How to Revise A Novel© by Holly Lisle
All Rights Reserved
I'm revising my current novel right now, and I got to thinking
about what a pain it can be to get the thing right.
When you finally finish the first draft of your novel, the temptation
to just print it, box it, and start it on its rounds can be almost
overwhelming. By the time you've written anywhere from 90,000 to
150,000 words, you can be pretty tired of the storyline, the characters,
the plots and subplots, and you're generally itching to start that
new project, too -- the one that started creeping into your dreams
three or four months ago and that has now become almost an obsession.
But you can tremendously improve your chances of making your manuscript
marketable if you'll take the time to sit down and do one truly
ferocious pre-submission edit.
(For the record, I usually only revise anything I write one time
before I send it out the door. My revisions to editorial request
add another one or two times through the manuscript. I don't
do five or ten or twenty revisions. At that point, I'd be so stale
and jaded on the material that I wouldn't be any good on it anymore.)
Here's how I revise a book before submitting it for the first time;
this process eliminates a lot of the editorial requests for revision
that I would otherwise get, and for those of you who have not yet
sold anything, will make it a lot more likely that your book will
sell in the first place. There are, of course, other ways of doing
this. This is mine.
- First, gather materials.
You can't do a decent, deep revision of your book without a printed
manuscript copy of it. Don't try revising on the computer
screen. Words look and feel different on the printed page that
they do on a monitor, and you'll find mistakes in hard copy that
your eye would slide right over on the screen. So you'll need:
- A manuscript copy of your novel, appropriately double-spaced
and with wide margins. Don't go with anything less than
an inch and a quarter all the way around.
- A new single-subject spiral-bound notebook -- you'll
be writing down continuity errors in this, ideas that you'll
need to include later in the story, notes about threads you
dropped, and more.
- Pens with three or four colors of ink (colored ink
optional).
- The background notebook or notes that you created while
working on the book, plus any maps, charts, diagrams, character
descriptions, etc. that you used while you were writing it.
- Second, set a completion date for the revision.
You need to keep yourself going with deadlines. It's easy to fall
into a nasty cycle of second-guessing yourself, revising your
revisions, and never getting to the point of actually sending
the manuscript out. So you have to remind yourself that the
book you're writing right now isn't going to be the best book
you will ever write. (If it were, that would be really sad,
because it would mean your entire career from this moment on would
be downhill.) Your objective is to make it the best book that
you are capable of writing right now. Worry about next year next
year.
I can do a complete revision of a 125,000 novel in one to two
weeks. It might take you less time than that, or more -- but
if you're spending more than two or three months on this, consider
the possibility that you might be malingering because you've
developed a sudden case of cold feet about mailing the thing.
A little self-honesty never hurt -- much.
- If this scene introduces a new idea or new action, is it
something that I remembered to follow through all the way to
the end? If you add subplots, introduce new characters,
throw in red herrings or real herrings that you intend to make
use of at the end of the story, you have to make sure that you
pick up on them by the end of the book.
I'm a "kitchen sink" writer -- that is, if I have a good idea
while I'm writing but I'm not sure where it's going, I'll throw
it anyway and trust my subconscious to make it work. Most of
the time it does. Sometimes my imagination is a little too fertile
and I'll end up with promising subplots that simply vanish because
I forgot about them in the press of the main storyline. This
is the point where I mark each of those dropped threads and
figure out where I can fit it in (or else figure out how to
extract it without crashing the book.)
- Have you met the objectives of your story? Did you
resolve your theme and your major and minor character conflicts
(excluding those thrown in to give some meat to the next book
in a series, if relevant), bring your plot to a logical conclusion,
and give the reader something to cheer about at the end?
- Have you followed your header, chapter, and quote scheme
consistently? If you use subheads for each chapter at the
beginning, did you remember them at the end. (I didn't in this
current book. Oops!) Do you have quotes at the start of the
front chapters, but not the back ones? How about chapter titles?
Did you write out Chapter One at the start of the book,
but just go to 35 by the time you hit the end?
- Does this scene matter?Not "Is it well written?" or
"Is it interesting?" or "Do you love it because it's funny,
cool, sexy, or brilliantly written?" Does it matter?
Does it move the story forward, develop a character, flesh out
the plot, and create the forward momentum that will keep your
reader reading?
I've written a lot of great scenes and even some great chapters
that never survived to the mailing draft of the book. I fell
in love with my own writing, got distracted by secondary characters
that took off on a tangent, and because of the way I write,
I followed them. But in rereading, I discovered that I wasn't
following them anyplace that mattered to my book.
You have to be willing to ruthlessly cut stuff you love if
it serves no real purpose to your story -- at least if you hope
to be published.
- Have you demonstrated an acceptable level of literacy?
It isn't more important than everything above, but it is as
important. Is your spelling correct? Is your grammar grammatical?
Do your sentences parse logically? Do you have paragraphs, and
do the break at logical points? Do you use the best word for
what you're trying to say? Have you used a lot of unnecessary
words, or re-used the same word over and over and over?
- As you read, correct any little mistakes in the manuscript
margins.
This includes spelling and typing errors, awkward sentences, vague
bits of dialogue, and places that just don't read right as you
go through them. It also includes little continuity errors like
hair and eye color, height, age, and dialect. Those corrections
fit pretty well into margins and are easy to edit from page to
screen as is. Get rid of all those florid descriptions So do chapter,
section, and quote corrections.
- At the same time, mark off the big errors that you find.
These are the continuity and story errors that I described above.
These are rarely "fix-it-in-the-margin" errors. Mark each one
that you find with an asterisk, and in your spiral-bound notebook,
describe the problem you found and what you need to do to fix
it. For example:
"John Brown appears at the front door with a package for
Murphy, and is carrying a knife, but after Murphy opens the
package, I never use John Brown again. He needs to show up in
the parking lot scene before the end of the book and threaten
Murphy with the knife."
This is where different-colored ink comes in handy. If you
edit each day's work with a different colored ink (or rotate
between three or four) it becomes a whole lot easier to locate
your notes to yourself and connect them to the appropriate asterisk.
- When you finish your read-through, go back and start adding
pages.
Don't do this before you've done one complete read-through, because
as you get to the end of the book, you'll find places where you
jumped to conclusions that you'll need to support earlier in the
book. If you're a thrifty writer (as I try to be, since I always
seem to be writing with a constrictively short word limit -- and,
yes, there are days when fitting my 200,000 word idea into a 125,000
word novel can feel like writing haiku), you'll figure out ways
that you can kill two or three or even four really big goofs with
a single new scene.
- Finally, re-read the book in manuscript form one time after
your major edit.
Writing uses a lot of paper, a lot of toner, and a lot of time
and patience. But the end goal is to get your manuscript in front
of an editor who wants to buy it, and in order to do that, you
have to demonstrate professionalism. Don't edit, and then forget
to check your changes.
For the read-through of your manuscript, you can print it in
small type with small margins and on both sides of the paper
if you want. You're mostly going to see if you've introduced
any new mistakes with your new sections. I have discovered that
I always add a few spelling mistakes at this stage, and
invariably I'll take out part of a sentence, edit the rest of
it . . . and then leave a section of the old sentence dangling
there at the end. Don't just skim this part. Be vigilant.
- And when that's done, kick the thing out the door.
And have yourself a party. You've earned the right to celebrate.
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