My creative writing classes have poetry portfolios due in two weeks, so yesterday I talked to them about general principles in revision.  At first, most kids don't get the idea of revising poems.  After all, they think, there's no such thing as "good" poetry or "bad" poetry.  If you like it, it's good, and if you don't, it's not.  But, after a few weeks of looking at each others' work and me talking about effective public poetry, they're ready to talk about revision.

It turns out that many of the principles of revision for poetry are helpful when looking at fiction too. 

I gave them five suggestions:

Move from the abstract to concrete.  This means that instead of writing a poem where they tell the reader they are happy (an abstraction), they give the reader an image of happiness.  The goal is not for the reader to know what the poet was experiencing, but to actually experience something themselves.  The basic advice, then, is "show, don't tell."

Move from the general to the specific.  This means if you're trying to evoke a camping trip, it's more effective to talk about an individual tree than to say there is a forest, to evoke the image of an individual boulder rather than to say there is a mountain, to put the reader's hand into the water washing over a rock rather than to tell them there is a river.  I asked them what is one way to judge the excellence of a photograph, and they said, "focus."  And the way you judge focus is by how clearly the smallest details exhibit themselves.  Go small.

Revise familiar word choices into fresh ones.  This gets them thinking about cliches, dead metaphors and overused descriptions.  We talked about how when we talk we don't have much time to compose, so its only natural that we fall into familiar word choices, but when we write we have time to consider word choices.  The search is not just for the words that communicate, but for the just right words that make our expressions interesting.  This is where we talk about how its not what we say that matters (at least in some ways) but how we say it.

Eliminate as many linking verbs as possible.  It's a simple check list: am, is, are, was, were, be, being, been.  Every time they show up, they should be questioned.  Linking verb sentences are static descriptions.  They encourage generalities and abstractions.  Taking a line like "It was a nice day" and changing it into an active verb requires the writer to make choices.  "The breeze slipped from leaf to leaf" makes me conclude it's a nice day, and the writing is better for it.

Cut out unneeded words.  On the first day we talked about what makes a poem a poem.  Of the features they identified, they noticed that poems are concise.  No wasted words.  So, a final edit has to involve clearing the underbrush from the poem, crossing out and erasing wordiness.  This is where Ken Rand's 10% Solution guides the class.

Here's an exercise is eliminating wordiness.  Take this rough draft of a poem and revise it by crossing out the unneeded words:

The Road That Was not Taken

 
I saw two roads that diverged in a yellow wood,
And I was very sorry I could not travel on both
And be one traveler, very long I had stood
And had looked down one as far as I could
To where I saw it bent in the undergrowth.

Then I quickly took the other, which was as just as fair,
And had having perhaps the better claim,
Because it was very grassy and it wanted slightly more wear;
Though as due to the fact as for the passing there
Had really worn them really about the same,

 
And the both that morning equally lay down
In leaves that no one's step had trodden to black.
Oh, I kept the first road for another day
Yet I was knowing how way leads on to other way,
I had doubted if I should ever come back.

 
I shall be telling this story with a deep sigh
Somewhere ages and many ages hence:
I saw that two roads diverged in a wood, and I--
I had took the one that was less traveled by,
And that has really made all the difference.

(with apologies to) Robert Frost