Customer Reviews

Revision: A Creative Approach to Writing and Rewriting Fiction

5 star:		(7)
4 star:		(0)
3 star:		(1)
2 star:		(0)
1 star:		(0)

 

 

I've read a lot of creative writing books and this is the best so far. David Michael Kaplan is an excellent teacher. He explains things well with humour and clarity. Every point is illustrated with examples and comments from both himself and other writers. I especially liked the way he uses his own stories as examples so he can show us the subsequent drafts as the story grows towards completion. This method perfectly illustrates the points he makes and I have never seen it used so well before. If you have ideas for short stories but never seem to get round to writing them, or when you try - you end up disappointed with the results, this is the perfect book for you. As a bonus it also helps you find ideas for stories because in David Michael Kaplan's book the 'revising' starts even before the first draft. In short if you want to write fiction and you only buy one how-to book make it this one.

This book is better than its title. The premise is that writing is re-vision and revision. The distinction is more than just spelling. Much of this book discusses the process, and how you view your work from its early stages as the glimmer of an idea to looking at it again as finished draft ready for revisiting. He also demystifies the all-too-common result of having a first draft that bears little resemblance to your initial concept or early outline.

In the early section of the book - the part I found most valuable - David Michael Kaplan offers a lot of advice for just getting that first draft *done*. He offers practical suggestions to help you keep going forward, rather than endlessly revising Chapter 2 and never finishing a complete draft.

He offers several examples of his own work (in the interest of copyright, no doubt, as many authors do), but they're mostly limited to a few paragraphs at a time.

This book is not about revising a novel per se, but rather about how the view of your work changes throughout the entire process and how to deal with that. The title was very misleading, though. I let this book sit on my shelf till I had finished a project. Now I wish I'd read it sooner.

Using David Kaplan's technique for revising each sentence enabled me to edit my book for publishing. He explains how to look at each word and sentence for clarity and succinctness, eliminating repetitiveness and wordiness. Although I didn't read all the chapters, this one was worth the price of the entire book.

I enjoyed Kaplan's book, and appreciated his encouraging tone. Also, his ideas on "revising before you write" were very new to me and I think very useful, as a way to avoid getting stuck in a particular way of viewing a story before it has become clear what it is about. I can't claim to have actually tried that approach much, but it seems to me it could help one avoid a lot of unnecessary writer's block and revision down the road. I also appreciated his analysis of the different types of beginnings, and ineffective endings to avoid, the latter especially, inasmuch as a good ending is perhaps the hardest thing to pull of with fiction.

I would heartily recommend this book to aspiring fiction writers, particularly those who are not just beginning to write fiction but have been at it for a while.

This book is one I keep beside my computer all the time. It's absolutely the best book on editing, revising, and even critiquing I've ever read. I'm an editor at a small press, as well as a freelance writer and editor, and I recommend this book to my clients, even though it's out of print. I reread it often and learn something new each time. Wish the publisher would bring this book back into print.

Though I learned a lot of his lessons the hard way through experience and work, everything he has said makes sense and rings true. It's nice to see some of the things I've slowly been piecing together through experience put down concisely, and wonderful to know I am not alone in my revising difficulties. If you haven't forced yourself through multiple revisions of a story before, don't think it's necessary, or don't know where to start, I strongly recommend this book.

I bought Revision because it came highly recommended through the Writer's Digest Books. During the two years it took me to finish it, I was aggravated at myself that I was so easily persuaded into parting with good money. The author uses much of his writings to demonstrate a point he's trying to make. I felt like he was doing this to showcase his own work, not to prove anything to the reader. He shows the same work over and over, with small changes that demonstrate how much better the work was after the revisions. Unfortunately I didn't like the stories any better than before the revisions. Maybe it's his writing style I didn't like, or the writer's lack of connecting with the reader he is trying to teach; whatever the reason, I didn't get much from this book. I gave it three stars only because I am one of those silver lining kind of people. If others have benefited from it, maybe I missed something. As for me, I wish I would have used my money on something better suited to fit my brand of fiction.

Note to self: Don't be so quick to buy a book based on the recommendation of a book club whose sole purpose is to move books.

This book offers indepth suggestions on revision of fiction writing, including some forms of revision I would never have thought of personally. The over-all goal is seamless fiction writing and Kaplan has some concrete suggestions on how to achieve this. One of the most helpful books I have ever read on the subject.