Abstract
Revision is a key aspect of professional literary writing. (Sullivan, 2013) Using the
keystroke logger Inputlog (Leijten & Van Waes, 2013), eleven Dutch and Flemish
authors recorded their processes for our study into born-digital literary writing. To
discover how they use revision and what they revise during the composition of short
stories, the revisions from three of these processes were manually classified using a
genre-specific taxonomy. Existing taxonomies generally follow Faigley & Witte's
(1985) broad distinction between meaning-changing, meaning-preserving and
surface revisions. Extensions have been created to subdivide these categories.
These extensions are usually genre-specific (e.g. Yang et al, 2017 for Wikipedia
edits, or Conijn & Schultz, 2020 for academic essays). Existing taxonomies did not,
however, allow for a subdivision within meaning-changing revisions that are relevant
for literary narrative texts. This is why I opted for a new semantic categorisation
which acknowledges that both stylistic and narrative changes can affect meaning.
For this collection of nearly 5000 revisions, the process characteristics were also
registered. In specific, I modelled the potential connections between preceding
pause time, linguistic level, the revisions' locations (contextuality) as well as their
timing within the multi-session processes. Significant correlations were found
between process characteristics and the semantic labels of the revisions. These
indicate that cognitive effort is higher for both stylistic and narrative revisions when
compared to surface revisions. Different linguistic units were affected for the different
categories of revisions. At pre-contextual locations (within incomplete sentences, see
Lindgren et al, 2019) writers focussed on different aspects of their stories then at
contextual locations. Also, the writers had unique revision profiles, in particular with
regards to their pause behaviour, but also with regards to the amount and the
proportion of revisions with a semantic impact. Over time, they focussed more and
more on stylistic aspects rather than narrative changes.
keystroke logger Inputlog (Leijten & Van Waes, 2013), eleven Dutch and Flemish
authors recorded their processes for our study into born-digital literary writing. To
discover how they use revision and what they revise during the composition of short
stories, the revisions from three of these processes were manually classified using a
genre-specific taxonomy. Existing taxonomies generally follow Faigley & Witte's
(1985) broad distinction between meaning-changing, meaning-preserving and
surface revisions. Extensions have been created to subdivide these categories.
These extensions are usually genre-specific (e.g. Yang et al, 2017 for Wikipedia
edits, or Conijn & Schultz, 2020 for academic essays). Existing taxonomies did not,
however, allow for a subdivision within meaning-changing revisions that are relevant
for literary narrative texts. This is why I opted for a new semantic categorisation
which acknowledges that both stylistic and narrative changes can affect meaning.
For this collection of nearly 5000 revisions, the process characteristics were also
registered. In specific, I modelled the potential connections between preceding
pause time, linguistic level, the revisions' locations (contextuality) as well as their
timing within the multi-session processes. Significant correlations were found
between process characteristics and the semantic labels of the revisions. These
indicate that cognitive effort is higher for both stylistic and narrative revisions when
compared to surface revisions. Different linguistic units were affected for the different
categories of revisions. At pre-contextual locations (within incomplete sentences, see
Lindgren et al, 2019) writers focussed on different aspects of their stories then at
contextual locations. Also, the writers had unique revision profiles, in particular with
regards to their pause behaviour, but also with regards to the amount and the
proportion of revisions with a semantic impact. Over time, they focussed more and
more on stylistic aspects rather than narrative changes.
| Original language | English |
|---|---|
| Pages | 52-53 |
| Number of pages | 1 |
| Publication status | Published - 26 Jun 2024 |
| Event | Sig Writing 2024: ways2write - University of Nanterre Paris, Paris, France Duration: 26 Jun 2024 → 28 Jun 2024 Conference number: 20 https://www.earli.org/sig-writing-2024-conference-programme |
Conference
| Conference | Sig Writing 2024 |
|---|---|
| Country/Territory | France |
| City | Paris |
| Period | 26/06/2024 → 28/06/2024 |
| Internet address |