What to revise to improve writing

Posted on January 6, 2025 | Leave a comment

Students often think revising means editing, that is, making small changes. Adding an apostrophe or improving spelling is not revising.  Revising means making significant improvements to writing.  Revising is the process by which okay writing becomes great.

So what exactly is revising?  Here are some examples, though there are many more.

Change weak (nonspecific) verbs to specific verbs.  If possible rewrite the verb to be (is, are, was, were) and come, go, give, take, get, start, put, look, and see, but not say or said.

  • I got tired raking leaves, so I came inside and took a nap.  This becomes, After I tired from raking, I snuggled on my bed and napped.

After weak verbs, find infinitives or nouns that can be turned into strong verbs.

  • When the car started to spin, Mom took her foot off the gas pedal. This becomes, When the car spun, Mom released the gas pedal.

Use active, not passive verbs.

  • The apple was eaten by Mary. This becomes, Mary ate the apple.

Change long nouns (e.g., encouragement, contamination, habitation) to verbs.

  • Use moderation in your dietary habits. This becomes Moderate your diet.

Combine frequent small sentences (fewer than 10 words) to add sophistication to writing.

  • That’s my brother. His name is Akhil.  He is seven.  He can write a two-wheeler.  This becomes My seven-year-old brother, Akhil, can ride a two-wheeler.

Delete a sentence with just one bit of new information and put that information in another sentence to eliminate wordiness.

  • The baby fell out of the carriage. The carriage rolled down the hill.  This becomes, The baby fell out of the carriage which rolled down the hill.

Combine sentences to eliminate wordiness.

  • My uncle was wounded playing football. He played for the University of Georgia twenty years ago. He played before I was born.  This becomes, My uncle broke his leg playing football for the University of Georgia twenty years ago, before I was born.

Identify the sentence structures used (simple, compound, complex and compound-complex).  Rewrite the sentences to create more complicated simple sentences and easy-to-understand complex sentences, and to eliminate most compound sentences.

  • I watched the Rose Bowl Parade on TV, and I enjoyed it. I could not believe the floats!  They were covered with flowers, seeds, leaves, and other living things.  I hope, when I am older, to see the parade in person.  This becomes, I enjoyed watching the Rose Bowl Parade on TV.  Flowers, seeds, leaves and other living things covered the floats.  Someday, I hope to see that unbelievable parade in person.

Limit the number of dependent clauses in sentences to two.

  • The resort where we vacationed used to be a private club that attracted millionaires in the 19th century who arrived by train before wealthy people had air conditioning. This becomes, We vacationed at a resort that used to be a private club for millionaires.  In the 19th century, wealthy people arrived there by train.  They wanted to escape the heat in an era before air conditioning.

Change first words of sentences to add variety. 

  • See previous changes.

Count the number of words in each sentence.  Average them.  Aim for an average of 14 to 18 words with some longer and some shorter.  If the average is 10 or below, increase the number of words per sentence.  If the average is 20 or above, decrease the number of words per sentence.  Don’t count the number of words per sentence until you have made other changes or you will need to recount.

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Posted in "to be", active verbs, how to write better, number of words per sentence, passive verbs, revising first drafts, revising sentence length, sentence structure, verb choice, voice, writing tips

How to start writing a narrative

Posted on December 20, 2024 | Leave a comment

A high school student asked me how to start writing a narrative–not how to continue on but how to start.  What should the writer think about?  Here are some good ideas:

A good story has a beginning, a middle, and an end. In the past, stories began with exposition, and some teachers still suggest that way of starting. But today many  professional writers start as close to the inciting event as possible and weave background information into ongoing action.  If you’re writing about a trip to New York, for example, forget the plane ride and hotel and start the story where the action starts–losing your balance while climbing the Statue of Liberty.

 

Determine the story’s arc, which is often the protagonist’s arc. What problem / situation does the protagonist want to solve / change? Readers search for change.  That change is usually growth in the protagonist.  If everything / everyone is the same at the end, start over.

Make sure the story’s problem is mentioned in every major scene. Keep the reader focused on it and on how the protagonist is dealing with it.

You want your readers to share the emotions of the protagonist. You want your readers to feel like they are the protagonist.  You want your readers to care about him/her.  Readers identify with emotions so make your character’s emotions known.

Whose story is this? Readers can focus/care about a single character better than a group.  Decide whose story this is.  He/she needs to be in every scene if you use first person POV, and in almost every scene if you use third person POV.  Keep your protagonist front and center starting in the first paragraph.

Readers need to orient themselves as to the time and place of the story. In the opening paragraphs, identify the setting.  You need not go into detail but make the reader comfortable.

Don’t belabor opening sentences. Just get going and you can go back later to refine the opening.

Expect your first draft to be imperfect. Expect that you will revise to polish everything from dialog to sentence structure to throwing out whole parts.

If you are handwriting, write on every other line of lined paper, leaving room to insert words in the spaces between the lines. Leave the backs of pages blank.  Learn to live with cross-outs, insertions, and a mess.  If you run out of room, use the back.  Write notes to yourself in the margins.  Rewrite a page only when you can no longer follow your arrows.

If you write on a computer, cut and save paragraphs, dialog, and anything else you might want when you revise.  Save this material at the bottom of your narrative in case you change your mind. Make back up copies on the cloud.  Send drafts to yourself as email attachments with the date so you have multiple backups.

Lastly, read your writing aloud, over and over.  Revise over and over.

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Posted in English Writing Instruction

Let students learn from other students’ writing

Posted on December 8, 2024 | Leave a comment

Students love to read what other students have written, especially if everyone is writing about the same thing and if everyone is the same age.  Students are immediately engaged, checking to see how their peers handle the same writing assignment as themselves.

For example, I have asked elementary students to read the textless picture book Flora and the Penguin by Molly Idle.  Then I have asked them to analyze the table below.  It contains student-written versions of parts of the Flora story.

Linda Marion Nancy
One day there was a girl On a cold winter day a girl Once upon a time Flora
There was a penguin who wanted to play with her. When a penguin poked its beak out of the water A penguin named Steve put his body in the water.
They started to dance while ice skating.  They did more and more ice skating until they were tired. They skated this way and that way. They skated and danced together.  They jumped and twirled.  They slid across the ice.
When the penguin saw a fish, he jumped in the water. The penguin smelled a school of fish. Steve poked his head in the water.  Flora said, “What are you doing?”  Steve disappeared.
When he came out he had a fish in his mouth.  Then the penguin gave it to her as a present. The penguin came back with a fish in her mouth.  Flora was outraged.  The penguin gave the fish to Flora. Steve got a fish.  He gave it to Flora as a present.  Flora thought the fish was disgusting.
She threw it back in the water. She threw it back in the water. So, she threw it back in the water.
Before she left, she put her [shoe]lace in the water and tried to get a fish.  So, she kept on pulling until she got a fish. Flora felt sorry for the penguin, so she took off one of the lacings on her skates.  She dipped it in the water so she could get a fish for the penguin.  The two of them pulled as hard as they could and out came a fish. She took her [shoe]lace out.  She put it in the water just like a fishing net.  A fish approached.  They both tugged and tugged and tugged and tugged on the lace.  They caught the fish.
The fish got eaten by the penguin. They started skating and they were happy. They started skating all over again.

Usually when  students analyze the writing of other students, they recognize when it is good.  They note that “This version has dialog” or “This version tells that it’s morning.”  Analyzing the writing in the table above, one second grader said he like the “tugged and tugged and tugged and tugged” part because it shows how hard it was to catch a fish.  Another said she liked “They skated and danced together.  They jumped and twirled.  They slid across the ice.” because it showed different kinds of play.

Students are surprised to see that some second graders write better than some fifth graders.  We discuss what the second graders do that the fifth graders don’t.  “More details.”  “Different ways to start sentences.”  “More interesting verbs.”

Help your students become better writers by exposing them to the writing of other students.  Encourage them to analyze why some writing is better than others.  Take a simple scene such as a girl and a penguin sliding across ice and ask students to describe it.  Then share responses and discuss what is good about them.

As they say, good writing is not rocket science.  Mostly it’s revising.

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Posted in action verbs, adding details, critical thinking, details in writing, English Writing Instruction, how to motivate child writers, revising first drafts, student writers as teachers, teaching writing

How to avoid overusing the verb “to be”

Posted on December 3, 2024 | Leave a comment

Eliminating the verb “to be” (is, are, was, were) from writing can improve your writing noticeably.  Yet eliminating “to be” verbs poses two problems.  First, easy-to-think of synonyms (seems, become) do not improve upon the weakness of “to be” verbs.  Second, students don’t want to take the time to think through strong alternatives.

Consider ways to help readers remember characters’ names.

Yet, strong alternatives exist.  Once students familiarize themselves with these alternatives, they will use them.

Alternative one:  Use an appositive.  Instead of writing, “Mario is my best friend.  He is on my soccer team,” write “Mario, my best friend, plays soccer on my team.”

Alternative two:  Keep the meaning but change the words and the sentence structure.  Instead of writing, “My sister was so disappointed when she didn’t get into Duke,” write “My sister moped around the house for days after she didn’t receive an acceptance from Duke.”

Alternative three:  Stick the idea in another sentence, and sometimes change the word order.  Instead of writing, “Olivia was overjoyed.  She was selected for the part of Annie in her school play,” write, “When Olivia learned she secured the role of Annie in her school play, she shrieked and danced through the house.”

To eliminate “to be” verbs as main verbs, students need to know the difference between main verbs and helping verbs.  Main verbs can usually be changed in the three ways mentioned above, but many helping verbs cannot be changed.  When writing the progressive verb tenses, forms of the verb “to be” need to be used as helping verbs, such as in “I am writing Grandma an email” or “The elephant had been trumpeting for her lost calf.”

When I tutor students, I ask them to write while I observe.  As questions arise, we discuss them.  Many times I see a sentence with the verb “to be” appear on a google doc only to be erased a moment later by my student and rewritten a different way, a better way—all without my saying a word.

My hope is that students apply the same thinking when I am not present.  One time a student of mine took an important writing exam.  I asked him if he did various things, and he replied, “Miss Kathy, I could hear your voice in my head.”  What a compliment!

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Posted in "to be", verb choice

Should you judge a book by its opening sentence?

Posted on November 25, 2024 | Leave a comment

Don’t judge a book by its cover, we’ve often heard.  But how about judging by its opening sentence? 

I’ve just looked at the opening sentences of dozens of classic children’s books from 1843 (The Ugly Duckling) to 1996 (the first Harry Potter book).  Some interesting facts emerge:

The briefest opening lines are six words, used in A Christmas Carol, by Charles Dickens (“Marley was dead, to begin with.”) and in Peter Pan by J. M. Barrie (“All children, except one, grow up.”)  Despite their brevity, I find both of these opening lines effective in piquing my curiosity.  Why was Marley dead, and so what?  What child didn’t grow up, and why?

The longest lines come from Treasure Island, 1883 (90 words).  Of the three other longest line opening sentences, two come from the 19th century—Alice in Wonderland, 57 words, and The Ugly Duckling, 56 words.  The other comes from J.D. Salinger’s 1951 classic The Catcher in the Rye, 63 words.  Of these four, only one’s opening sentence makes me curious, and that is because Salinger’s narrator’s attitude is so in-your-face that I want to find out why.

My take away?  Long isn’t necessarily better.

Other opening lines which captivated me include:

  • “Christmas won’t be Christmas without any presents,” grumbled Jo, lying on the rug. (Little Women)  Why won’t there be presents?  Who is Jo?  Who is she griping to?
  • Once upon a time, a little girl named Laura traveled in a covered wagon across the giant prairie. (Little House on the Prairie) Why was a child traveling across a prairie in a covered wagon?  Who did she travel with?  When?  This sound like an adventure.
  • “Where’s Papa going with that axe?” said Fern to her mother as they were setting the table for breakfast.” (Charlotte’s Web) Yes, where is the father going?  Why is he carrying an axe?  Is the family in danger?
  • When he was nearly thirteen, my brother Jem got his arm badly broken at the elbow. (To Kill a Mockingbird)  Why?  What happened?  A fight?  Sports?  Did he recover?
  • Mr. and Mrs. Dursley, of number four Privet Drive, were proud to say they were perfectly normal, thank you very much. (Harry Potter and the Sorcerer’s Stone)  This opening sentence is humorous.  Why were the couple proud to be normal?  “Thank you very much” sounds like someone is trying to say the Dursleys are not normal.  Why is the couple so defensive?

What surprises me after reading the opening sentences of dozens of classics of children’s lit is how few opening sentences grab me.  If you have studied writing, you know how important first lines are to attract readers.  Yet so many classics seem to make no effort to entice readers.

Does “We moved on the Tuesday before Labor Day” make you want to keep reading?  It is the first line of the classic, Are You There God?  It’s Me, Margaret.  The book is great, but the opening?  Eh.

Or how about “Once there were four children whose names were Peter, Susan, Edmond, and Lucy.”  This is the opening sentence of The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe. My response?  So what?

My take away:  Since some dull openings begin great books, keep reading not only a few more lines, but a few more pages.  Some books percolate slowly.

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Posted in opening sentences of books