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Novel Revisions



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Sun Oct 01, 2017 3:46 pm
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Mageheart says...



Hello! I'm currently about the embark on revisions for my novel, but I've never gotten this far with any of my previous books. Though I do have a list of things to change or elaborate on, I'm not sure about the process of novel revising in general. Do any of the more experienced novel writers here have any words of wisdom for revising, or is just like revising any other piece of literature?

Thank you in advance for any help that you can give!
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Sun Oct 01, 2017 4:32 pm
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StellaThomas says...



lol I am by no means an expert but I'll give it a go!

Step 1. Break Up With Draft 1.
The first thing I do is I let a project rest for a while. For me, this can be several months, but for you it might be a lot shorter! But I just don't think about it. I work on something else. I put distance between myself and that first draft. The reason is because to be a good editor, you need to be objective as possible. You need to be able to recognise what parts of your story are good, and what parts need improvement.

2. Reopen relations with Draft 1.

So after you feel like you're not still in an emotionally fraught relationship with that piece of work, take it back out of the drawer (real or theoretical), and read through from beginning to end. You probably - as you mentioned - already have a good idea of the changes you need to make. But as you read through you'll see other things that you mightn't haven noticed first time around! And opportunities will arise. For instance, one of the things I always have to do with new drafts is mention concepts that I forgot in the draft beforehand. Your read through will also show you where to put these.

Now, where I did this for the second draft I'm working on at the moment, was on Microsoft Word's review function, so that I have the notes right there in front of me. It's up to you how you do this, maybe you'd prefer your notes handwritten, or on sticky notes all over your monitor. You do you.

3. Bring Draft 1 on your date with Draft 2.

Okay, now, this is just me. And it largely depends on how big the changes you're making are. For instance, if you're overhauling the entire thing, Draft 1 isn't much use to you.

But, I've come to enjoy just copying the first draft into a new document, and working through it. Some chapters just get completely deleted and rewritten. But some only need minor changes. And if you used a review function or similar, you remind yourself when you have changes to make right then and there in the moment.

4. Remember what was good

If you read through a passage and think, "hey, that's actually okay, I'll leave that how it is" then do! That's totally fine.

5. And remember what was bad

Especially what was bad on the read-through. Remember the biggest changes you wanted to make. And make them.

It's honestly not as scary as it probably seems - it's probably more boring than anything.

Most of all, congratulations on finishing draft one and getting onto draft two! That's a miracle in itself.
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Sun Oct 01, 2017 6:17 pm
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BluesClues says...



Excellent advice, especially "break up with Draft 1" and "reopen relationships with Draft 1."

Before I reopen the relationship, if I've posted the first draft on YWS, I first consolidate all the reviews I've received into notes. I mostly focus on things that several people said, like if multiple people agreed the pacing was off in this or that spot, this or that plot line dropped off the face of the earth, this or that character didn't seem to do much for the story. I do that so all the things other people thought didn't work are fresh in my mind.

Then I do a read-through of the first draft and make more notes. Big-picture notes, mind you. I don't care at this point that this sentence is worded awkwardly or that that sentence doesn't make sense. Most of the individual sentences are probably going to change anyway. It's wasted energy to do line edits at this point.

I focus on things like plot progression (does it make sense?), pacing, characterization and character development. To a lesser extent, I consider things like description: do I have enough of it, too much of it, is that something I need to watch out for in the next draft.

Once I've done a read-through and have all my notes, this is where I start planning. I'm mostly a pantser for my first draft, it's very much discovery writing (although I generally have at least a broad idea of where things are going), but before revision planning is really important. The point of revision is to make the story better, more cohesive, and you can't really do that if you're still discovery writing. So this is the point where I try to write a clear synopsis, an outline, try to find all the weaknesses in the plot and address them so I can fix them in the next writing.

Once I've got the story more or less figured out, I start rewriting. Because my first draft is a discovery draft...my next draft tends to be really heavy on rewriting, vs. editing/revising, although I'll certainly use and revise parts that I like that I think still work with the reimagining of the story.
  





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Sun Oct 01, 2017 7:38 pm
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Carlito says...



I love all of the tips so far! You absolutely have to break up with your first draft and lose your emotional connection to it - not that you won't love the story anymore, but that the butterflies of yay look I finished it and it's so great are gone. I wait at least four months after finishing a draft before I start to seriously think about revisions because I need that much space from my previous draft.

I then look back at reviews or critiques that I've gotten from people and look for themes - the pacing here is bad, this character is annoying, I don't feel the connection between these two people, this plot line needs to be developed more, etc. Big picture things. Then I read the entire draft through and change absolutely nothing yet, just think about what isn't working and how I want to change things with thoughts from others in the back of my mind.

Like Blue, I totally pants a first draft and do virtually no plotting before I start. Before I start subsequent drafts I do much more plotting and really think about my character arcs and plot arcs and how I want to change the flaws of the first draft.

One thing I've found to be super helpful when plotting a new draft is to write a synopsis. A synopsis is essentially a 1-2 page summary of a novel and it's something an agent may want to see should you ever start querying agents. It's helpful to me because if there's something big missing in your story, a synopsis is going to catch it. It's also a nice snapshot of the major arc of your story. This is a resource I love for writing a synopsis that's geared towards romance books. This is the same sort of thing only for fiction in general.

I recently discovered this great blog post from an author about her revision process. She breaks it down into how she personally organizes all of the thoughts about what needs to change in the next draft and how to actually go about making all of the changes in an efficient way. I really like her approach and plan on trying it when I start revisions for one of my novels next year.

I've never taken the exact same approach with revisions in any of my novels. It's always an evolving process. So try not to put too much pressure on yourself and whether you're doing it right. There's no limit to how many rounds of revisions you can go through. :)
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Mon Oct 02, 2017 1:14 am
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Mea says...



Novel revisions are fun!!

First off, I agree with the tips everyone else has given, but I'll try to add a couple of my own.

When you re-read through the manuscript after however many months away, read as a reader first. Try to get out of the mindset that you're looking for issues in the story - the issues you notice despite reading it as a reader are the most glaring and the ones you'll want to fix right away. Most likely, those will be plot holes, pacing problems, and out-of-character characters.

Also, note down the moments that work, those moments that get you excited as a reader or you realize are just on the verge of being really powerful. Especially if you hugely pantsed the first draft, those moments are probably going to become the core of your new/heavily edited plot. Whatever you do, you want to refine those moments, and not accidentally get rid of them.

Once I have a list of changes I want to make, I usually make an outline scene-by-scene of how the current novel stands. Then I go through and cut stuff, add stuff, etc. until I have something semi-coherent again that reflects the changes I wanted to make. (And this is where I get detailed - I'll write at least a paragraph, often more, on each scene, to make sure I remember all the character bits that are supposed to go in there.)

At that point, I just went through and wrote the whole second draft based on my outline and assembled thoughts. Also, there's still definitely room for spontaneity in the second draft! Though I followed my outline pretty closely, I still left a lot of the details of the new scenes purposefully vague so I could come up with them as I went.

Hope that helped! Congrats on finishing the first draft, and good luck with the second!
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Mon Oct 02, 2017 5:55 pm
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Rosendorn says...



I know I said this on your status, but: rewrite the thing.

Like, just from the onset. Don't even try to salvage the plot. Revisions are the time where you go "okay, this story was a good try, but it's nowhere close to what it should be."

Re-enter every single word so you're not just working with what's there. When you can't just rely on what you already have, you're far more likely to make the drastic cuts and shifts that are required for getting a better story out of it.

Keep the document of the first draft pristine. Don't go back and make edits in the document, and do not under any circumstance delete it. Keeping a backlog of draft versions is a fun way to save progress, and who knows, you might end up with "oh there was this awesome line in this previous version where is it" and you'll want to not have that edited.

If you go into the mindset of novel revisions with "I am rewriting the plot, the stuff in the original might never make it back into the novel but the original is what made the story what it is now", you'll be much better off. I don't know a single author who doesn't make drastic, story-now-unrecognizable changes at some point. Doesn't matter how well you plotted it out before. Doesn't matter how well it came together as you were writing.

Commit to redoing it, and you'll have the courage to go headfirst into big picture edits.
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Wed Oct 04, 2017 10:58 pm
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Kale says...



I just want to 100% second @BlueAfrica's post-draft outline technique because it's one I use myself, and it works SO WELL when it comes to hashing out any major structural issues the story may have BEFORE you invest a lot of work into Draft 2 (or 1 in my case because I find it helpful to consider my discovery-written pile of word vomit Draft Zero, akin to Ground Zero of a disaster, because it is exactly that).

I actually work with two sets of outlines: one for the story as it stands in the first draft, and one for the revised draft. The first outline gets lots of notes and things like red pen "WHYYY???" and "Where did this plotline GO?" and "I don't remember writing this but it works so cool". The first draft outline usually winds up about as messy as the original draft, and so from that hot mess is distilled the essence of the second, much neater, outline.

From there, Draft 1 (or 2) emerges, and the later drafts can then focus on more micro things because thanks to all the outlining, I've usually gotten the macro stuff all hashed out and settled.

You might need more, though, which is also okay. Some stories just take more drafts than others, sometimes just to spite your screaming at them.
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