What's the next step?
After drafting comes revision! Sometimes revision can feel daunting or unexciting, but this mini-lesson will help you break it down and get to work. Ultimately, revision starts with understanding the effect you intend with your words, and creating that experience for your reader. Do you want your reader to laugh? To think deeply? To feel understood? Revise with your goal in mind. Grab some index cards and we’ll play around with our stories and poems in order to see them in a new light and revise them to be even better than before.
Spring is running down the hill.
I follow her to see
How she makes the flower buds
Bloom so beautifully.
Spring is dancing behind the bush.
I dance with her to see
How she turns the strawberries red
And make them taste yummy!
(2019, I Love Spring by Maryam Ali)
With your words like the thunder on the horizon
I feel every word
Every jab.
I have to stand by myself
I have to stand alone and suffer
I hope for freedom,
I hope for this to end,
For the raining skies to part
Then the eye of the storm passes over me,
I think I am free
But everywhere I go,
There you are.
You are my shadow,
My unwanted mirror,
The storm might return and then,
If I were to break like
My grandmother’s glass elephant,
Then all my cracks would show,
And the stable world I live in would be turned
Upside-down like a snow globe.
(2017, Storm by Toby Jacob)
If my life had to be described by
five items
in
a paper bag, it would
contain...
A peach, the
drops
of
juice
as clear and sweet as
golden
glass
beads,
the taste unable to leave my mouth
after
it
is
gone.
(2019, My Life in a Paper Bag by Caitlyn Zhu)
✍🏼 Ready to revise?
Use the interactive tool below or download the PDF 👉🏼 to complete the activity.