This semester course is for senior Creative Writing students interested in studying the art of poetry and writing original poetry. An open mind and supportive attitude will be essential as we workshop each other’s poems. We will be exploring several approaches to the art of writing poetry through a variety of different exercises to generate poems in open and closed forms.
Friday, May 11, 2018
Revision
AGENDA:
Handout: Creative Exercises: Revising and Building
Please post a comment by the end of class about what revision exercises you tried.
Continue to work on short stories for portfolio and workshop.
I continuously struggle with dialogue and point of view. These are the two areas I do the most revising in. Changing the point of view in a second draft, cutting out chunks of redundancies in dialogue and finding new ways to convey the information more artistically are often the strategies I use. With the short story I'm working on based on my POV exercise, I'm experimenting with dialogue. Also, the POV exercise allowed me to see which pronouns fit the story best.
I revised a section of my story about a man's fascination with his neighbor using the tone exercise. I used synonyms that sound slightly more obsessed "I peered out the window" instead of "I glanced out the window" these subtle changes make it seem like he is intently looking for his neighbor, not that he happens to see her every once in a while. This makes the reader wonder what the connection between the two is, the changes have made it seem it is less of a familial love and more of a sexual desire he has for his neighbor.
I'm currently revising my POV exercise into a proper story, and have been using the various revision techniques to really make it work. Techniques such as keeping an eye on an ongoing conflict for the main character, while at the same time noting the language I use and trying to really strengthen the overall performance of each paragraph, trying to make one detailed description for each one. Here's to hoping it works.
I worked on revising my adverb usage and only keeping those words that I felt were truly necessary. I have a tendency to overwrite, and sometimes the adverbs just get jumbled and do not add anything to the sentence or the story. Also, if the adverb was necessary, I thought about other ways I could structure it, using a different description or other phrases that mean the same thing but sound less awkward.
I am working on the Structure Exercise for the short story I wrote about a little girl with disillusionment about motherhood. While I feel like I had a strong, developed beginning and middle, my end was lackluster and it came too soon. Like the prompt says, I need a clearer reason for the tension/conflict and how this can be resolved. The original draft has a sudden and sharp shift from the mother dealing with depression to doing something serious without a clear development as to why she'd do this.
For my revision, I worked on my poem entitled Crosman Terrace that I read during coffeehouse. I altered many of the lines and the stanza structure in general to create a better meessage and a more accurate representation of the events I am describing. I wanted to work to develop a more nostalgic tone within the poem, which is how I actually feel about that situation. Overall, the revision is more accurate towards my own emotions and creates a tone that clearly displays the importance of that time in my life.
For my revision, I worked on a poem entitled "Dad" which is one of the pieces I read at the coffee house. I remember you telling me it was cliche at some parts and could have a stronger ending so I worked on fixing some of those problem areas as well as adding onto it.
I Focused on the point of view exercise for my revision.i am working on changing my first person and creating a second person narrator. I realized how much imagery can be visualized when the second person narration is used. Before the revision I didn't focus on the environment as much,but once I changed the Point of view it was more collaborative with the character.
For this exercise I revised a poem called House of the Rising Sun. This poem is a God Poem about how short life is and personifies different people who have died. This period, I modified some of the details, developing them a little more heavily, and making the characterization a little more advanced, while also focusing on creating more of a rhythm. In order to do this I organized the stanzas in a more consistent pattern, and focused on a clear theme.
Telling verses showing has always been problematic in my writing as I explain what's happening instead of letting the readers and audience figure out the details and underground notions of the characters. For this I revised a portion of my perspective story called ''Crawl Space.'' Also, after work shopping it,I also decided to make the tone a lot more consistent rather than over the place, due to the showing not telling aspect of it so these two exercises with describing the emotions of a character and choosing a new desired tone for the story helped.
I will be revising my short story exhale by changing the perspective of first person to third person limited in order to create more of a dynamic and impactful connection with the main character and his struggles
I revised my John Ashbery poem "Flittering Ideas" that I wrote in the first few weeks of school. This was a poem about writing, and I wanted to express the feeling of finding a perfect word, or how ideas feel when you have so many of them and need to write. However, my original poem was long winded and repetitive, so I revised it by taking the handout's advice and cutting my words in half to make it more concise, which I believe helped a lot.
Tenses have always been my problem, so last year for the points project I wrote a 30 page short story and I have continuously gone back to it, editing it and watching the tenses to see if they change. I am also planning on expanding this story, so editing it bit by bit has helped.
I continuously struggle with dialogue and point of view. These are the two areas I do the most revising in. Changing the point of view in a second draft, cutting out chunks of redundancies in dialogue and finding new ways to convey the information more artistically are often the strategies I use. With the short story I'm working on based on my POV exercise, I'm experimenting with dialogue. Also, the POV exercise allowed me to see which pronouns fit the story best.
ReplyDeleteI revised a section of my story about a man's fascination with his neighbor using the tone exercise. I used synonyms that sound slightly more obsessed "I peered out the window" instead of "I glanced out the window" these subtle changes make it seem like he is intently looking for his neighbor, not that he happens to see her every once in a while. This makes the reader wonder what the connection between the two is, the changes have made it seem it is less of a familial love and more of a sexual desire he has for his neighbor.
ReplyDeleteI'm currently revising my POV exercise into a proper story, and have been using the various revision techniques to really make it work. Techniques such as keeping an eye on an ongoing conflict for the main character, while at the same time noting the language I use and trying to really strengthen the overall performance of each paragraph, trying to make one detailed description for each one. Here's to hoping it works.
ReplyDeleteI worked on revising my adverb usage and only keeping those words that I felt were truly necessary. I have a tendency to overwrite, and sometimes the adverbs just get jumbled and do not add anything to the sentence or the story. Also, if the adverb was necessary, I thought about other ways I could structure it, using a different description or other phrases that mean the same thing but sound less awkward.
ReplyDeleteI revised the middle/ending of my story "in color" trying to show more instead of tell more.
ReplyDeleteI am working on the Structure Exercise for the short story I wrote about a little girl with disillusionment about motherhood. While I feel like I had a strong, developed beginning and middle, my end was lackluster and it came too soon. Like the prompt says, I need a clearer reason for the tension/conflict and how this can be resolved. The original draft has a sudden and sharp shift from the mother dealing with depression to doing something serious without a clear development as to why she'd do this.
ReplyDeleteFor my revision, I worked on my poem entitled Crosman Terrace that I read during coffeehouse. I altered many of the lines and the stanza structure in general to create a better meessage and a more accurate representation of the events I am describing. I wanted to work to develop a more nostalgic tone within the poem, which is how I actually feel about that situation. Overall, the revision is more accurate towards my own emotions and creates a tone that clearly displays the importance of that time in my life.
ReplyDeleteFor my revision, I worked on a poem entitled "Dad" which is one of the pieces I read at the coffee house. I remember you telling me it was cliche at some parts and could have a stronger ending so I worked on fixing some of those problem areas as well as adding onto it.
ReplyDeleteI Focused on the point of view exercise for my revision.i am working on changing my first person and creating a second person narrator. I realized how much imagery can be visualized when the second person narration is used. Before the revision I didn't focus on the environment as much,but once I changed the Point of view it was more collaborative with the character.
ReplyDeleteI'm revising my point of view exercise into a full story.
ReplyDeleteFor this exercise I revised a poem called House of the Rising Sun. This poem is a God Poem about how short life is and personifies different people who have died. This period, I modified some of the details, developing them a little more heavily, and making the characterization a little more advanced, while also focusing on creating more of a rhythm. In order to do this I organized the stanzas in a more consistent pattern, and focused on a clear theme.
ReplyDeleteTelling verses showing has always been problematic in my writing as I explain what's happening instead of letting the readers and audience figure out the details and underground notions of the characters. For this I revised a portion of my perspective story called ''Crawl Space.'' Also, after work shopping it,I also decided to make the tone a lot more consistent rather than over the place, due to the showing not telling aspect of it so these two exercises with describing the emotions of a character and choosing a new desired tone for the story helped.
ReplyDeleteI will be revising my short story exhale by changing the perspective of first person to third person limited in order to create more of a dynamic and impactful connection with the main character and his struggles
ReplyDeleteI revised my John Ashbery poem "Flittering Ideas" that I wrote in the first few weeks of school. This was a poem about writing, and I wanted to express the feeling of finding a perfect word, or how ideas feel when you have so many of them and need to write. However, my original poem was long winded and repetitive, so I revised it by taking the handout's advice and cutting my words in half to make it more concise, which I believe helped a lot.
ReplyDeleteTenses have always been my problem, so last year for the points project I wrote a 30 page short story and I have continuously gone back to it, editing it and watching the tenses to see if they change. I am also planning on expanding this story, so editing it bit by bit has helped.
ReplyDelete