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Daily Deviation
October 22, 2011
Poetry Self-Edit Checklist by *Mahi-Fish
Featured by ikazon
Suggested by LadyLincoln
Literature Text
Poetry Self-Edit Quick Start Guide and Checklist
Introduction
The idea behind this is to give newer poets a way to better edit their poetry themselves, without having to rely as much on an external editor. It can be frustrating, especially for new poets to request feedback from a friend, or worse, to post a poem, and have all of the responses be about grammatical errors and other details. We write poetry to convey ideas and emotions, and when something is off technically about the poem it distracts the reader. When a reader is distracted enough to notice an error or other problem it means they might spend the time they might otherwise have spent glowing about your poem to post a comment correcting you instead.
After this introduction is over the checklist will be as brief as possible while retaining its utility. The idea is to serve as an organizational tool and a reminder rather than to educate on effective techniques and style. There are plenty of resources out there to teach the things I'll list or to elaborate on them. If there is anything that I list that deserves further explanation, please contact me, and I'll either tell you in my experience what I've found, or I'll help to locate a guide or tutorial that can do it better than I can.
Self Editing in a Nutshell
The idea behind self editing is to make your poem as strong as possible before having a third party read it. I write poetry with the intention of eventually publishing it, so when I self edit, my goal is to get it as close to professional quality work as I can before I seek more help. If your goals are different, that's fine. You can still make your poems stronger through self editing in order to share with friends, family, or whomever your intended audience is.
When I self edit, I have a copy of my original poem and a copy to make edits on. If I edit on the computer, I'll create two files via copy and paste and arrange them side by side. If I do it with a printed copy I'll often print an extra one. From there I go through and mark up my revision copy. Depending on what my current focus is, I'll use different symbols and methods to identify different elements. For instance, if I'm looking to cut down on filler words, I might go through and mark them with brackets of different kinds: [ ] { } < > ( ). Use one bracket for each type of word. I go through my revision copy and make changes, one or two at a time, and compare how it sounds with the original. If I think the change makes the poem stronger, I change the original. If not, I move on, possibly to come back to it later.
One easy type of edit I've seen that many poets fail to do is to go through and try to eliminate what I like to call filler words. Filler words are words that have little to no meaning or weight by themselves, and are often used as part of a grammatical construction. The English language has quite a bit of flexibility to allow us to delete words that aren't necessary. The reason to delete filler words when possible is that they generally don't impact your reader. Every unnecessary filler word that your reader has to read is another word coming between them and the core words that comprise the meaning of your poem. There are many times that they simply can't (or shouldn't be) deleted, but when looking for a place to edit a poem to make it stronger, this is always a good place to start.
Read your poem aloud whenever possible. If you stumble in a certain place, odds are good that there is a mistake or something about the flow and style of the poem there that you can fix. If you get the feeling that something there doesn't sound right, stop and try to figure it out. If you wrote it and it gives you trouble, it'll give your reader trouble too! This is especially true in poetry where a grammatical rule has been broken in order to achieve a rhyme or other effect. Poetry is one of the few types of literature that can get away with breaking the rules, but most new poets don't realize that even poems that break rules must break them in certain ways. Discarding grammar because you don't think it is important is a sure way to ensure that your reader has no idea what you are trying to say.
Below is the checklist. Feel free to copy and paste it to a new document, and add or subtract things to make it more applicable to you (for personal use).
POETRY SELF EDITING CHECKLIST
Spelling and Grammar
__ Spelling run a spell check to find the obvious misspellings
__ Homophones its/it's your/you're their/there/they're etc
__ "Correct" Typos find words that are typos that spell check misses
__ Grammar grammatical rules DO apply to poetry. Break with caution!
__ Tense don't flip between past and present tense without a reason
__ Punctuation is your usage consistent throughout? Overused?
Filler Words
__ Prepositions to, with, for, above etc
__ Pronouns she, he, it, her, his, him etc
__ Conjunctions but, and, or
__ Relative Pronouns which, that, who, whose etc
__ Auxiliary Verbs is, are, was, would, could etc
__ Redundancies are there words you've used multiple times close together?
__ Vague Language generally nouns that refer to a broad type e.g. flowers, people, birds
Poetic Devices
__ Form is your poem true to its form throughout?
__ Simile check each simile to see if "like" and "as" can be deleted
__ Metaphors are yours trite or stale?
__ Rhyme is it used effectively or does it detract?
__ Alliteration do you have spots where this feels forced?
__ Line Breaks are your lines broken with a purpose?
__ Stanzas are they well organized for your needs? Balanced?
__ Imagery is it clear while remaining moving or powerful?
Last Step
__ New Eyes is it time to have someone else look at it?
Literature
Introduction: Character
First lesson about writing: Characters are what makes the story.
Think about your favorite story. Ever.
Well, I can't think about mine, so I'll go for "Which French anti-hero do I feel like fangirling for today?" Narrowly beating out the story about the tragic relationship between the bohemian sociopath with the amazing set of pipes and unfortunate skin condition (unless he's being played by Gerard Butler) and a Scandinavian soprano is The Count of Monte Cristo. That novel is, in its unabridged printing, thick enough to bludgeon a walrus with. It starts off pretty fast, but gets slow just as quickly. It's not a book for the short of attenti
Literature
Regulars
Jon and Carol came in as they do
every day
she clutching a bit of cloth to
her face and being unable
to give me an honest look and
Jon being overly enthusiastic about
his coming meal
(I am a goddess because I
bring them food.)
They met each
other outside the bathroom,
gazed across the table with a fifty
year old expression
and the only emotion I have
ever heard in Carol's
ancient, cracking voice
is when she calls him baby
Repeatedly I wonder, if or when
I give up my mind
to age and black eyes,
will we do this? Drink tea
with too much sugar
and have a waitress that will
be overly concerned if we
don't show our wrink
Literature
Birdcage
Nothing ever happens the way you read in the history books. In war there are never two armies, there is only a field of men. Never a number of dead; but individual lives snuffed out. That is what the subject of history is, years shelved and decimalized. Birth and death, graphed to the simplicity of lines. Great wars a footnote to the next great war. The achievements of men and women plotted out against the bookmark of day, month and year.
And somewhere amongst this, my mother breathed. Somewhere danced in now long-closed nightclubs, laughed at jokes told by a younger version of my Father. And then the unpin-able moment she fell in love with
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I have had a lot of people ask me for a poetry guide of some sort. I don't really feel that my poetry is any better than anyone else's at its core. Even some of my best poems started out as horrendous failures on the first draft.
The idea for a checklist came to me last night when I was trying to explain to someone why I made some suggestions that I did. My answer was simple: it's just something I do when I look for ways to make my own work better.
I see a lot of poetry pop up in my watch that could use a good revision, and I think that many newer poets might simply not know how. My hope is that this checklist can help get writers new to poetry into the habit of looking for all of these things on their own without having to refer back to guides, more experienced poets, or even this checklist.
If this proves to be a useful resource, my intention is to add other things that are suggested to me if I can find a way to do so that is consistent with my "simpler is better" method. If you are an experienced poet, feel free to point out things you think I left out or glossed over. If you are a new poet, or simply not used to self editing, please let me know if you found this to be a useful tool.
The idea for a checklist came to me last night when I was trying to explain to someone why I made some suggestions that I did. My answer was simple: it's just something I do when I look for ways to make my own work better.
I see a lot of poetry pop up in my watch that could use a good revision, and I think that many newer poets might simply not know how. My hope is that this checklist can help get writers new to poetry into the habit of looking for all of these things on their own without having to refer back to guides, more experienced poets, or even this checklist.
If this proves to be a useful resource, my intention is to add other things that are suggested to me if I can find a way to do so that is consistent with my "simpler is better" method. If you are an experienced poet, feel free to point out things you think I left out or glossed over. If you are a new poet, or simply not used to self editing, please let me know if you found this to be a useful tool.
© 2011 - 2024 Mahi-Fish
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Many people i know will find this benificial, thank you mahi-fish.
sincerely,
zman1130
sincerely,
zman1130