REVISER’S TOOLBOX

BARRY LANE

KIM KEGLOVITZ

Concepts of Craft To Aid Revision

LEADS (the magic flashlight)DETAIL (the binoculars)SNAPSHOT (physical detail)THOUGHTSHOT (thoughts)EXPLODING MOMENTS (slow-mo)

The Lead

Leads are showing the

Magic writer what

Flashlights to put in and

that shine what to leave

down out.

through a

story

Leads to Remember

I was six years old when my mother taught me the art of invisible strength. Amy Tan

Every so often that dead dog dreams me up again. Stephanie Vaugn

When I was ten years old I couldn’t sleep, because the moment I closed my eyes the ponoes would get me. Peter Meinke

Leads to Remember

My husband gave me a broom one Christmas. This wasn’t right. No one can tell me he acted kindly.

• Grace Paley

You are not the kind of guy who would be at a place like this at this time of the morning. Bright Lights Big City

• J. McInerney

Leads to Remember

If you really want to hear about it, the first thing you’ll probably want to know is where I was born, and what my lousy childhood was like, and how my parents were occupied and all before they had me, and all that David Copperfield kind of crap, but I don’t feel like going into it, if you want to know the truth.

Catcher in the Rye J.D. Salinger

Leads to Remember

I stand here ironing and what you asked me moves tormented back and forth with the iron.

• I Stand Here Ironing Tillie Olson

During these last few decades the interest in professional fasting has been markedly diminished.

• The Hunger Artist Franz Kafka

Leads to Remember

Four score and seven years ago our fathers brought forth on this continent, a new nation conceived in Liberty and dedicated to the proposition that all men are created equal.

• The Gettysburg Address Abraham Lincoln

Five score years ago, a great American, in whose symbolic shadow we stand, signed the Emancipation Proclamation.”

• I Have a Dream Martin Luther King

Leads to Remember

“You must not tell anyone,” my mother said, “what I am about to tell you.”

– “No Name Woman” Maxine Hong Kingston

“My first lesson in how to live as a Negro came when I was quite small.” R.Wright

“I was an ungrateful little boy.” Isaac Babel

“Call me Ishmael.” Herman Melville

The Big Potato Lead

Jump into the middle of your story and give the reader a taste of your action.

His boot felt empty without the knife in it.”

As a boy, I never knew where my mother was from—where she was born, who her parents were.

– Over Sea, Under Stone Susan Cooper

Talking Lead

Begin with a line or two of dialogue.“Dude check that one out!” yelled Mark.

“Betcha’ I can ride the next one,” I cut in, looking at the waves. The accident is like a distant memory but not forgotten. It started good [sic] and ended with an excellent bonding experience.”

A Snapshot Lead

Create a picture in the reader’s mind; use 5 senses Abraham Lincoln wasn’t the sort of man who

could lose himself in a crowd. After all, he stood 6 foot 4 inches tall and to top it off he wore a high silk hat. His height was mostly in his long bony legs and when he sat in a chair he seemed no taller than anyone else. It was only when he stood up that he towered above other men.

• Lincoln: a photobiography by Russel Freedman

The Binoculars

Think of a pair of binoculars. You look through them at first and they are blurry.

Here’s a blurry sentence, “I walked into the McDonalds and there were people everywhere.” You’ve been there before. All McDonalds are the same, right? Wrong. Now take our your binoculars and turn the little knob. You turn the knob by asking questions. Questions that focus your own binoculars on all your senses. Here, I’ll show you…

The Binoculars

What did they look like? (eyes) What were they wearing? (eyes) What were they doing? (eyes, ears) What did it smell like? (nose) What was the air like? (touch) What was in your mouth? (taste)

Imagine your binoculars focusing. Then, write your way past the blurry room and see, smell, hear, taste, the details.

The Binoculars The workmen leaned on the stainless steel counters,

bellies bursting out of stained tee shirts. An old man in the corner held an aluminum cane in one hand and a rolled up newspaper in the other. He swatted at the flies as the workers scurried behind the counters, stuffing bags with greasy burgers, rushing to the beeping fryolators to scoop the golden greasy potato sticks, slinging steaming robot food into cardboard trays and paper bags. The smell of sizzling fat hung in the air and I could taste, swallow and digest that hamburger before the young girl could say, “Have a nice day.”

Look what happens when a 1st grader starts using the binoculars.

My Pig by Jessie BEFORE– I made a pink pig. His name is Ham Yoko. He

rolls in the mud. One day he a a lot of food. He rolled down the hill. He couldn’t wald so he didn’t try to get up. The next morning I got up to feed my pig. I didn’t see him. Then I went to look for him. I couldn’t find him so I went home. When I got home, there he was, and he never ate a lot of food again.

Using the Binoculars to Shrink Time

One way to use your binoculars is to shrink a period of time into a paragraph or two. The most famous shrunken period of time in literature begins Charles Dickens novel, A Tale of Two Cities. Read it and see if you can write the next paragraph giving specific examples to breathe life into Dickens’ sweeping generalizations. Have fun following the same sentence patterns. For example…..

Using Binoculars to Shrink Time

It was a time when you always could get a parking space, it was a time when your car would never start, it was a time when toll booth attendants always smiled, it was a time when large appliances rained down from overpasses.

Binoculars on Prompted Tests

A first grade teacher handed me the following responses by her students to a prompted test. The directions were to imagine you planted a magic bean in the garden. Remember to include a beginning, middle, and an end and tell your story in the order it happened. Simple. Simple and boring.

Binoculars on Prompted Tests

As you read the following responses, notice how the kids who excel the most tend to ignore the directions and just write and write where the binoculars lead them. It is their sense of audience and story which guide them. Real organization grows out of having something to say.

Snapshots…Thoughtshots Show don’t tell. Maybe you’ve heard this good advice

from your teacher. Writing gets better the more we can zoom in on specific concrete details to make powerful feelings come alive. “Don’t write about humanity, write about a man,” E.B. White said. “Don’t write about how bad your day was at school. Describe the inky pen stain on your pants, the scab forming on your grass-stained knee, the smashed peanut butter sandwich which was supposed to be your lunch, the crumpled chemistry test in your back pocket.” Strong writing blooms with physical detail, but it’s not always that simple.

Snapshots….Thoughtshots

There is also a time in writing to tell don’t show, to go inside with thoughts of how you feel, what you’re thinking, dreaming, imagining, a time to write thoughtshots, reflections, ideas. All writing moves from thoughts to physical detail and back again, sometimes in the same sentence, but sometimes writers get stuck in one place or another.

Snapshots and Thoughtshots

Have you ever written a story and felt you were stuck in events as they happen (then this happened and then this happened)? Maybe this the kind o f story that might benefit from a few added thoughtshots. Maybe this a time to Tell don’t show. “It was not the worst day of school I’d ever had, but it ranked right up there.”

Snapshots and Thoughtshots

Snapshots and thoughtshots are simple tools to help shift gears as a writer. The point is not to write perfect snapshots or thoughtshots but to hear the difference and see holes in your writing to insert these types of details.

Time as a Writer

When you write, your whole life is a stretch of mountains and you choose where you want to hang out. You can write one sentence and describe twenty years of your life.

Time as a Writer

You could write three pages about one tiny moment that only lasts a minute. This is the kind of moment you’d make in slow motion if you were making a movie. This is the big moment, the moment too important to just let slip by with a sentence or two. You need to make the reader feel what your character feels. You need to pull the reader in.

Thinking Leads

Begin with a thought inside a character’s mind.

“Last day at the beach, if I don’t do it now, I never will,” I thought to myself as I paddled to meet my destiny. The accident is like a distant memory but not forgotten. It started good [sic] and ended with an excellent bonding experience.”

Surprise Leads

Set up expectations, then surprise the reader. I was good at surfing. Nothing could touch

me, not anyone, not anything. I was immortal and untouchable by wipe outs. Then, the day of reckoning came. The accident is like a distant memory but not forgotten. It started good [sic] and ended with an excellent bonding experience.

Set-up Leads

“That day the wind was beating down on the water. The waves were twice as tall as I was. I will never forget that day when I first rode a wave on my new surfboard. The accident is like a distant memory but not forgotten. It started good [sic] and ended with an excellent bonding experience.”