Writing it, then writing it better

Word	What it means
Point of view	Whose eyes a story is told through, and how much that narrator can know.
Retelling	Telling the same events again from a different point of view.
Voice	The sense of a particular person behind the words: what they notice, the words they use, how they feel.
Unity	Every sentence in a paragraph supports its one main point.
Coherence	The sentences connect, so the reader moves from one to the next without getting lost.
Transition	A word or phrase that links ideas: for example, however, by the next morning.
Sentence variety	Sentences of different lengths, types and beginnings.
Precise word	The word that says exactly what you mean: limped rather than walked.
Tone	The attitude your words show toward the subject and the reader.
Revising / editing	Changing what a draft says and how / fixing spelling, punctuation and grammar, which comes last.

Unit 2's story of Tessa and Mr. Okafor follows Tessa. Here is her first visit, then the same moment retold by Mr. Okafor:

The original: Her first job was reading the newspaper aloud to Mr. Okafor, who had lost most of his sight. He argued with every article.

Retold by Mr. Okafor: The school sends them every fall, and they read to me the way you'd read a cereal box. This one got through the whole business section in eleven minutes, so I told her the reporter had canola prices all wrong. She looked up. “How would you know?” I farmed canola for forty years, that's how. Nobody had asked me anything in a long time.

A retelling should	In Mr. Okafor's version
Keep the events	The newspaper, the arguing, a volunteer in a hurry.
Change the voice	Short sentences, that's how, a comparison from his own life: a man who has always said what he thinks.
Fill a gap	The original never says why he argues. This suggests he wants to be treated as someone who knows things.
Stay inside what the narrator could know	He cannot know Tessa planned to rush her hours. He can only guess from how fast she reads — which is what he does.

The gap is where a retelling earns its place. A version that only swaps she for I tells the reader nothing new.

Our buddy-reading program helps the Grade 2 students and us. Every Friday we read with them for half an hour. The Grade 2s pick the books. Their teacher says they read aloud with more confidence now. Our school is also getting new basketball hoops. Grade 8 students learn patience. Some of the books are really long.

• Unity: the basketball hoops have nothing to do with buddy reading, so they go. The long books are on topic but, as written, support nothing.
• Coherence: each sentence starts fresh, with no link to the one before. The benefit to the Grade 8s arrives from nowhere, and nothing says why reading to a seven-year-old teaches patience.

Our Friday buddy-reading program helps the Grade 2 students, and it helps us just as much. For half an hour each week, every Grade 8 reads with one younger buddy, who chooses the book. For the Grade 2s, that means a reader who listens and never rushes them, and their teacher says most of them now read aloud with more confidence than they did in September. For us, the benefit is patience. Reading the same dinosaur book for the fourth Friday in a row teaches you to care more about your buddy's progress than about your own boredom.

• Order: what the program is, the benefit to them, the benefit to us.
• Transitions and key words: For the Grade 2s and For us mark the two halves, and helps, buddy and benefit keep the point in view.
• Evidence where there was none: the long books came back as four Fridays of one dinosaur book. Now they prove the patience.

The storm was really bad. We went into the basement. The wind was very loud. The lights went out. We were scared. It was over in ten minutes.

The sky over the canola field turned the colour of a bruise. By the time Dad yelled for us, hail was already bouncing off the deck, so we ran for the basement. Above us, the wind howled through the vents. Then the lights died. In the dark, my little sister found my hand and squeezed until my fingers hurt. Ten minutes later, it was over.

• Variety: six sentences that all began with The, We or It and ran three to six words become six that open six ways and run from four words to twenty. Then the lights died is short on purpose: it lands the way the dark does.
• Precise words: really bad and very loud become a bruise-coloured sky, bouncing hail and a wind that howled. The lights did not go out; they died.
• A feeling shown, not named: We were scared becomes a hand squeezed until it hurts.

Tone has to fit the reader. The same complaint to a friend, then to the principal:

• “The washrooms by the gym are gross and nobody ever fixes anything.”
• “Two of the taps in the washrooms by the gym have been broken since October, and I wanted to make sure you knew.”

The second swaps a feeling (gross) and a blame (nobody ever) for a fact someone can act on, and its polite, specific tone makes acting easy. Revising for tone means rereading your draft as the person it is for.

• A retelling that changes the events, or lets the new narrator know what they could not.
• A sentence that is on the topic but does not support the paragraph's point.
• Transitions stuck on the front — firstly, secondly — instead of real links between ideas.
• Varying sentences by making them all long.
• Very plus a weak word where one precise word would do.
• A tone that slips, such as slang in a letter to the principal.