Revising Toward Exactness

We all hope readers will think our books and stories are “well-written”, but how do we go about making sure they are? We spend time revising for plot and character arcs, but what about those final improvements that give our readers an enjoyable reading experience and let them know they’re in good hands? I’m not talking about proofreading or polish, but important changes that will elevate our scenes and sentences.

One of the ways we develop our preferences and tastes (a feel for good writing) is to make small changes to our manuscript—many of them, over and over again. Through careful attention to the way in which we’ve conveyed our ideas, we begin to see what belongs and what doesn’t. What’s boring or inferior and how it can be made better.

In this training, I’ll talk about how the writing in our books, and even shorter works, can go from blurry to sharp. How we can tap into the narrative power of specificity by learning to revise toward exactness.