Descriptive Writing Revision Strategies

Possibilities for Revision

• Insert a snap shot
• Insert a thought shot
• Explode a moment
• Shrink a century
• Insert more meaningful dialogue
• Add three new details
• Revise the order of events: begin in medias res
• Count how many senses you included in your sensory description, then add more or vary them
• Include musical devices such as alliteration, repetition or onomatopoeia
• Add some more figurative language
• Compare things using a simile, a metaphor, synecdoche or metonymy
• Personify something

Editing Suggestions

• Replace “to be” verbs with more active ones
• Revise passive voice into active voice
• Add more specific or evocative nouns or verbs
• Combine sentences (see below)
• Cut out inessentials
• Eliminate excessive modifiers (adjectives and adverbs)
• Take out “then,” “it” and “there”
• Ex: There were three men sitting under the tree
• Ex: It was _______ .
• Ex. Then we _______ .