Radical Revision

Similar to Unsettling Drafts, radical revision involves revision as rewriting. One way that writers revise is by writing an entirely new thing. Radical revision is helpful as a way of getting students to re-envision their writing. The writer’s struggle to find meaning often transcends point of view and genre.

This outline might be useful in getting students to rethink their writing.

Radical Revision Possibilities:

Change the point of view

• Be a different person, change characteristics
• Pick a different narrator
• Write the story as many times as you have characters, catching only what they
  see

Change the chronological order of events

• focus on the beginning, middle or end only
• 1234 becomes 3241

Give the piece a new ending or beginning

• you can practice this on someone else's writing

Change the tone or voice of the narrator

• make the timid shy kid, the bold brash hero
• change the voice of the 20 something heroine to be the voice of the emotional
  child within

Completely alter the genre

• poem to essay
• essay to newspaper article
• newspaper article to one-act play

Alter the focus (may be done while altering the genre)

• Write it to show something radically different than what it originally showed. Your essay about your father’s endearing eccentricity becomes the tale of his neglect.

From: Radical Revision: My Road from Fairy Tale to Catharsis By Juanita Willingham The Quarterly of the National Writing Project 2004 Vol. 28 No. 2