The Library · Workshop 06 · Practice
Cut, Don't Throw Away
Five steps. About 25 minutes. Up to 7 stars. The constellation you're building is called First Draft.
The Library · Workshop 06 · Practice
Five steps. About 25 minutes. Up to 7 stars. The constellation you're building is called First Draft.
The first draft is for getting it down. Revision is for finding what was actually good in it — and cutting away everything else.
A lot of beginning writers do one of two things: they protect every word they wrote, or they throw the whole thing out and start over. Both are mistakes.
Revision is not destruction. Revision is reading what you wrote like a stranger would, finding the lines that are alive, and cutting the lines that are explaining instead of showing.
By the end of this workshop you'll have revised one short piece — same idea, half as long, twice as alive.
That's the warm-up. When you've actually read it — not skimmed — tap below.
Pick all that fit.
Click a problem, then the move that helps.
Take any short piece you've written before (or write 4 quick lines now). Then revise it — cut at least one line, change at least one line, and keep the strongest line untouched.
Stuck? Write 4 lines about walking into your own kitchen. Then revise — cut the line that's just describing, keep the line that has a feeling in it.
One sentence.