Personal Narrative Revision Strategies

We had so many different ideas for strategies we could use to revise our personal narratives. Here are some of them:

• Find the heart of your piece (the most important part). Stretch the heart of your piece, showing everything that happened at that time. 
• Look for times you are just telling your emotions (ex. I was angry). SHOW how you felt instead (ex. I clenched my fists. My heart beat hard against my chest. I glared daggers at him.). 
• Look for times you are just telling what happened in your piece (ex. It took a long time to get to the mall.)  SHOW what is happening instead. 
• Revise your piece to make sure each scene includes a variety of details and not just one type of detail (dialogue, internal thoughts, small actions, and setting details).
• Revise to include the internal and the external stories! Tell about where times you character ran, jumped and played, but also tell about times your character wished, hoped, thought, yearned and desired.
• Write a stronger lead to your piece, trying out a few different versions until you find the one that works.

You can also look at our Writing Rubric under the "Writing" tab to get more ideas for how to revise your piece. As you revise, remember that revision is about making MAJOR changes that improve your piece, not about editing for capitalization, punctuation, spelling or paragraphing.   
Do you know another revision strategy? Add it here in the comments!