#novel revision

In my last post, I mentioned why it can be beneficial to self-edit before we finish writing our first draft. If we leave big issues in the beginning, they’re harder to fix later without breaking the story. Problems in a manuscript can snowball faster than your neighbor’s flooding bathtub leaking through your ceiling.

Going back to fix a problem actually helped me move forward with a stronger story. But as we know, there are rewards as well as pitfalls to going back when we’re trying to power through a manuscript.

Recognizing Our Own Writing Flaws

I’m in a unique position of helping authors diagnose their story issues, so that mental muscle of mine is in fairly good shape. But not everyone has that charging in the background 24/7. It’s difficult to banish blind spots and see our own errors. Especially when we’re frolicking in creativity and dishing out the wittiest lovers’ banter. (Ooh, banter!)

So how do you gain self-awareness?

Oncoming Writer’s Block: If you’re familiar with the symptoms of writer’s block, you might sense your writing momentum becoming a bit erratic or slowing down. This absolutely happens to me. I’ll be looking for which way to go in a story, experimenting a bit, while writing becomes less fun. That’s a sign to look back at what you have so far with a critical eye. Something might not be working right that’s stalling you.

Playing the Reader: Part of getting a sense of perspective is putting yourself in a reader’s shoes. Would a reader be intrigued? Bored? Confused? If so, which moment triggered those reactions for you? Sometimes you need a few days to clear your mind and become the reader, and that’s totally okay—even necessary.

Testing Your Idea: It helps to test your story idea on a writing buddy, a friend, or your editor. Will they see some weak conflict or a hole in your character’s reasoning? Or one issue causing a lot of little problems? If so, that could eventually lead you to the Saggy Middle of Doom while you’re writing. Rework your idea to prevent issues later.

Being Brave: It takes some real backbone to look at the issues in your own story. Realizing our writing flaws doesn’t come from a place of skittish doubt or failure. It actually comes from a brave place, a place of courage. That you’re willing to ask yourself “Can this be stronger? Can this be more creative? More unexpected?” and then taking care to fix those issues.

Getting Stuck in Early Revisions

Is this like one of those dreams where we’re running through high water or thick mud and we can never get faster and closer to our destination? Because I hate those dreams.

We might feel the same sense of frustration in early revision. We don’t always want to look back at our work when we’re in the middle of our first draft. Because the temptation to over-edit and get stuck in the weeds is a very real risk.

But it doesn’t have to be.

Big perspective: If you find yourself tweaking character expressions and the smallest details, you should probably move on. What if you spend all that time on the little things only to realize later that the scene needs to be cut?

Grinding teeth: When I have an itch to redecorate my apartment, I’ll wander my living room without purpose, mindlessly rearranging things. But I haven’t actually brought anything new to freshen the room. I’ve just been switching around the decor items on my shelf. Nothing is changing.

If you’re rearranging the same sentences over and over to no effect, that’s a sign to move on and continue writing.

Are there any tricks and insights you use for yourself?

Don’t get bogged down in your draft. Sign up to take the overwhelm out of revision.

As soon as you step outside in the morning, you see that a raccoon overturned your garbage bins and left piles of trash all over your driveway.

Cleaning it up left you frazzled and running late that you hit traffic. After an hour’s commute, you get to work and realize you forgot your security badge to enter the office.

By mid-morning you spill coffee in your lap and have to wear your long coat to a meeting to hide the stain, but now you’re too warm and sweating, trying not to pass out from a self-induced heat wave.

Can the universe just give you a do-over?

We can’t control the craziness of life, but we can control what happens in our manuscript.

I’m a believer in finishing a first draft. Methods like NaNoWriMo and bloodshot-eyed determination allow us to power through our writing, getting as many words on the page as possible, and not look back. Sometimes we’re even afraid to look back.

But in my recent writing project, I felt that something wasn’t working as well as it could’ve been.

My heroine was being hunted by an outlaw and found temporary refuge in a small town. Immediately, she was accepted and encouraged by the friendly women there. I thought this would balance out the danger aspect I was slowly building and the love-hate dynamic with the hero.

Wrong.

When my heroine didn’t have her occasional encounters with the outlaw, the story was too comfortable. And stale. The town was too nice. The hero too charming. The danger too infrequent.

Despite my earlier plotting and planning, I was only 10,000 words into my novel when I felt that some important things weren’t clicking.

So, I did the one thing that makes many writers gasp and wrinkle their noses: I went back and revised those 10,000 words, instead of going forward and promising to fix it later.

Why? Because the magic of early self-editing actually pays off later in second- and third-draft revisions.

Nathan Bransford says,“There is one very simple and important reason why you should self-edit: problems can snowball.“

If a character has to start with an entirely different mindset, all of those inner thoughts and interactions need to be changed. Or if we decide halfway through that our protagonist should have an injured leg for most of the novel, we have to adjust all of his actions.

This becomes an incredible amount of work to do while ensuring the story still makes sense and that the foundation isn’t shaky and broken in places.

I followed this advice firsthand and got great results.

Granted, sometimes we don’t see the problem until we finish writing the draft. But if we do see it early…self-editing is all about preventing chaos later.

Like that day from hell, mistakes pile up and we want a do-over. Luckily in novel writing, we get plenty of do-overs.

Need help revising your novel? It’s what I do.

Revising a novel can feel like you’re standing at the beginning of an unending, cracked desert and have no idea how to get to the other side. Your mouth goes dry. As does every other impulse.

But in order to get from a crappy first draft to a polished manuscript, you have to go through that desert. Well equipped.

Step 1: Play the Reader

Spend at least two weeks away from your completed first draft. You’ve just written The End so… Get drunk. Take that shower. Feed the cat. And get fresh perspective. Then forget that you’re this fabulous writer orchestrating your story’s destiny.

You heard me. Forget it.

Take a backseat and simply be a reader, settling into your book as if for the first time. And read your entire story from beginning to end.

And when you do this, make time. You want to read, if not all at once, then in big chunks. Don’t take long breaks. This will allow you to keep the entire story in your head in a short amount of time and really give you that broad view of the plot, characters, and overall flow.

Step 2: Take Notes, Notes, Notes

You’ve stepped back from all the details to see what you’ve really created. (Ahhh, my trainwreck.) There were some jewels, but maybe it’s not as good as you thought it was.

Don’t despair. Resist the I’M A TERRIBLE WRITER AND WILL DIE ALONE IN A DARK ALLEY WHILE CATS EAT MY CARCASS feeling. And take a deep breath.

Any story problem can be fixed.Trust me, I’m a professional.

Besides, you wrote a full draft! Most people haven’t even done that. They were binge-netflixing House Hunters instead. (I should really quit that show.)

The good news is: while you were reading, you were mentally gathering first impressions.

And with all the pens at your disposal, or highlighting tool, or commenting tool, now’s the time to jot down these impressions—any big story elements you found problematic. Ideas and areas that strike you as odd or not yet right.

Maybe you have too many unnecessary scenes that can be combined or deleted to tighten the pacing.

Character goals weren’t clearly stated.

The plot is like an unmanned airplane taking a nosedive.

The middle is lagging, dragging, sagging.

Things feels too safe and boring.

Or maybe an idea needs further exploration and time in the story.

The BIG stuff.  

When you take your notes, resist the temptation to go deep into your manuscript and lose your way. Just jot them down, and keep going.

Step 3: Re-imagine, Rewrite, or Search and Destroy

This is where you’ll do the most heavy lifting in your manuscript. Think of it as fixing the holes in your ship before picking out the window treatments.

The good news is:

When you made all of your notes, you were giving yourself a map to follow.

But what might some big issues really look like?

I love examples. Examples save lives.

Maybe you’re noticing your hero, Kevin, lacks integrity throughout his journey. He’s declared to the reader he’s a nice guy. But in the next chapter, he’s impatiently banging his fist on a door to a lawyer’s office, and when a lowly clerk shows him in with a stuttering apology, Kevin thinks “You idiot!” You notice things like this are happening from scene to scene. And Kevin isn’t schizophrenic. (I see this too often in alpha heroes.)

Maybe your heroine Lisa keeps running into all sorts of trouble (late to a meeting, forgets a baby shower gift, gets stuck in traffic) and while there are all these difficulties, you realize there’s not one moment of real conflict driving the story. Then you get to the Saggy Middle of Doom. And somehow the story, broken pieces and all, coasts to the HEA ending.

Maybe there are dumps of info scattered throughout the book. And backstory seems poorly timed, but you don’t know where to put it. Or the info isn’t directly relating to the plot, but you like it. Or there’s too much info and it’s repeating everywhere.

The thing with big issues is: they’re easy to diagnose.

With Kevin, he simply needs to be straightened out, where he makes kinder decisions (kindness through strength), where the telling and showing need to match up better. You can follow his thread from scene to scene and make the necessary adjustments. All of this may affect his character arc too.

With Lisa, poor Lisa, she has no antagonist creating obstacles or pushing against her. OR she doesn’t know what she wants. What’s motivating her? What does she want that the antagonist keeps dangling just out of her reach? You may have to do some rewrites to make sure that conflict is prevalent in every chapter. That she is making it harder for the antagonist and that the antagonist is making it harder for her (like a seesaw).

As with info dumps and fat lumps, we’ve all got them. Paragraphs of backstory maybe aren’t fitting the way you want them to because the info isn’t prompted by a character’s thoughts or actions. It just feels random. Once you supply those prompts and triggers, and clear away repetitions, the story will flow in a natural way.

Ta-da!

Let’s review:

1. Read your manuscript with fresh eyes.

2. Take notes of your first impressions (this is your road map!)

3. Brainstorm new solutions, rewrite, or destroy.

After the big stuff is fixed, you can focus on the emotional cues, adjust the smaller beats, pretty-up the setting, play with words—the FUN stuff.

As for the fat lumps, I’m still convinced wine is the answer.