I used to work for a department head who said that revision is at the heart of good writing. Even though good writing is full of subtleties and nuances, and at every turn, seems to defy easy descriptions, he had a point. So, to honor my former boss and to help you emerging and professional writers out there, here are five classic revision techniques.

 Life is the elimination of what is dead. --- Wallace Stevens

1.    Less is More.

Don’t you remember writing for your high school English teacher who asked for a five-page paper? You wrote your first draft and had only three pages. What did you do? You did what 90% of high school student writers did, you padded your paper with a lot of meaningless verbiage because you knew that at the end of the day, you had to satisfy that requirement. I used to tell my friends that I was going to  “baffle ‘em with my bullshit.”

 However, if you want to keep the attention of the readers of your Hubpages or your magazine articles, you can’t play this game. Try another one. We’ll call it the Minimalism Game. Here it is: After your first draft, go back over your writing attempting to eliminate every dead word that weakens your writing. The four other rules included in this article are techniques that will help you to achieve this goal.

2.    Use the Active Voice

I could list all of the books on writing that emphasize this rule, and no doubt about it, this single bit of advice will quickly empower your writing. 

 What is the Active Voice?

The best way to explain this concept is to show you a group of sentences, some with the passive voice and some with the active voice:

Passive Voice

 The June prom was dreamed about by Alice.

The class was read several humorous poems by Mr. Mitchell.

Active Voice:

Alice dreamed about the June prom for months in advance.

Mr. Mitchell read the class several poems.*

Do you see how the second group of sentences is more direct and assertive than the first? Notice how the first group ended with prepositional phrases. Observe how the writer of the second group got rid of the helping verbs and used direct objects to achieve create the active voice.  Also, in using the active voice, the writer has the subject perform an action upon the object. The writer of the first group of sentences has the subject being acted upon by the object of the preposition.

* Sentences taken from Richard Lederer’s Basic Verbal Skills

3.    Watch Out For Whooery, Whichery and Thatery

Ken Macrorie, my mentor, taught me this tip in graduate school. Watch how the excessive use of who, which and that can be a source of wordiness in your sentences. Here are a few examples from Ken’s book  Writing To Be Read:

a.     Mr. Rendew, Alice’s father, (was a man who) actually liked to have his lawnmower go wrong so he could tinker with its motor.

b.     George ( is the type of man who) always shines his shoes before going downtaown.

c.      (The people that) I would like to tell you about (are) Father and Mother.

4.    Cut out Weak Repetitions

Like a burglar in the night, this error can creep into your prose of your first draft. When your revise, keep an eye out for this subtle intruder.  Ken Macrorie writes that,” repetition can comfort or bore, clarify or confuse, astound or outrage." Consider these repetitions: 

I think Ethel was rebelling when she refused to follow my suggestion. She was rebelling against her ability to recover, her ability to heal, her ability to retain her youth. She had lost her youth, yet she was still fighting. Fighting for a lost cause.

             Ken points out that these weak repetitions clog the passage rather than emphasize what needs to be emphasized. 

       My senior English teacher Mrs. Lowery gave me the best revision tip technique I have ever encountered. She told us to read our writing aloud. This strategy is also the best way to discover one’s weak repetitions. 

5.    Look for Opportunities to use Appositives and Participial Phrases to Combine Sentences

Okay, my love of grammar comes forth. Constance Weaver, in her book Teaching Grammar in Context, explains that three grammatical techniques separate the men from the boys or…. the women from the girls.  They are the use of the appositive phrase, the participial phrase and the ablative absolute.  (I’ll discuss the ablative absolute in a later Hubpage.)

The Bedford Handbook explains that appositive phrases “function somewhat as adjectives do, to describe nouns or pronouns. Instead of modifying nouns, however, appositive phrases rename them.”

 Consider these two sentences:

 John Randall was the speaker at the football banquet. He is an expert on college coaching methods.

 To use an appositive phrase, we would write this sentence:

 John Randall, the speaker at the football banquet, is an expert on college coaching methods.

The appositive is the word speaker and the appositive phrase is the speaker at the football banquet. Notice the effect of this technique. It helps us play the Minimalism Game, and it helps us achieve the goal of sentence variety.

The participial phrase helps us achieve the same goals. The Bedford Handbook defines this term as a verb form that is used as an adjective.

There are either present participles ending in –ing or past participles ending in  –d, -ed, -en, -n, -en , or –t. Participial phrases frequently appear immediately following the noun or pronoun they modify.

 Congress shall make no law abridging the freedom of speech or of the press.

However, at times, they can precede the word they modify.

 Being weak, foxes are distinguished by superior tact.

Richard Lederer provides two sentences that might appear in a first draft.

 Tommy wanted to impress the little girls at the next table. So he ate three of the giant Clown-and-Circus sundaes.

 Using the techniques of combining sentences using a participial phrase we might create this sentence:

 Wanting to impress the little girls at the next table, Tommy ate three of the giant Clown-and-Circus sundaes.

 The participle is Wanting, and the participial phrase is Wanting to impress the little girls at the next table. Again, we are using this technique to play the Minimalism Game and to achieve sentence variety.

 Here are five techniques that can improve your writing. Use them and prosper. Happy Revising!