Revising: Principles of Revision

1. Rewriting helps you get to the point.

A writer who gets to the point does not need little throat-clearing words which ask permission to write or which give out obvious information. Knowing that you must get to the point helps you cut out little words, but the reverse is also true. Cutting can clear the way for a thesis, a question, a problem, or an observation.

2. Rewriting substitutes one word for many words.

Thus "react strongly" becomes "object." "The trains running on time" becomes "train schedules" which becomes "schedules," tucked neatly into parentheses. For the "doubling" of "through little things, not through big dramatic gestures, through trivia, not through melodrama," the writer chooses the second, pithier phrase.

3. Rewriting gets you in deeper. 

Thus the writer on Dracula forgoes the empty, easy gesture of the first sentence--which anyone might know--for a more profound recognition. He eases up on editorializing and clichés ("calm, cool, and collected"). By the third draft, he is telling us that the book takes us somewhere too, and he is trying to tell us where. In seeing how Stoker's purpose works, and not just saying what it is, the writer gives himself a purpose. A paper with such a purpose may take more trouble to write, but it will be more rewarding, more energetic, and more profound.

   Planning for Rewrites
   Hit-List of Problems in First Drafts
   Principles of Revision