How do you unfamiliarize yourself from your WIP? It was not a term I had heard before when it came to revising my works. But apparently this is a thing and not only a thing but I took a class on it this past Saturday at the writers conference.

When you hear what I am about to write some you will nod and think I knew that one like I did. Some, I did not.

Here we go:

– read your work out loud or have someone read it to you out loud.

– change the font of your work

– change the title of your work a number of ways

– change the gender of your main character

– change the pronoun

– try a new opening

It does not drastically change your WIP but it makes you view it as different in comparison to one that you have read a thousand times before. You know what I mean? You know it so well you skip over lines, words and things that need to be edited just because you are so familiar with it.

The class was amazing and the instructor as well. When he informed us we had 10 minutes left so it was time for questions I was bummed out that it had gone by that quickly.

I believe I will try some of what I learn in hopes of improving my WIPs from now on in hopes it makes it shine more. For after all that is the whole point of revisions which is to make your work shine as much as possible.