Revision: A Creative Approach to Writing and Rewriting Fiction

Using David Kaplan's technique for revising each sentence enabled me to edit my book for publishing. He explains how to look at each word and sentence for clarity and succinctness, eliminating repetitiveness and wordiness. Although I didn't read all the chapters, this one was worth the price of the entire book.

This book is better than its title. The premise is that writing is re-vision and revision. The distinction is more than just spelling. Much of this book discusses the process, and how you view your work from its early stages as the glimmer of an idea to looking at it again as finished draft ready for revisiting. He also demystifies the all-too-common result of having a first draft that bears little resemblance to your initial concept or early outline. In the early section of the book - the part I found most valuable - David Michael Kaplan offers a lot of advice for just getting that first draft *done*. He offers practical suggestions to help you keep going forward, rather than endlessly revising Chapter 2 and never finishing a complete draft. He offers several examples of his own work (in the interest of copyright, no doubt, as many authors do), but they're mostly limited to a few paragraphs at a time. This book is not about revising a novel per se, but rather about how the view of your work changes throughout the entire process and how to deal with that. The title was very misleading, though. I let this book sit on my shelf till I had finished a project. Now I wish I'd read it sooner.

Though I learned a lot of his lessons the hard way through experience and work, everything he has said makes sense and rings true. It's nice to see some of the things I've slowly been piecing together through experience put down concisely, and wonderful to know I am not alone in my revising difficulties. If you haven't forced yourself through multiple revisions of a story before, don't think it's necessary, or don't know where to start, I strongly recommend this book.

I've read a lot of creative writing books and this is the best so far. David Michael Kaplan is an excellent teacher. He explains things well with humour and clarity. Every point is illustrated with examples and comments from both himself and other writers. I especially liked the way he uses his own stories as examples so he can show us the subsequent drafts as the story grows towards completion. This method perfectly illustrates the points he makes and I have never seen it used so well before. If you have ideas for short stories but never seem to get round to writing them, or when you try - you end up disappointed with the results, this is the perfect book for you. As a bonus it also helps you find ideas for stories because in David Michael Kaplan's book the 'revising' starts even before the first draft. In short if you want to write fiction and you only buy one how-to book make it this one.

This book offers indepth suggestions on revision of fiction writing, including some forms of revision I would never have thought of personally. The over-all goal is seamless fiction writing and Kaplan has some concrete suggestions on how to achieve this. One of the most helpful books I have ever read on the subject.