Personal Narrative: Drive To Red River Gorge

Revision is a strange process. After writing and revising time efforts have been poured into a draft, the writer’s mind can become entangled in an ideal story—a story crafted that reflects their heart. With this mindset, it is easy for the writer to become stagnate in their revisions, only to change some sentence structure or the particular words used. While this might be good in some cases, it can also be dangerous. To combat this liner mindset, I made three changes after a failed attempt of revising.
Firstly, I cut the section of the story that was the inspiration. The opening paragraphs in the story were enjoyable to read, however they did the rest of the story. Because of this, I cut them entirely. It worked to main sections I cut. Firstly, I removed the Flashback. While enjoyable, the opening paragraph was written in second person only to switch to first person in the second paragraph, creating a confusing and incongruent opening. Removing the location of the first mini story also allowed me to keep the story set one location, thus leading to my second appointment change.
The original draft began with the flashback in red river gorge. After that, the story jumps to Zion national Park. A small amount of conflict occurs here before the two characters’ drive to Red River Gorge, only this time in the present.
Chapter 13 in The Making of a Story is all about revision. One of the first subjects it talks about is that every one is different in the way they revise. LaPlante states, “There’s no magic built or panacea for revision. Every person’s revision process, like their writing process, is different” (542). This was quite to realize that it is okay that I do not know how I personally revise yet, because this is my first time writing fiction stories, and it will take time to build up this information. Knowing that it is okay to cut large, and emotionally close parts of the story can make profound and wonderful changes to the