Unless you’re a rare genius or a sloppy typist who publishes your latest novel on Amazon the weekend after you finish writing it, you will spend a dear portion of your creative life engaged in the art of revision. But the act of “revising” your work can mean many different tasks and each requires a different skill. What are they and how do you know when to apply them? In a post on Writers Unboxed, Barbara Linn Probst defines the different kinds of revisions you might make and
Probst divides the revision effort into three buckets: reworking, refining, and revisioning.
“Reworking is about the mechanics of how you tell the story,” she explains. “It addresses storytelling elements like point-of-view, scene breaks, pacing, flashback, emotional turning points, dialogue, and the use of interiority.” You might rework a scene to alter the pace or smooth a transition, for example.
Refining is about language, ensuring that your word choices are clear and precise, or lyrical and flowing. This is also when you check your grammar and redline cliched phrasing. This is nitty-gritty editing.
“Revisioning is a shift in your understanding of what the story is about,” Probst writes. “That shift can happen at any point in the process—a buried theme that takes on a surprising importance, a new twist that changes or elevates or expands the message you want to convey.” A change in your vision may – or must – require massive changes in tone, plot, or characterization.
Finally, Probst notes that the three levels work in tandem, and not in any special order. You might work on all three levels at once, or editing in one level might require a change in another. However, they are still discrete tasks. You can work on them at the same time, but you’ll still need to complete all three. Your careful language editing won’t eliminate the need to make major changes based on a re-visioning of your idea.
