Kid's Book Revisions Home Page
Kid's Book Revisions: Resources
On this page, we post links to resources (book or web) related specifically to revision.
Books
Picture Writing by Anastasia Suen: A good general how-to, covering both the writing and rewriting of picture books, fiction, and nonfiction.
Revision: A Creative Approach to Writing and Rewriting Fiction by David Michael Kaplan: A guide to both drafting and revising, focusing on fiction.
Writing It Right! How Successful Children's Authors Revise and Sell Their Stories by Sandy Asher: Revision is the sole focus of this collection of case studies--Asher gives multiple versions of actual published stories as they were revised, with comments, and covers short stories, picture books, and novels.
Writing Picture Books by Ann Whitford Paul: Much of writing is revision, and this how-to helps with revising many aspects--from voice to characters to story to word count--of picture books.
For even more writing guides, consult Writing How-Tos: A general list of writing guides, originally created as a resource for Harold's Complete Idiot's Guide to Publishing Children's Books.
Webpages
The Art of Detection: One Editor's Techniques for Analyzing and Revising Your Novel: A lengthy and detailed piece from editor Cheryl Klein.
The Art of Revising a Novel: Writers' answers to a survey to find out how they revise.
A Collection of Revision Tips by Laurie Halse Anderson: These are fun and useful. If you find the videos distracting, scroll past them....
Critique groups versus beta readers: A useful blog post.
Emma Dryden on Revision: An inspirational essay.
Revising Characters: Detailed suggestions, over several posts--follow the links at the bottom.
Revision Tips: Index to ten tips from ten published authors.Ten Mistakes Writers Don't See -- a great checklist for use when revising.
Suggestions are welcome, but we will not act on all of them.