Modify Poetry

Getting Your Work in Shape

Now that your creative work has taken shape, you’re ready to start sweating the details—and I do mean sweating, because it’s time to work the fat out of your stories/poems and turn them into lean, mean fighting machines. Remember, writers work hard to get every single word right, whether they’re writing a poem or a novel. Finding the right, most effective words—and trimming away the ones that aren’t doing anything for your story/poem—will go a long way toward making your work sing.

When we talk about making your writing lean and muscular, we’re really talking about economy. Economic writing says what it needs to say in as few words as possible. It doesn’t say anything that is unnecessary. And what it does say it says in as few words as possible, with only the best possible words. So: Don't tell us that the radio blared loudly - "blare" connotes loudness. Don't write that someone clenched his teeth tightly - there's no other way to clench teeth. Don’t say "totally flabbergasted." The beauty of "flabbergasted" is that it implies an astonishment that is total. Can you picture someone being partly flabbergasted?

Below are a few very simple exercises to help you economize your writing.

Part One: Trimming the Fat

First, let’s get rid of the flab in your work. If your story/poetry is full of words that don’t do something useful or interesting for your work, then they’re just taking up space and distracting the reader from the really interesting stuff in your work. Follow these steps:

Generalities/vagueness

Words like “nice,” “good,” “very,” “pretty,” “so,” “well,” “beautiful,” “OK,” etc., are used so often and have so many different meanings that they don’t really mean anything, (what does “good” really mean?) or they’re just filler taking up space (why say “very good” if you can just say “great”?). You either need to revise generalities to make them more specific and compelling, or cut them out altogether.

Look through your work and circle all the generalities, vague words, and filler words

that are making your writing bloated.

Adjectivitis

This common ailment afflicts the writer with a need to modify every noun with a lot of clunky, useless adjectives: “The small, red, Honda Civic sped away quickly from the bank, leaving a trail of smoky dust.” Unless it’s crucial to the story that the reader know this car is a small, red, Honda Civic, get all those adjectives out of there. And what kind of dust isn’t smoky? Get that out, too.

Look through your work and underline all of the adjectives you can find that may be unnecessary.

(Some may be necessary, but you should always strive to use as few adjectives as you possibly can.)

Adverbitis

Like adjectivitis, adverbitis afflicts the writer with the need to modify his verbs with useless adverbs (those are the words that usually end in –ly): The Civic sped away quickly from the bank, leaving a trail of dust.” How else does a car speed, if not quickly? Get “quickly” out of there.

Another example: “Frowning angrily, she moved hurriedly towards him, saying very harshly, ‘You bastard.’” If you’ve done a proper job of characterization and scene-setting, all those adverbs are unnecessary.

The cure for adverbitis is in your computer:

Try using the "Edit - Find" feature of your word processor. If you use Microsoft Word, press Ctrl + F. In the “Find what” field, type in "ly," and click "find next." Word will highlight every instance of ly, one by one, so you can revise as necessary.

As a parting thought on adverbitis: If you're a budding J. K. Rowling and your books are selling faster than dog treats at Westminster's, you don't have to be concerned about this sort of thing, do you?

"Careful not to walk through anyone," said Ron nervously, and they set off around the edge of the dance floor.

"Oh, no," said Hermione, stopping abruptly. "Turn back, turn back, I don't want to talk to Moaning Myrtle -"

"Who?" said Harry as they backtracked quickly.

Harry Potter and the Chamber of Secrets - J. K. Rowling

Look through your work, and draw a square around all of the adverbs you can find.

In medias res

This is for those of you working on stories. In medias res is a fancy Latin phrase meaning “in the middle of the things,” and it describes how many writers begin their stories. Updike’s story, “A&P,” could have begun with some background information about the narrator—how he got his job, how well he likes it, what his life is like during the summer, etc. Instead, it begins with the narrator already at work, and shows all of the information we need to know: he works in a grocery store, he’s not terribly happy. And by the second paragraph, the story’s situation develops. Beginning in medias res—in the middle of the action—grabs the reader’s attention and helps the reader focus on the story’s situation. It also cuts out all the boring back-story that isn’t necessary to put at the beginning.

Look at the first 1-3 pages of your story, and see how many different possible starting points you can locate. Are there sentences, or scenes with action, that might be more engaging than the pure information that might begin your story? Are there ways to establish the story’s situation on page one? Mark with an X all the points that might serve as a good beginning point for the story. Start reading the story out loud from each of these points. How does it sound? If it’s engaging, and it makes sense, you might have found a stronger beginning.

Now, ask yourself if you can cut all the stuff that comes before this new beginning (or at least condense it, and/or move it to a different place in the story).

Weak verbs

Remember this sentence?

“Frowning angrily, she moved hurriedly towards him, saying very harshly, ‘You bastard.’”

Here’s a leaner rewrite: “Scowling, she stalked towards him. ‘You bastard.’”

Look at that—we said the same thing, but in fewer words, and in a more vivid, engaging way.

Getting rid of adverbs forces you to find stronger verbs. In the example above, we cut out the flabby adverbs and found stronger verbs for “frowning” and “moved.” The muscle of a story or a poem lies in its verbs and nouns, so choose your verbs carefully—search for verbs that are vivid, electric, and specific. “Stalked” is much more striking and specific than the more bland, vague, and generic “moved.”

Why say “He went to the store” when you could convey more information in a more engaging way by saying he “He meandered over to the store”? Why say “The Civic sped away from the bank, leaving a trail of dust,” when you could say “The Civic rocketed away from the bank…”?

Look through your work and find all the weak, flabby little verbs. In particular, look for verbs like “go” (goes, went, going, etc.) and “be” (am, was, were, etc.). Write a check mark by them.

Showing v. telling

We already covered this, but it bears repeating: if you can show something rather than tell it, then show it. Consider this example: “He was an attractive man.” “Attractive” is vague and bland; it means too many different things and so doesn’t mean anything. More importantly, this sentence tells the reader information that could be shown: “He had Paul Newman's eyes, Robert Redford's smile, Sylvester Stallone's body, and Bill Gates's money.” With this revision, we see the attractive man much more clearly (rather than hearing about him), and we learn something about the character looking at him, too.

Instead of telling us that “she works tirelessly,” show us the calluses on her hands and her heavy walk.

When you show, you use vivid, concrete, sensory details to convey an image to your reader through action.

Look through your work, and mark any passages that tell with a T, and passages that show with an S.

Passive v. active voice

Passive voice is just as weak and useless as it sounds. Active voice is just as invigorating and exciting as it sounds. I don’t want to give you a grammar lesson here, so I’ll just provide an example and you’ll see what active and passive voice are:

Active voice: The dog bit him. He bit the dog back.

Passive voice: He was bitten by the dog. The dog was bitten back by him.

See how clunky passive voice is? In active voice, you structure your sentence subject-verb-object. In passive voice, it all gets reversed. Things happen to the subject by something else. Passive voice uses more words and sounds clunky. Avoid it all costs.

Look through your work and put a bracket around all the passive voice you can find.

Part Two: Adding Muscle

Now that we’ve identified where the flab is in your work, we can start building up some lean muscle to give your work more power. Remember: use as few words as possible, and get rid of everything unnecessary. You must be ruthless in this. Follow these steps:

1. Look at the generalities you circled, the adjectives you underlined, and the adverbs you drew a square around. How many of them can you probably do away with? Cross them out.

2. On a separate piece of paper, create a list of all the generalities, adjectives, adverbs you did not cross out. Your list should be very short, because in step one, you should have crossed out nearly every weak word. Beside each list word, write 2-4 new words that are more specific, unique, and engaging. Replace the weak words with one of your new list words.

3. Repeat step 2, using the weak verbs you marked with a checkmark.

4. Look at the passages in your story/poetry that you marked with a T (for “telling”). On a separate piece of paper, use specific, concrete, sensory details to rewrite the passage so that it shows rather than tells. Use the Showing v. Telling handout to guide you in this.

5. Look through your story/poetry for the passive voice you bracketed, and change each passage to active voice.