Monday 05 February 2024
Revision isn’t always cutting a paragraph or an entire section from a written draft. Revision doesn’t always mean adding or creating new content. Revision can be rearranging parts of a text to other places in the draft, inserting them earlier or later in the draft. At first, this form of revision may not seem like a radical or profound change; however, sometimes “just” repositioning misplaced paragraphs so that they form a more coherent section, making it complete and finished, is revision that is a comprehensive and powerful alteration. This kind of revision not only improves the writer’s message by grouping all paragraphs discussing that message but also improves the writer’s organization.
Repositioning written text in a draft initially may seem like an unnerving part of the writing process because doing so involves disrupting “flow.” After all, the writer wrote that sequence of paragraphs following some kind of order: paragraph 4 leads into paragraph 5, and on and on. This flow seems like good organization. The writer did write it “in order.” Sometimes, paragraphs do get lost in the flow, and by linking those drifting paragraphs with the other paragraphs discussing the same idea, the writer can achieve a quick and easy solution to attain better flow.
Sometimes, repositioning draft sections isn’t obvious or straightforward. At these moments, I must determine the order of importance of the ideas I am writing about. Do I start with the least important, and build up to the most important? Which sub-idea needs a lead-up, thus requiring more detailed analysis and explanation? Do earlier or later written parts in the draft do this? This kind of revision strengthens the final version’s readability. Clarity is the goal. Leading the reader through the writer’s thought process, and not skipping any steps in that thought process, is the method.
Nonetheless, how does a writer know that their written content has “flow”? And isn’t this “flow” what I as a writer mean when I say revision is moving written content around? How does a writer sense that they need to reposition paragraphs or even chapters? The sequence of ideas isn’t always self-evident.
Years before Steve died, he repeatedly and emphatically argued that the opening chapter of my Katyn manuscript shouldn’t be the scene of my Russian Security Services (FSB) interrogation. He worried that everything afterward would be anti-climactic. He advised that I should begin “from the beginning.” He contended that my FSB experience was too important to be the lead-in, maintaining that doing so would confuse the reader.
“I want the reader to be caught off guard. I need the reader to be scared and disoriented: ‘What’s going on? What did he do?’ By starting this way, I impel the reader to experience what I felt. With this beginning, I hope to capture the reader’s attention, and keep their attention,” I counter argued. Steve listened.
“Remember Homer’s Iliad? After the “Invocation,” Homer begins in media res—in the middle of things—when the Trojan War is almost over, but still the armies are fighting. Homer doesn’t gently usher us through the history or commence from Greece. Amid the chaos, plague, destruction, and violence, Homer throws us in. You feel the Trojan War. Smell it. Fear it.”
Steve was skeptical. He never agreed that I should write this way. Understanding that my Katyn manuscript was to be a memoir, he still clung to his perception that I must write it like an academic. To Steve, “writing like an academic” meant strict organization and an uncompromising chronology. “Didn’t you publish a scholarly article on D.H. Lawrence entitled ‘Broken Chronology in “The Rainbow’s “Anna Vicrix” and “The Cathedral”’? Your title describes what I’m doing. Broken chronology,” I continued. Still unpersuaded, Steve cautioned otherwise. I remained unconvinced.
Steve envisioned a calm, personal but historical narrative, chronicling my Katyn story from my childhood and adolescence, graduate school, West Point, and the Russian and Poland trips to the Katyn Massacres sites. A far-reaching, comprehensive memoir. I understood methodology; however, I wasn’t planning to write another “dissertation.” Once I decided to write a memoir, I couldn’t write it like a dissertation. To me, the meaning of Katyn was chaotic. Bringing order to that chaos wouldn’t have reflected what Katyn was to me. The “flow” of the opening of my Katyn manuscript may have appeared choppy and rough, but the current moved forward, not backward.
Historians before me already authored books instructing students on the history and circumstances of the Katyn Massacres. As a fellow scholar, I had nothing to contribute to that library shelf. Steve saw I was becoming less a Katyn “scholar” and more of a creative writer with my Katyn project; however, I’m unsure if he understood what this new identity meant. As a memoirist, I had experiences to share. I couldn’t wait hundreds of paragraphs or even pages to arrive at one of the most defining moments in my life—my FSB interrogation. Traditional chronology or time flow in the writing didn’t work for me. My intentions were different. Moving the opening FSB scene later in the manuscript could, might have resulted in better “flow,” but it would have been a different kind of flow.
Steve was my first, earliest book editor, and I appreciated his feedback. And yes, sometimes, during revision, a writer doesn’t always agree with their editor’s revision plan. And this topic will be another blog in this series on revision. However, what if I had followed Steve’s editorial advice?
For argument’s sake, I considered Steve’s suggestion of moving the entire FSB section later in the manuscript. As a writing teacher, I saw how repositioning this section worked, and how placing it later had its own logic. Nonetheless, keeping this new chronology changed the whole manuscript. To me, it seemed ordinary and predictable. The anxiety was gone but for the wrong reasons. The chaos was tamed by this alternative revision, but then my manuscript’s message also had changed. Honestly, I couldn’t identify that alternative revision’s new message. What was I now sharing with the reader? What did I truly achieve by this radical repositioning? The hidden, deeper underpinnings of the manuscript no longer were there. The manuscript didn’t feel like a memoir. It seemed more like an informal dissertation.
During my current, on-going revision of the Katyn manuscript, I have moved entire sections—pages of them—to other parts of the manuscript. And without adding considerable supplemental content to those existing sections, I see how the manuscript’s flow has been improved, making it more readable. And readability is the whole purpose of revision.