Revisions

Oh, that dreaded step in the long process of writing. Is anything more tedious, more annoying, more painstakingly frustrating, than the process of revisiting and checking over your work? You spend hours going over work only to change two things, yet still when the moment comes to present your story, you see things that make you think, "How the hell could I have possibly missed that?"

That's one of the cons that comes with being a writer, having to deal with the hair tearing out anger of not being able to check your own work. But, hopefully, I can teach you a few of my methods for checking and revising, and that can ease the process for you!

One of the first things I do after finishing is just read the whole thing to myself, checking to make sure there aren't any holes. No sentences I left out, gaps in the story, blatantly obvious content mistakes, etc. After that, I reread one more time, instead looking at individual sentences in particular, just to try to catch any punctuation or grammar mistakes. Personally, that's the end of my step one, because I know from there that there's not much more I'm going to catch myself without wasting tons of time.

Side note; another good strategy I've heard of is reading your story backwards, from the last sentence to the first. I don't do this myself, but it's supposed to be good as far as working on sentence structure and grammar.

After that I usually take a break, one or two days off where you can clear your mind and not think about the writing. The reason for this is so that when you look at it next you have a slightly different perspective and are more prone to catch things. How I normally do it from there though is I'll find somewhere quiet and just read to myself out loud, as if I was presenting it. Again, this'll just help provide a different perspective and just make you much more prone to catching things, especially when it comes to smoothing it out and making it flow better.

The last thing I usually do then is probably the most uncommon. A lot of authors, especially quieter ones who don't exactly like publicity, will only rely on themselves for revision, as well as maybe one other trusted person. However I think for the best revisions I think you should be open with your writing! Share it with friends and family, or really anyone you know who has any kind of writing or reading interests. You'll get a lot of solid feedback, as well as get a feel for how people will receive your writing and whether or not you should change it accordingly.

Anyway guys, that's about all I got for this topic. Until next time, peace.

-Ink