Editor Harold Underdown Explains How To Use a Revision Grid

It's a powerful tool. You may have seen the legendary one created by J.K. Rowling for the entire Harry Potter series, on one piece of paper!

In this blog post over at the Highlights Foundation, Using a Revision Grid to Break a Story Down Into Elements, there are two videos with Harold walking us through, first, the revision grid concept, and second, how he used a customized grid to look at the first two chapters of Gail Carson Levine's Dave at Night.

A still-frame from the video where Harold walks us through what a Revision Grid is, and how it works.

The post even includes downloadable templates for creating your own Revision Grid for your story.

I'll add that making a revision grid works for picture book manuscripts as well—especially as a way for writers to track if there are enough different locations/visuals for an illustrator to explore with the 15 or 16 page turns.

The Highlights Foundation post is a generous teaser for their upcoming revision retreat (co-facilitated by Harold Underdown and Eileen Robinson), and is well-worth checking out. Read the full post and watch the videos here.

Illustrate and Write—and Revise—On!
Lee