ENG 223

Greg Martin

Revision Craft Exercise:  (adapted from Bill Roorbach’s WRITING LIFE STORIES)

Note:  You'll be doing this exercise for each of your essay drafts.

Cracking Open a Scene: 

Too often in our initial drafts, we summarize or skim over or rush past a possible scene.  Choose a moment that seems to beg to be expanded, that seems significant and pregnant with possibility, from a draft already in progress and expand it into a larger scene:  telescope in, slow down, use as many of the ideas and techniques that you know to make the scene as vivid as possible: 

·        Conflict

·        Dialogue

·        Siginificant Action

·        Reflection (Sense-making)

·        Active Verbs

·        Figurative Language

·        movement from circumstantial or sequential summary into the scene

·        Description & Significant Detail (engage the senses)

Length:  No less than two double-spaced pages, no more than three double-spaced pages.

Make two copies of your exercise.  One to give to me, one to share with another person in class.