your readers suggest: Follow the suggestions of any comments you
received, then make your own decision about whether they work or not.
2. If the original version didn't precisely follow the assignment, write a version that more
closely follows the assignment, and see what happens.
3. Edit out every word or phrase that seems the least bit dull or familiar. Decide if it needs
replacing with something more original, or if it was better the way it was, or if it is
necessary at all.
4. Make a map or outline of your plot, showing where the moments of conflict are (internal
or external, between characters or within a character, and showing where power shifts
between characters. Who is “winning” at any one moment?
5. Make a map or outline of your plot, showing where there is connection or disconnection
between characters. At what moments to characters connect? Where do they reject each
other? Is someone included or excluded?
6. Experiments with scenes: Stories are usually told by means of scenes. What scenes
already exist in your story? Could any of these scenes be expanded so as to accomplish
more? What if your story were to be told by means of other scenes? Which would they
be? Are there undeveloped places in your story that would be interesting to develop into
full-fledged scenes? What would happen if some currently minor places in the story got
developed into lengthy scenes? What would happen if what currently is told by means of
summary and narration were to be illustrated in a scene instead?
7. Follow the original assignment even more strictly and carefully.
8. Interleaving expansions: Read your piece carefully, hunting for every word or phrase that
seems even the slightest bit general, or that you have even the slightest inclination to say
more about. Look for those places where you may have been in a hurry during the early
drafts, or where you may have given up in the frustration of trying to describe things
accurately. Insert after every one of these, more detail, development, description,
imagination--whatever is appropriate for the situation. As you do this, you may discover
that you can cut out the original generality and substitute one of these other images. Or
you may discover an idea or theme you didn't know was there. Or?
9. Highlight all uses of the verb "to be" (except where you need it as a helping verb). Cut
them and focus on using a more active, dynamic verb. do the same thing with any use of
the verb "to become." To do this, you’ll probably have to radically rearrange syntax;
simply substituting other verbs doesn’t necessarily do the trick.
10. What if the piece has a different source, a different motive? Rewrite the story or poem as
if it is a message to your lover. As if it is to your mother. As if it is to a stranger. As if
someone else is telling the story.
11. Order and sequence: Change the order of things around. For example, let the story begin
with what's now the last scene, or put the current opening scene in the middle. What does
changing the order tell you about your meaning? How might changing the order affect the
reader's experience?
12. Freewrite on a motif or symbol: Let yourself write as much as you can, brainstorming
about all the different forms your motif or symbol can come in, and what it might mean.
For example, I'll start a freewrite on the motif of "lips": Certainly they're on people.
Lipstick prints on glasses. The lip of a tunnel or hole--scary, the unknown, a turning
point. Don't give me any of your lip. Fat lips, thin lips. Thin lips--anger or prudery...
13. Research an element of your piece: Maybe there's a subject in your story interesting to
know more about, or that you need vocabulary for. If you're writing about a character
who's having chemotherapy, it might to interesting to know more details about how
chemotherapy works, for example.
14. Let your characters dream: Write down your characters' (or speaker’s) dreams. Be loose,
wild, imaginative; don't worry about meaning or believability. Read over what you've
written. Possible you'll be able to include one of these dreams in your fiction. Or maybe
you can include some of the elements of these dreams in other ways. For example, if your
character has a dream of a flight of crows blocking the sky, maybe you can make her
black hair shine like crow feathers, or her eyes take a long time to adjust to the darkness
in a room when she suddenly comes in out of the sun. If a character dreams that she can't
get out the door and go to work because she can't find her shoes, and then when she does
find them there are two left ones only, and then when she finds a right shoe it has no
laces, you can give your character some similar kind of shoe problem as she's getting
ready to go to work. See if you can use the images from the dreams in any way that helps
to develop the conflict or the characters in your story.
15. Experiment visually: Here are a few possibilities, and probably you can invent others:
Draw a picture of your character. Draw a map of the setting. Illustrate your poem or
story. Draw panels as in a comic book. Make a collage of elements from your poem or
story.
16. Answer these questions: Who is the protagonist? What is his or her goal? What does he
or she want? What internal characteristic keeps him or her from getting it? What external
force keeps him or her from getting it? What factors complicate the situation? What
character trait enables the protagonist to solve (or not solve) the situation and get (or not
get) what he or she wants?
Then, cut any scene or narration or sentence or word that is not relevant to the plot you
outlined above, or re-write it so it becomes relevant.
17. Experiments in point of view: Choose a passage from your fiction, and re-write it from a
different point of view.
18. Make up your own revision experiment (make sure your Reflection describes it).