Revising and Re-Imagining Your Novel or Chapter Book:
KBR Archives
This class was originally held in the spring of 2019 and is now part of the KBR Archives.
Are you revising a novel or chapter book, or planning to get started on revising one soon? Do you want to learn a variety of techniques to help you find problems and create new material? Then this online webinar class is for you.
A free preview and introduction is available: A Demonstration of Creating a Revision Grid: A Free Webinar and Preview. This recording features a demonstration showing how to make and use a "revision grid" (a key revision tool) and information about what is covered in the class. Click that link to stream it.
What to expect from the class:
Clear presentations of proven tools via a slideshow and video feed. Plenty of handouts and recommended resources. Text chat during presentations for discussion and questions. Question time, with all questions answered. "Homework" for those interested, including feedback from one of us. Video recordings of the sessions and transcripts posted online. Optional 20-page manuscript consultation. An optional add-on: our line-editing course. One single tool that will solve all of your revision problems. Promises of access to editors or agents--we focus on the process. Door prizes, gimmicks, or special guests. We want you to join us for the content and insights we provide. Hype or a hard sell.
Based on what we have developed for our Revision Retreat at the Highlights Foundations and for workshops at writing conferences around the country, this online course will teach you proven revision techniques and tools. But you don't just get a presentation of working methods. We will help you try them out and understand how they work so that you will feel confident when you need to choose, adapt, or even make your own. Through practice, we show you how to use these tools to become better at self-editing your own work so you can eventually present your best manuscript to an editor or agent. This webinar will help you become more comfortable with revision, giving you a toolbox you could use with any story.
There's more to revision than finding problems, of course. What do you do once you've done that? That's why we also teach techniques to help you re-imagine different elements of your story, and create new scenes, explore and flesh out characters, build settings, change or refine voice, and to tinker with the overall story and emotional arc.
In this class, we focus on the craft. We built it for writers of different experience levels: for beginners, the techniques and approaches will be new to them, but structured to be understandable right away; experienced writers will be reminded of techniques they might want to try and challenged to rethink how they approach revision.
What's in each session (After the first session, each will open with a look at sample "homework" and answers to questions remaining from the previous session):
Session 2 -- Getting Feedback from Others: The good and bad magic of critique groups, how to make them work better, plus beta readers and feedback from children.
Session 3 -- Revising at the Big Picture Level--1: Holistic techniques, including methods of reading, asking questions, using checklists, and making maps.
Session 4 -- Revising at the Big Picture Level--2: Analytic techniques, including outlines, understanding scenes, and different ways to use the "revision grid."
Session 5 -- Re-Imagining Your Story--1: Ways to create new material, rethink characters, reshape your setting, and more.
Session 6 -- Re-Imagining Your Story--2: Ways to create new material, rethink or find your voice, rebuild your plot, and more.
Session 7 -- Putting on a Final Polish: An introduction to line-editing; tools to use in place of hiring a professional copy-editor, from Wordles to reading backward.
If you don't find an answer to your question here, please send it to us at webinar@kidsbookrevisions.com and we will update this list as needed.
I took your "Editing without an Editor" workshop, your revising picture books webinar, or your Revision Retreat. How much overlap is there? We want anyone who has been to our retreat or has taken either of those webinars to know there is overlap. But you would encounter some new material too, so it's up to you--this one could serve as a refresher, and it does concentrate on novels.
Why novels and chapter books? We feel that books with chapters--from chapter books to YA novels--have many similar characteristics, at least when you look at revision techniques that work with them. So we are covering the whole range, and distinguishing them from picture books, for which we have a separate webinar course.
Harold Underdown and Eileen Robinson teamed up in 2008 to bring something different to aspiring authors. And since then they have created online classes and tutorials and in-person workshops, presenting and working with writers at SCBWI conferences, workshops in western Massachusetts, Connecticut, and Pittsburgh, a weekend retreat in central NY, and an annual 4-day retreat at Highlights. More information on their backgrounds.
What not to expect:
Class rationale and who it's for:
Session 1 -- Reading Like an Editor: An introduction to "reader response theory," how it works in comparison to literary analysis, and how to use it in revision.
Questions asked and answered: