Tuning, Tying, and Training Texts: Metaphors for Revision

In “Tuning, Tying, and Training Texts: Metaphors for Revision” Tomlinson gives eight metaphorical stories: refining ore, casting and recasting, sculpting, painting, sewing and tailoring, tying things off, fixing things, and cutting.  I would use some of these sculpting, painting, and sewing and tailoring. 

Of the metaphorical stories the one that seems true in my experience is sculpting.  As Tomlinson said “Goyen’s comparison to sculpture provides clear directions for a workable revising strategy: start first to shape the whole text, then cycle back to work at finer levels for revision”.  When I write I first look back at my draft as a whole to check that it flows well from paragraph to paragraph.  Then I go back through again and take a closer look at each individual paragraph to rework each one.

We can learn a lot about revision by examining the view history and discussion tabs of any particular article on Wikipedia.  The view history allows us to see what has needed to be changed in the past.  It allows us to see what has worked and what has not.  By viewing the history of changes that have been made it allows us to think about the composing process in terms of the metaphorical stories for revision.  We can think about how and why it was changed.  Which then allow us to start to think about and see what other kinds of things could use revision as well.  The discussion tab of an article allows the writers/people making revisions to discuss what works and what doesn’t it allows them to collaborate better to make the article the best that it can be.  In some cases it may even allow us to see the composing process from start to finish, well to the article in its current state.  We can see what kind of things the writers were discussing and then check to see what kind of revisions were made to reflect their discussion.