Revising Fiction - Sharon Oard Warner
Workshop Summary
The workshop, focused on large-scale revision of fiction as distinguished from editing and polishing, used two versions of a Raymond Carver story as the starting point for ways to re-imagine our stories. As preparation, we each wrote a quick draft of a story that included or focused on something we experience as a “small good thing.”
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“The Bath”
We began by discussing how we experienced “The Bath” (1981) as readers. We described it as a detached, sterile, impersonal, spare, ominous story of parents dealing with a random accident that leaves their child hanging between life and death on his birthday. This version of the story emphasizes the futility of our efforts to control anything in our lives and the isolation and inability of human beings to connect in times of great stress. The principal devices contributing to our understanding of the story were the narrative distance (great), the detached tone (few names or details about characters, and the minimal development of ancillary story elements (no driver to the car that hit the boy; no backstory hinted for the baker, for example).
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Writers’ Revision Strategies
Thinking about ourselves in the role of writer, we shared some revision strategies we us, or could use:
- Spread out the entire piece to get a sense of flow
- Physically cut and rearrange to experiment with organization
- Trace an image to check balance
- Ask questions or have someone else ask questions about the story (eg. “Why did Carver ignore the car and driver that caused the accident in the first version?”)
- Consider point of view and narrative distance
- Consider the beginning. Is this the best place to start the story? Does the beginning hold the end in it?
- Walk away and let it cool to gain objectivity.
- Without consulting the first draft, completely redraft a piece to see how it comes out.
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“A Small, Good Thing”
After this discussion, we traced the image of eating throughout the second Carver story, “A Small Good Thing” (1983). We were able to see how the type of eating and nourishment offered throughout the story changes and how Carver uses the breaking of bread with the baker as a redeeming gesture, reuniting the grieved parents (and the gruff baker) with humanity.
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Defining Large-Scale Revision
Sharon offered that large scale revision almost always involves one or more of the following major story elements:
- Structure (Carver extends the timeline in the second story)
- Point of view (Carver gets closer to his characters in the second version)
- Themes (In the second version, Carver offers hope rather than futility)
- Plot (Carver develops the character of the baker much more extensively in “A Small Good Thing” and he adds events—the boy’s death, the parents’ journey to the bakery)
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Writing Workshop
Overnight, each of us wrotea paragraph summary of our own piece and read Kathleen Westfall Shute’s article, “On ‘The Bath’ and ‘A Small Good Thing,’” for another critical comparison of the stories.
On Sunday we began by recalling the different versions of the story Evelina Zuni Lucero shared at the previous night’s reading. We noted that even though the setting and characters were different, the story of the seductive man with hooved feet was essentially the same.
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Re-imagining our Stories
In order to “get the story off the page” in a non-threatening way, we broke into two smaller groups and orally shared the summaries we had written. By sharing our stories orally, we broke free of the typed words on paper that look so “finished.” The experience was valuable and many of us saw some new aspect (character, conflict, point of view) that we could consider for our stories.
When debriefing our small group experiences, Sharon offered some other ways she tries to get her students to re-imagine the story:
- Talk about the character. Other students ask questions and the writer must make up an answer on the spot.
- Write three different scenarios (no more than one page), changing something different each time (plot, theme, structure, point of view, anything).
We had time to write one more summary that shifted one of the “big” issues (plot, structure, point of view ) and to share those, each of us finding out something new about our potential story. For example, by starting the story in a different place, we learned something new about our characters, or by changing the point of view we saw something new in the conflict.
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Strategies for Teaching
- Modeling and small group work are very important overarching strategies.
- To help students understand that every version is a draft
- Give credit for every draft
- Before students turn in the “finished” piece, have them mark it up in some way (eg. trace an image, highlight the most problematic scene)
- Have students highlight and annotate the changes they’ve made on their resubmitted revision
- Give credit for risk-taking during the process
- Allow the piece to cool to gain objectivity (Maybe draft a piece in August and revisit it in December)
- To “get the story off the page” and to help focus the piece
- Ask students to summarize their piece in a page or less.
- Have them write three more scenarios (one page or less), changing something significant each time (point of view, starting point, character, setting)
- Have students write one sentence that captures what the story is all about.
- Have students tell their story orally to a small group or partner, let the group ask questions.
- Have students talk about a character, allow others to ask questions. The writer must answer the questions on the spot while someone takes notes. (Does your character have a husband? What kind of toothpaste does she use?)
- Have students switch genres: rewrite a story as a play to focus on action; rewrite a story as a poem to focus on theme or image.
- Rewrite a scene from a different character’s perspective
- Prompt re-visioning with visuals and activities
- Ask students to work in some aspect of a work of art
- Have them draft different versions on different colored paper to reflect different approaches (pink = romantic mode, yellow = lively)
- Ask them to put their final version on a shape other than a square or rectangle
- Use partners to role-play scenarios
- Ask students to select background music or create a soundtrack
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