What Does it Mean to Revise?

Let’s start with what it doesn’t mean: revising is not editing, fixing grammar mistakes, or taking out one sentence from an essay. Revising is bigger than that; it’s all about looking at your writing in the macro sense, examining it globally, looking at the entire piece, the big picture.

In writing, we refer to revising as looking at Higher Order Concerns (HOC) and editing as checking the Lower Order Concerns (LOC).

Most students aren’t used to making real revisions. They’re familiar with making edits and, possibly, changing anything that their teacher has told them to change (usually by bleeding red ink all over it.) And it’s sometimes a struggle to develop an understanding of making such significant changes to your writing.

A different chapter in this book included a sample personal narrative essay. In another chapter, there is a revision of that essay that turns the personal narrative into an argument targeted at a specific audience. That’s a significant kind of revision – it’s changing the entire point and purpose of the piece, adding in an audience, and using the personal experience as support rather than as the main point.

One way to “envision” what revision means is to see it in action. While we’re focusing on revision in writing, that’s not the only place/medium where it happens. Revision has been a part of music since it’s inception; many of us have heard a song done by one artist and then later heard a different version of that same song done by a (sometimes much) different artist. In music, that’s called a cover, but it could just as easily be referred to as a revision.

Let’s take a look at one such song – Welcome to the Jungle, originally by Guns N’ Roses.

That’s the original version – what we can consider the first draft – from 1987. It’s loud, aggressive, suggestive, and energetic. It’s a song that many pro sports teams play at their stadiums to hype up the crowd. The music itself is rock and it’s got traditional rock instruments: guitar, bass, drums.

Now, let’s take a look at a cover of that same song:

That’s a much different version, right? What’s changed? The music itself hasn’t shifted much – still rock and still similar instruments – but the vocals have changed. Instead of Axl Rose singing, we have a female vocalist. Are her vocals that different from his? Or is the revision primarily that she’s a woman and he’s a man?

Even if the vocal styles aren’t massively different, they’re still different enough for this to be considered a pretty significant revision. The question is, what does that do to the impact of the song? Does it change how you, as an audience, hear it or appreciate it? Does it change the message or the attitude of the song?

Here’s another revision:

You can probably see pretty quickly that this version is a lot different. There’s no vocals and instead of the rock instruments we have two cellos. (That’s literally the band’s name.) They play the song fast and even head-bang a bit, but those are still some really big revisions. Think of the list at the beginning of the chapter: which of the HOC’s does this version changeup? (If you said tone, style, and structure – Gold Star!)

One last revision:

Let’s count the differences: acoustic, guitar only, vastly different vocals in tone and style, and even the overall message/vibe of the song seems different, doesn’t it? What stands out to you the most about this version? Does it stand out to you for any particular reasons?

While these were all the same song, they all were different in some aspects. The artists who covered the song changed things up to fit their own style, skills, and approach. That’s what revision is all about – making changes to fit the situation, the audience, and the purpose. When you’re really revising, you’re taking chances and trying something different in an effort to produce something better and more effective.