Revision Minilesson 11/13/12

Posting today's lesson, buy popular demand:

AP Writer’s Workshop

Book Review Revision Checklist

We are not working on the rhetorical précis today, so if you wrote one, set it aside for now.

EXERCISE ONE -- PARAGRAPH STRENGTH
In black or blue ink, underline the topic sentence in every paragraph you wrote.
Check:  Is it a complete sentence?  Does it say something worthwhile?
Next, check every sentence in every paragraph.  Does every sentence illuminate the truth of that topic sentence in some way? (Go ahead.  Check.  We’ll wait.)

EXERCISE TWO -- SENTENCE STRENGTH
Looking for weak, passive sentences
With a yellow highlighter, mark every occurrence of the “to be” verbs, and the modals:

am	is	are	was	were
be	being	been		ought to
do	did	does	shall	should
have	has	had	will	would
may	might	must	can	could

Again, the "to-be's" are not inherently bad; we need them. But their overuse can signal a break down in thinking, passive sentence construction, and boring, repetitive writing. Re-crafting even a third of your sentences to eliminate the "be" verb, and replacing it with an active one will improve your prose style.

RED PENS NEXT:  Check for these sentence sappers

• Avoid most adverbs: basically, obviously, surely, certainly, very
• Look for clichés:  thinking outside of the box, a picture’s worth 1000 words, it is what it is
• Don’t you dare say the author paints a picture in the reader’s mind
• In fact, get rid of “the reader” right now:  draw a big red circle around “the reader," and vow to get rid of at least half of them (some of you have used "the reader" infrequently or not at all; some of you will have as many as 12).
• Hold your paper up and look at it from 3 feet away.  Squint your eyes.  Look for “I”. Reduce usage by 50%.
• NO HOMONYM ERRORS ALOUD ALLOWED.  Check for the usual suspects:  there/their/they’re; its/it’s; your/you’re

CHECK FOR UNINTENTIONAL HYPERBOLE AND ABSOLUTES

• a million times more
• 99.9% of the time
• every, always, all, never
• And please, stop complimenting the writer.  Don’t say she’s amazing.  Don’t say she did a great job, or he does an extremely well job.  Don’t say he’s extremely dedicated.   Don’t even say he’s proficient.  Also, she’s not “the author of your book.”  She’s not.

GET RID OF THE STUFF FLETCHER HATES, including the little qualifiers that chip away at your veracity:

• In today’s society
• What the author is trying to say

• Nowadays
• I think, it seems to me, in my opinion, maybe, perhaps, seems to me

IN FACT, AS A CLASS, LET’S JUST ADOPT GEORGE ORWELL’S SIX RULES.  MEMORIZE THESE:

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word when a short word will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, cut it out.
4. Never use the passive when you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday English equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than saying anything outright barbarous.

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I found many terrible sentences lurking in the stack I brought home; here’s one now.  Take a moment to gawk slack-jawed at the many problems piled on top of one another like a 6-car collision on the 710 freeway.

Although the information was presented in a manner sometimes too straightforward, it was made up due to the various information Bixby includes and eludes readers to question trust as Franklin tried to plead innocence through his memoir.

No one reading that sentence is going to be happy.  We intuit that the writer is suggesting that there’s a pleasing balance between the writer’s terse tone and the many details that are included about...something or other.  Various information? trust? innocence?  Not really sure.  

It is our responsibility as writers to make our thoughts intelligible and clear.  

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NOW THAT WE’VE COME THIS FAR TOGETHER...a few pointers about English usage:

• number/amount • well/good
• fewer/less • all ready/already
• effect/affect • allude/elude

✩FINALLY:  Grab your reader by the throat with the very first line.  Take your time writing this very important sentence, and make it count.  It should be impossible for any thinking, curious person to stop reading.  Write an opening sentence that is tight, and clean, and smart.  Refer back to Orwell rules #2 and #3.