Before: Someone looked me in the eye today and told me everything happens for a reason. Everything happens for a reason? Oh that’s great. My mom was just shot and killed for the mere reason of her being in the wrong place at the wrong time and there’s a reason for that? You’re honestly going to look me in the eye and try to justify her death by telling me not to worry, because there’s a plan for me? That’s going to make it better. Bring in God, tell me how he’s looking out for me, tell me about how he took my mom because heaven needed another angel. What about me? I didn’t need her? I’m 14 years old, now alone and motherless. But thank you, everything happens for a reason.
After: Someone looked her in the eyes today and told her everything happens for a reason. Everything happens for a reason? She thought. That’s great. Her mom was just shot and killed for the mere reason of being in the wrong place at the wrong time and there’s a reason for that? They’re honestly going to look her in the eye and try to justify the poor girls moms death, by telling her not to worry and there’s a plan for her. That’s going to make it better. Bring in God, tell her how he’ll always be looking out for her, tell her how heaven needed another angel. What about her? She didn’t need a mother? She’s fourteen years old, now alone and motherless. Sit there, looking into her hurt-filled eyes and tell her every things going to be okay and watch her expression as she listens to your lies.
I found this exercise particularly interesting because it's so crazy how changing a few words out of a paragraph can change the whole tone. It changes the whole story. My original paragraph was about an upset kid, my revised paragraph, to me, took the tone of an adult giving a narrative of advise on her disgust of how people treat children without parents. Telling it, although in basically the same words, entirely different. I found this most interesting because we often are so negligent of "the other side's story", that we forget that when we're writing, changing the perspective can put a whole new spin on things. I posted this exercise because I thought it was nifty to look at how things can change so drastically by a simple word choice.
I also did Exercise Five, The Impersonal or Distanced "I"
Before: I’m small enough to crawl into that tiny little space
I can live for a week without my face
I come in thousands and thousands of kinds
Making me even harder to find
I run at three miles per hour
Germs spread quick to make you cower
Six inches is my biggest size
Well that’s been seen with your human eyes
You think I’m a bother and useless to you
So try to kill me, lets see the best you can do
I don’t need to eat for forty days
No water for a week and I’m barely fazed
Oh yes lets try to drown the little guy
I can stay underwater for thirty but good try
I appreciate the efforts you try to make
But killing us would be your biggest mistake
After: Small enough to crawl into that tiny little space
Can live for a week without a face
Come in thousands and thousands of kinds
Making it even harder to find
Run at three miles per hour
Germs spread quick to make them cower
Six inches is the biggest size
Well that’s been seen with their human eyes
They think it’s a bother and useless to them
So try to kill it, lets see the best they can do
Don’t need to eat for forty days
No water for a week, barely fazed
Oh yes lets try to drown the little guy
Can stay underwater for thirty but good try
Appreciate the efforts they try to make
But killing us would be their biggest mistake
I found this exercise to also be very interesting because taking things out of first person, like in my previous exercise, changes the entire perspective. It made my new work impersonal, and in my opinion not as fun to read. It also changed my end rhyme style, which I personally found annoying, because it meant If i was sticking with the newer version I would have to restructure multiple parts of my poem. This exercise I'm sure could've been a lot more beneficial using a different writing passage, but for this particular one, I was not a fan of the results. Which goes to show you how changing your writing and revising sometimes takes a lot of work and you sometimes run into both very good changes and some not-so-good changes that lead you back to the drawing board. Overall though, both of these exercises, opened my eyes to how you can drastically improve your writing and revise almost your whole story by replacing a few words. It was really neat to see how different these versions could become, by making simple changes.
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