- Hey, welcome back. You got here just in time to hear the big secret. The key to great writing is great revision. 

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- As you no doubt remember from our video on the writing process, revision is an important part of any writing project. In fact, in many writing classes, it's often required. But revision is not just about doing extra work or turning the same paper in twice. So even if it's not for a grade, revisions should still be a part of your writing process. 

To put it in perspective, I had a poetry teacher once who said that there were probably a handful of students in class who had enough raw talent to write a better first draft than he could write. However, and I may be paraphrasing, he went on to say that he could revise circles around any one of us. That teacher understood that a draft was only the first step in a longer writing process. He knew that his first draft was never going to be the best possible version of that poem, and he wanted us to understand that revision was always going to be worth the extra effort, and it makes sense. 

If you've ever learned to play a song on a musical instrument, your first attempt at playing that song probably wasn't your best attempt. Similarly, your first experience baking a cake probably did not produce the best cake you've ever made. And of course, you're surely better at riding a bicycle or shooting free throws now than you ever were. The point is that everything gets better with practice. So obviously, your first attempt at writing a particular paper or poem is never going to be your best attempt at it. Even if you go in with a really good outline, there are still some things that you're just going to have to figure out in the process of writing. 

But with writing, the practice that goes into making a paper isn't as visible or as audible as the practice that goes into learning to play a song on a musical instrument or learning how to perform a dance. Actually, that's one of the things that I love about writing. I can get all my mistakes and wrong turns straightened out before anybody else has to see them. In other words, revision is just practice. It's a way of refining your skills as you write a particular piece in order to write it to the best of your ability. But unlike baking, it's never too late to make changes to your paper. 

So today, I'm going to share four principles that will help to guide you in your revision process. If you're interested in learning more on your quest to becoming a better writer, click that Subscribe button. And of course, if you already have clicked that button, you have my appreciation. Now, let's talk about revision. 

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Whenever you write, you write with a purpose. In other words, whenever you write, you're trying to accomplish something with your writing. If you're writing a persuasive argument, you're obviously trying to persuade someone. If you're writing a poem, you may be trying to highlight the beauty of a quiet moment, listening to meadowlarks beside the reservoir. Or if you're writing a set of instructions, your objective is to help somebody complete a task in an effective and efficient way. In any of those cases, the thing that you're writing is a tool to help you to accomplish something in the real world. And that thing that you're trying to accomplish needs to be front and center in your mind and in your writing. 

You wouldn't want a persuasive argument to spend some time just talking about how interesting meadowlarks are. And of course, you wouldn't want a set of instructions for building a desk that spends a lot of time giving a negative review of the competitor's product. Those tangents might be interesting, but they don't contribute to the paper's overall purpose. If someone has already purchased your desk kit, they want to know how to put that desk together. They don't need to know why they shouldn't buy the competitor's product. You might have good things to say about why the competition's product is inferior, but assembly instructions are not the place to make that case. 

Every so often, I'll see a paper with a paragraph that's pretty interesting but doesn't do a lot to move the purpose of that paper forward. Now, I suspect that the writer of that paper had that interesting fact in one of the sources that took them a long time to find and read, so they felt compelled to include it in their paper, even if it didn't really contribute to their argument. But don't do that. You wouldn't want to go to a concert just to watch tapes of the band's rehearsals, and your reader doesn't want to see everything that you've learned in the process of your research. Instead, they want to read your argument. 

So it's OK not to include everything in your paper. All of that stuff was helpful for you, but it's not necessarily helping your paper to move its purpose forward. And if it's not directly helping you to accomplish your purpose, it really doesn't belong in your writing. Extra stuff, even if it's interesting stuff, can ultimately do more harm than good. So stay focused on your purpose, and let that guide your revision process. 

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If vision refers to seeing, revision could refer to reseeing or seeing your paper in a new way. More particularly, it's important to be able to see your writing through the eyes of a reader because, in the end, it's the reader who's going to decide whether your writing is great or garbage. And of course, you know that. How many times have you skipped a boring paragraph, shared a great quote with a friend, or tossed an unfinished book to the side because you hated it? 

Now, how many times have you thought about all of the time and effort that the writer put into that piece of writing and then returned to read it anyway? If you have read a terrible book purely out of sympathy for the author, then you're a better person than most. The common reality is that readers don't value writing in the same way that writers do. They only see the piece of writing, not the time and effort that went into producing it. And beyond that, reading is a very different experience from writing. So if you're going to write something that people are going to want to read, you're going to have to think about what it will be like to read your piece of writing once it's finished. 

Now, there are a couple of ways to get a reader's perspective on your work. Of course, the first and most obvious way is to ask somebody to read your paper in progress and tell you what they think. This happens pretty regularly in most writing classes, but it's also possible to ask for input when you're not in a formal class setting. 

Of course, when you're actually asking another person for their feedback, you're getting a genuine reader's perspective on your writing. And that's really valuable information, so you should take it seriously. You see, you won't be able to explain things to your readers later on. So if something confuses your test reader, you should really think about reworking it, even if it makes sense to you, because, ultimately, it's not about what makes sense to you. It's about what makes sense to your readers. 

Now, giving and receiving feedback could be a video all on its own. But for now, just be sure to receive that feedback that you get with gratitude. Don't be defensive or combative or disregard all the feedback that you received just because it cancels out a lot of work that you've already done. If you really want your writing to work for readers, you should pay attention to what real readers are telling you. 

But with that little soapbox out of the way, you don't have to have access to real-life people to get a new perspective on your writing. In fact, one great strategy for seeing your writing with new eyes is just to set it aside for a while and do something else. If you can set your writing aside for a few days or even weeks, you'll definitely come back to it with a new perspective. You'll be better able to see issues in your writing, and you'll have a better sense of how to improve it. Setting your writing aside gives you distance, distance from the thoughts and emotions that went into writing it and distance from your attachment to the words on the page. 

When you have that distance, you're approaching your writing a little bit less like a writer and a little bit more like a reader. And that will go a long way in helping you to make some more meaningful revisions. So however you do it, be sure to think of your writing from a reader's perspective while you revise so that you can serve up a piece of writing that better meets your reader's needs. 

Think of it this way. If you were at a restaurant, you probably wouldn't want to taste all of the failed recipes before getting the dish that you ordered, and you probably wouldn't want the chef to say that you didn't know what you were talking about if you said you didn't like it. In the same way that you're entitled to food that tastes good, your readers are entitled to texts that they want to read. 

A piece of writing is only as good as its worst part, so you're not doing yourself any favors by holding on to a bad sentence or paragraph or stanza. When it comes to revision, be aggressive. Now is the time to deal with all that garbage so that your readers won't have to. Often, revision requires aggressive cuts. In fact, when I'm really taking revision seriously, my writing often gets cut in half, usually because there are paragraphs that don't really contribute to the overall purpose and because I manage to find ways to say the same things with fewer words. 

This can be harrowing advice in a world of minimum page counts. Who wants to cut a page worth of bad writing when you're barely meeting the required length? But you have to remember that a page worth of unhelpful junk is not going to make your paper any better. And of course, it may even hurt your grade more than turning in a paper that's too short. Like we've said already, revision is really about providing your readers with the best experience possible. Leaving in weak writing because it's too painful for you to hit the Delete key is not going to win your readers over. 

I mean, just imagine if an Olympic figure skater interrupted their routine with a bunch of videos of all the times that they fell down during practice. Obviously that would not get them the gold medal, so don't make your readers sit through your rehearsals. Instead, give them the show that they are coming to see. So start by finding the strongest parts of your writing, those parts that are clear, engaging, and brilliant, the parts that contribute to your overall purpose. These are the parts that you know you're going to keep. Then look at the rest. 

If you write brilliantly in one part of your paper, your readers are probably going to wonder why you didn't write brilliantly for the whole paper. In order to avoid that issue, you have a couple of options. If the weaker parts are doing their job but just not doing it very well, then you can rework them to bring them up to the level of the best parts of your paper. If you have real readers who will give you good feedback, you can ask them to help you to understand why the good parts of your writing are good, and that will give you some guidance in reworking those weaker sections. 

If those weaker parts aren't really doing much to move your paper forward, and it doesn't seem like they ever could, then your paper is just better off without them. Highlight that junk and delete it without a second thought. Do not hesitate. Show no mercy. Just delete it. When all of that writing turns into white space, it might feel like it was all a waste, but of course, it wasn't. It was practice. It was rehearsal for the paper that you're actually writing. Don't make your readers sit through your rehearsals. Do them and your paper a favor by revising aggressively. 

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Of course, there's always more to improve. Your paper could always be better, but at some point, it's going to be good enough. The goal of revision is not perfection. The goal of revision is to put a high-quality piece of writing in front of your readers. Like the old saying goes, done is better than perfect. And I suppose that's especially true when we're talking about writing assignments. At some point, you're going to have to turn in or publish something, and that's never going to happen if you get stuck in an endless loop of revising for perfection. 

In fact, it's possible to be so driven by revision perfectionism that you ruin a piece of writing by sucking the life right out of it. So it's important to know when to stop. Unfortunately, there's not a one size fits all rule for finding that stopping point. But if you go back to your purpose for writing, it can be a pretty good guide. Whatever you're writing, the goal is ultimately to get your readers on the same page, to help them to think and feel about your topic in the same way that you do. And you don't have to write a perfect paper to accomplish that. A good one will be plenty. 

The goal of revision is to write a piece that gets the job done, and that means finding and removing all of the pieces that are getting in the way of doing that job and then reinforcing all of the parts that are pulling their weight. And once you've done that, perfect writing or not, it's probably time to move on. 

So as you can see, revision is a hugely important part of the writing process. It's the practice. It's the rehearsal, the opportunity to refine your writing into its best possible self. A lot of the time, people work with the idea that revision is just proofreading, but it goes a whole lot deeper than that. Revision isn't about commas and spelling. It's about the structure and function of your writing. In other words, revision is less like redecorating a house and more like remodeling-- tearing down walls, putting in stairs, adding an extra bedroom, and expanding the garage. It's significant work, but it results in a better house, not just a prettier one. 

In the end, revision is probably what experienced writers spend the most time doing. And even if they don't know it, it's probably what your readers will most appreciate. And I suppose this is where we'll stop for today. If you have any questions about revision or about anything related to writing, let us know in the comments so that we can address them in a future video. Give us like if you learned something. And share this video with a friend who could use a fresh perspective on their writing. Thanks for watching, and may all your grand revisions come true. 

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