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.

📖

As you revise your story, consider how you might use imagery and description, as in these examples:

The lake had been sprinkled with water lilies in full bloom, the water was clear to the bottom so you could see the schools of small fish swimming by, and the lake wasn’t deep, so I thought there was nothing to fear. I was sure that it was a beautiful and romantic place to be. But every time a lone fish swam by you would freeze up and forget to paddle. Then heavens forbid a school of fish swam by as you were reaching out to touch the calm surface of the water.

(2019, Smile for Me by Claire Reiger)

That night after dinner, Ali and I sit outside, on the porch eating flan. We can just see the beehives off in the distance, a silhouette against the ombre sky. Crickets sing their nighttime melody and I can faintly hear frogs croaking in Mallard’s Lake.

(2020, I Speak for the Bees by Karina Knowles)