I taught a seven-week course on revision in a church basement. I had about a half dozen students, all of whom brought either a chapter from a longer work-in-progress, a short story, or personal essay. Aware that all of nature is an endless nesting of microcosms, that the atomic resembles the cosmic, I decided to try something new in my class. I had my students pair each paragraph with the one situationally opposite, then analyze them in relation to each other. On a handout I offered these suggestions: Do they resonate the same way? Is their timbre similar? Is there a repeated image? A connecting theme? An echoing or mirroring? A metaphor at play? Consider the center paragraph (or paragraphs); what is it doing (or what are they doing)? Observe any growth or change in the main character between the two paragraphs.
Afterward everyone shared their findings. They gasped at coincidences, laughed at double meanings, scribbled arrows and margin notes about grand revision plans. I was giddy at not only how eerily the paragraphs aligned, but also how useful and generative the process was, if even to simply reveal the author’s deeper intent and emotional wisdom— {read}