Like most things, revision carries with it both bad and good news. The bad news is that it does indeed take years of practice to develop an intuition about where to take a piece of writing that isn’t working. The good news is that most revision is methodical.Professional writers consistently apply proven strategies to hammer and reshape nonfiction until it becomes something that educates and excites readers. These steps are not only definable, they are teachable.
That’s why we’ve written this book—to demystify the revision process and provide simple strategies you can readily teach your students. Think of these strategies as a Rosetta Stone of nonfiction revision. Students may not master every strategy on the first try, but they will make huge strides toward understanding the revision process. Given practice, they will write words you will actually look forward to reading.
We have organized this book into seven sections. “Part I: Setting the Stage” comprises seven short chapters that examine the nature of revision, foundational beliefs about teaching it, and early steps your students can take to promote effective revision later. These chapters, written in response to common questions from teachers, provide a critical context for the instructional strategies that follow.
Parts II through VI contain nuts-and-bolts teaching strategies designed to strengthen students’ nonfiction revision skills. These strategies proceed from “big” to “small,” and follow specific approaches many professional writers use to revise their work. We first tackle whole-manuscript issues such as content, organization, and the writer’s vision. After that, we gradually work our way down through scenes, paragraphs, sentences, and words.
Part VII concludes by offering final revision suggestions along with firsthand perspective about the entire revision process.
You can read strategies to yourself—or share them aloud with your students. In many instances, chapters may spark important and useful classroom discussions. The strategies in these chapters are pulled directly from Sneed’s extensive experiences writing and revising nonfiction—so when you see the word “I” in the main text, that is Sneed talking!
Following each strategy, Vicki has added two or more special features to help you teach and communicate that strategy to your students. Vicki has pulled these suggestions and exercises from her years of experience as a teacher, author, writing coach, writing workshop facilitator, and journalist. The “I” in these features is Vicki.
We want you to be able to travel through this book quickly, so we’ve kept each strategy as short as possible. Still, some revision concepts demand more attention than others, so we’ve allocated our word count accordingly.
Although our approach and exercises primarily target grades 4–8, teachers of both younger and older students can readily adapt lessons to fit their classroom needs. Whether you are a regular classroom teacher, a literacy specialist, or a writer yourself, this is your book, and we know you’ll figure out the best way to use it. So have fun—and get ready to launch!
