Writing Exercises: Revision

[rowyn]

Write a paragraph about anything at all.

Madden is a rude smartaleck. No, wait, that's not fair. On the other hand, maybe it is. But he's more than just a smartaleck. And it's not that he can't behave himself; it's just that he doesn't bother to most of the time. His respect has to be earned -- he doesn't just give it to people for existing. Beyond that, he thinks being a smartaleck is good self-defense, part of protecting your own ego. He makes wisecracks at Kildare because he thinks Kildare isn't tough enough, and needs the training to develop a thicker skin. Maybe Kildare does.

Decide what you want out of the paragraph, and re-write it with that in mind
Hmm. I want it less wordy, and more to the point--explaining why Madden acts the way he does. Come to think of it, I didn't even capture that in the first pass.

It's not that Madden doesn't know what good behavior is; it's that he thinks good behavior equals formality -- and he doesn't want to be formal with his friends. Besides, a little verbal abuse from your friends is healthy: it toughens your mind in a safe setting. Kildare is too thin-skinned, too sheltered. If he can't defend himself from Madden, who loves him, how's he going to fare against his real enemies?

---

In one sense, this exercise felt very unnatural to me. I'm not a "rough draft/second draft/third draft" sort of writer. More like "write a few words, rethink what I was saying, change them, write a few more sentences, go back to the second one, switch stuff around, write another paragraph, edit it ... " Revision isn't something that happens at the end.

But it is interesting to see an actual "rough draft" that I've written -- something I actually had not gone back to edit at all. Although I think I edited it a bit in my head before I started typing. The revised paragraph does a better job of encapsulating Madden's view, although the tighter prose loses something, I think. I'm a sucker for verbose, conversational writing.

Next exercise is to do another draft paragraph + revision. I'll do that tomorrow, though. Kinda tired now.

Comments

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

It's unclear to me who the speaker is, unless it's you yourself, speaking to the readers. That makes the paragraph feel self-conscious, perhaps artificial.

I picture Madden talking to someone candidly.

"Heck yeah, I'm a rude smart aleck. Where do you think my name came from? Seriously though, with most people, I like to poke them a bit, see what they're like, how they deal with it. Maybe it's a little defensive too, because as long as they're dealing with a poke, they aren't going to be thinking 'Look at the cute widdle fuzzywuzzy bunny'. And it's fun. I don't like to get all stiff and formal with my friends."

"With Kildare, I mean it in a good way. Honest. He's got flaws, everyone does, but if I didn't toughen him up on them, he'd just curl up if someone mean took a swipe at him for real. He takes things too personally."

Okay, I probably didn't get Madden square on, and this is certainly longer than either of the paragraphs you gave.

As for the whole revision thing, I suspect the odds are pretty low that Joe Average Writer has a perfect writing style straight off the bat. This is to get Joe Writer to think about how he reads to someone else.

[rowyn]

Actually, this paragraph has no place in the narrative of Silver Scales at all. It's just a factoid about Madden that I was writing down because it was something I could think of for the exercise. I guess that part was a bit confusing, especially since the next exercise I clearly am using something that fits into the narrative.

Madden is unlikely to say something this introspective, at least not in anything like this fashion. This factoid may come out later, but if so, it'd be in the form of dialogue, not specific exposition, either from the character or from the narrator.

[tuftears.livejournal.com]

I tend to think of writing in terms of stories, not exposition, I admit. And per the book I cited, Creating Short Fiction, every paragraph in a story should advance character, plot, or background, preferably more than one at a time.

Thus, exposition advances background. A character telling how he or she feels about something advances both background and character.

But, different metrics may be at work here, in the consideration of how to make a paragraph 'better'.

Or perhaps the idea is to learn the different kinds of metrics that you can apply, or the twists you can put on a paragraph to make it interesting.