As if to fulfill my need to demonstrate an especially nit-picky, real-life instance of revision, an editor with whom I’ll soon be publishing an essay (on the modest topic of love in Shakespeare’s plays) has been working with me for weeks on a single sentence from a 5000-word piece.  The assistant editor first emailed me about the sentence, which occurs late in the essay and concerns the protagonist of Shakespeare’s play Cymbeline:

The ultimate point, though, isn’t Posthumus’s failure, any more than is his failure to act out of compassion, rather than in defense of his male honor, the end of the story.

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At the conclusion of the last post on this blog, I said I’d follow up with some practical pointers that may be useful to others.  I’ve met some people who compose and revise very closely to what I’ll describe here, though I’m aware of others for whom some of my tactics would seem anathema.  General rule of thumb: do what works for you, but be open to others’ suggestions. [Read more…]

Revising Prose is the name of the best book I know of on the subject.  In it, author Richard Lanham outlines the “paramedic method,” as he calls it, for eliminating wordiness, achieving clarity, and polishing style.  The method is brilliantly direct, practical, and applciable, although later editions of the book have tended to clutter the approach and needlessly—indeed, counter-productively—improve upon the elegant original.   I use the book when I teach advanced nonfiction writing to undergraduates and have even concocted my own exercise booklet on which students can practice the principles Lanham outlines. [Read more…]