Revision Process

I was asked to tell what I did for the Iowa City revision. It ended up being completely different from the draft, a complete rewrite. The biggest change was the structure. I wanted to focus more on the emotion of the piece and the theme of music. The two major parts of the story would be about the homeless man and the pianist. I needed to tie them together somehow and the music theme would work for that. I ended up cutting or condensing alot of what I'd already written and focusing on the parts that would offer the most "sound". I made a list of the parts I wanted.

Intro

Relaxing plaza

Homeless man

Old man music

Young guy music

Missed homeless man

Alleyway

Then I wanted to keep with the theme, make it seem like each part was part of a song so I gave each part a letter and a number of notes.

Intro

Relaxing plaza A 4 notes baby one of them

Homeless man B 4 notes

Old man music C 4 notes

Young guy music D 2 notes

Missed homeless man E missed note

Alleyway F break

Then I marked down the emotion or idea each note would have.

A

-Harsh traffic 1

-Rise and fall people 2

-Nature sounds 3

-Baby 4

B

-Good natured 1

-Uncomfortable, sweet 2

-Scary 3

-Evocative 4

C

-Distant 1

-Busy 2

-Enjoy 3

-End 4

D

-Funny

-Sad

Then, based on how I wanted the emotions/ideas to go, I started making an order using the note symbols

A1 E B1 C1 A2 B2 C2 C3 B3 F A3 B4 D2 A4 C4

I used the symbol order to start the structure of the piece and then I changed it when I felt I needed to. I also wrote it out by hand which I think helped since this was basically a completely new piece and I think handwriting it gave me a better feel for what I was saying. The whole process took a while but I think it helped in the long run. Charting the emotions was probably the most useful part and having something like a map made writing a little easier.