Here's one example of revision from my latest project:
BEFORE
She thought again about the Mexican kids in the courtyard at lunch. What did they do when they got home from school? Not this, she was sure. Did they watch TV, or play soccer, or call up their friends and go cruise downtown? She’d been on the college-prep track as long as she could remember, which meant that she and regular kids were developing into two different species. Just like Darwin's finches in the Galapagos. Separate them for too long, and they’d lose the ability to communicate, to mate, to produce viable offspring. (about 93 words)
AFTER
She thought about the Mexican kids in the courtyard at lunch. What did they do after school? Watch TV? Play soccer? Three years on the college-prep track meant that she and regular kids were developing into two different species, just like Darwin's finches. Separate them for too much longer and they’d lose the ability to communicate, to mate, to produce viable offspring. (about 62 words)
Now, there's nothing inherently wrong about the first version. It's just that it isn't the tightest, best, and sharpest it could be. Here are a few specific changes I made in order to get to my second draft version:
Sentence 1: Delete "again" from the first sentence. The reader has already read the section where the character thinks about the Mexican kids for the first time. Therefore, she knows this is the second time. The word "again" is unnecessary.
Sentence 2: Change "when they got home from school" to "after school." The meaning is the same, but it's accomplished with fewer words. This is always going to be better.
Sentence 3: Delete the whole damn thing. Because the character is griping about the fact that she's stuck inside doing homework while other kids are having fun, the comparison is obvious. The fact that she's thinking about the other kids doing other things means she knows they aren't doing homework. Why waste words, even 5 of them, to express this?
Sentence 4: Remove "did they" and "go cruise downtown." Shorter sentences can be much more effective, especially if you're listing things. The rapid-fire short sentences have more immediate feel, as if you're right there with Emma (the character) as she's thinking these things. Also, I don't really gain anything by including a list of three items, as opposed to two. The reader gets the picture after two, so I cut the third list item entirely.
Sentence 5: Delete "she'd been on" and "as long as she could remember." These are fluff. The revision offers a more concise version of this thought, and a concrete detail. "Three years" is much more specific than "as long as she could remember."
Sentence 6: Delete "in the Galapagos" and attach this sentence to the previous sentence. The reference to
Darwin is probably enough to bring back vague memories of Darwin, turtles, the Galapagos, the HMS Beagle, and something about the birth of the theory of evolution. There's no need to mention Darwin and the Galapagos when the mention of Darwin alone will serve my purpose.
Sentence 7: You'll notice here's where I added to the second version. Instead of "too long," I went with "too much longer." I wanted to raise the stakes and show how Emma, my character, is at a tipping point in terms of social development. "Too long" is a generic statement. "Too much longer" means that Emma knows she's on the boundary of something in a way that isn't generic at all.
Phew. If you're still with me, you see how much I agonize over each word in each sentence in each paragraph. I know not everyone is going to do this, or even think it's necessary. I just hope I can inspire you to start looking for little things to cut (extra words, unnecessary cues) that bog down your own writing.
Happy revisions!
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