Revising Up!

Last week’s post discussed the idea of power positions in story. (If you missed it, here’s the link.)

We looked at . . .

Who is the character with the most agency, in the entire story, in a specific scene?

Does that change or stay static?

Considering power positions allows the writer to do something called “revising up.” Not always possible in early drafts but definitely necessary in later ones.

In essence, revising up is about adding elements that increase the heat of the scene or story.

How to revise up

Let's say you write a first-draft scene where a character (or real person--if you're writing memoir) sits drinking coffee in her grandmother's kitchen. The talk might have undercurrents, subtext, but nothing is overt. No fights, no arguments, no stomping out of the room. Nothing yet to raise the stakes.

Nobody’s in a power position—they are just trying to keep the peace.

When revising up, you might:

1. Introduce a third person who presents a challenge (three often is a stronger number in scenes than two, and this third person could be the power player in the scene, thereby changing its direction).

2. Raise the narrator to a level of more agency—for instance, they decide to go ahead and meet a challenge that they have been avoiding.

Camera shifts

Sometimes revising up is just as simple as changing the camera’s focus, what the reader sees.

Focus the camera on a challenging part of the setting, placing the power in that location. Something is broken and suddenly noticed, for example. Something is missing. Someone has left something out on the counter, which tells a whole story in itself.

It can be small

I remember a student who was working with revising up, using a scene for her memoir. The scene took place the day after her father died unexpectedly.

The household was in terrible grief. She and her aunt were having breakfast in the kitchen. There was essentially nothing happening, but all that grief was a heavy atmosphere. She needed something to ratchet up the tension because the draft was sluggish.

Interestingly, the writer herself felt the scene was already full of tension. She was speaking of the deep misery inside each of them, via long silences and sighs, wasn’t she? But to me, and her writing group, it came across low key and almost ho-hum.

I asked her to look at her smallest details, what she’d included both about the location and the two people in it.

Ask herself if there was a power element in these details. Something that could become a challenge. Something that she'd been ignoring or downplaying because she knew the scenario so well.

She found two. Her aunt's sweater was buttoned wrong and her aunt was always a snappy dresser. The writer had not included the narrator's reaction to this. Once highlighted, it showed the deep confusion in the aunt's heart about her brother's sudden death.

Also, a broken glass in the sink stayed there all morning--no one cleaned it up.

When she expanded these two power elements (both were tense to her, challenging the norm), the scene's tension exploded. She’d successfully revised up.

Your Weekly Writing Exercise

This week’s exercise is unexpectedly potent if you’re revising a story or book manuscript and want to increase the heat. Try it this week and share your thoughts!

1. Make a list of all the main players in your current story.

2. Rank them in order of power--power means they cause change in the story, in a big or small way.

3. Make another list of locations--rank them according to their ability to enact change.

4. Pick a scene or chapter that is not tense enough. Ask yourself if you've followed the power rules above. What can you add, change, or move to increase the power elements and raise the tension?

Photo by Explore with Joshua on Unsplash