Favorite Revision Process

[popmuze]

Now that I'm down to the last 5,000 words on my WIP, I'm thinking ahead to the next step.

This has been a very tight draft, I think. I've re-read the book a few times along the way, fixing some stuff that didn't work. It really feels complete, not just an attempt to get all my thoughts on paper and then go back and really write it. It's all written.

Of course, I felt this about my last book in 2002, after spending eight months on the first draft. This book is only now just starting to make the rounds through my agent. I wasted a lot of time and valuable contacts showing the manuscript around too soon.

Although I do have an agent now (and have published three other novels in the past), I'm wondering whether I'm jumping the gun again. Maybe a few betas should intervene.

How do you all approach revision?

[orion_mk3]

I wish I had a coherent process, but I think I'm evolving one.

One of the things that I like to do is break the draft up into its component parts and label them, then re-order and re-write the story as necessary. I'll take a character that doesn't show up in prose very often, like # or %, and then affix that, a number, and a brief description to each segment of the text.

I'll make a list of all the numbers and descriptions, and play around with cuts and rearrangements in a copy of the document. I used this method to great effect in my mist recent completed work, using it to combine rewritten material from three very different drafts with new writing. Once I've got enough to work with, it's a very exciting process, as the story is literally coming together from disparate pieces.

[S.H.P.]

I just read and read it again and again and again, and print out a hard copy, and read each chapter out loud. I do catch a ton of simple mistakes, but not really huge ungood ones.

[Judg]

Well, I can't talk about what I have done, because this will be the first time for me. As I wrote, I made notes on things I would have to go back and change, because the story evolved from what I thought it would be. In my first revision, I will incorporate these changes and read through looking primarily for plot coherence, pacing, structure, the big picture. Some chapters will be deleted altogether and a couple will require a massive re-write. For most of the rest it should be mainly tinkering, adding description, slowing some parts down, speeding others up, that sort of thing.

Then I'll do another draft where I will do line editing. I'll probably start with a series of searches for problem words and phrases and then do a careful reading to make the prose as tight as I can't and polish it to a high lustre. Somewhere in there, I'll read it aloud and hopefully catch a few more problems that way.

Then I will give it to beta readers and make any changes that seem to be required after that, especially if there are parts that most of them found confusing.

So that's the plan. If anybody has suggestions on how to improve it, I'm open.

[Qui]

Fun thing I do: Listen to your computer read it aloud. Computers don't forgive.

[Matera the Mad]

First let it sit and rot for a month. Forget about it. Then pretend you just found it and read it. Weep. Start fixing. Repeat process as often as necessary.

[DWSTXS]

I read it like I'm reading someone else's novel........and as soon as I see crap, I start cutting...........i try to be brutal....so my feelings won't get hurt when the publisher eventually starts doing the same...........

[Scrawler]

I print a copy, curl up in the corner with a colored pen and rewrite most of it.

[caromora]

I divide the story into its acts (I typically use four act structure). I go through each act globally looking for pacing problems, characterization problems, etc. After I've gone through each act and made sure the story is what I want it to be, I go chapter by chapter and scene by scene polishing up the language.

Then I print it out and repeat the process.

[Raphee]

I've been revising for months now. Can't get it fixed. On my final few weeks and then it 's off to submission.
What I've learnt, before line editing and the wordsmithing; get the story, the characters and the plot in the right shape and structure. Then and only then do you start work on building up the novel.
Saves time and effort, later on.
Do it on screen or paper, whatever feels good.

[ascribe]

First let it sit and rot for a month. Forget about it. Then pretend you just found it and read it. Weep. Start fixing. Repeat process as often as necessary.

That about sums up my method too. What's annoying is no matter how many times I do this on computer, I still waste reams of paper when I find yet another thing that just isn't right.

[Erin]

Well, I can't talk about what I have done, because this will be the first time for me. As I wrote, I made notes on things I would have to go back and change, because the story evolved from what I thought it would be. In my first revision, I will incorporate these changes and read through looking primarily for plot coherence, pacing, structure, the big picture. Some chapters will be deleted altogether and a couple will require a massive re-write. For most of the rest it should be mainly tinkering, adding description, slowing some parts down, speeding others up, that sort of thing.

Then I'll do another draft where I will do line editing. I'll probably start with a series of searches for problem words and phrases and then do a careful reading to make the prose as tight as I can't and polish it to a high lustre. Somewhere in there, I'll read it aloud and hopefully catch a few more problems that way.



This is exactly what I do! It's a good process and this is my third time doing it. I have a list of things to look for when I start doing the tinkering then onto line editing and I'll put together a list of reptitive words to search and replace as I spot them. I'll do many pass throughs in line editing until I'm satisfied that nothing needs to change. Today, I'm starting revisions on a first draft I completed Tuesday. I have a 3 page list of things to add or change that I've tablulated throughout the first draft.

[Gigi Sahi]

When I completed my first novel, just for the heck of it, I retyped the entire ms--from memory--no peeking.

I learned A LOT. In comparing the first draft with the ms I retyped, I noticed: one, in my retyped version I forgot all the dull parts of the first draft. The retyped version had more dialogue. I also left out lots of adjectives and dialogue tags, which I thought were oh so brilliant the first time around. I re-wrote in active voice more. And I chopped a 100k ms down to 88k.

It was a daunting challenge, but I can't say enough about the payoff. It's now my default revision method. A little cooky, maybe, but I find it highly effective.

[Danger Jane]

I fix the big things first--plotlines I've changed since I wrote them, cutting/adding extra scenes, and sorting out characters. Then is the line crit. I love line critting. I like to solve my prose problems, for whatever reason. That's when I make each line count.

(Sometimes fixing big things means rewriting from memory a few weeks later)

[Nateskate]

For me it's like varnishing a floor. Sand and polish.

The problem is that I not only have a flawed first pass, but I make dumb mistakes on subsequent passes. So, editing is this laborious chore for me.

I will re-read what I wrote the day before- making corrections, and then proceed with the edit. Then when I'm done I put it aside before reading the story to see if it flows. Lol- I have first-pass envy- those writers who can keep a story flowing and only have to make minor edits when they're done.

[popmuze]

The whole first draft, start to finish, has taken about six weeks (working almost every day for at least 4-6 hours a day). I've also reread everything a few times. This is remarkably similar to the process by which I produced my first YA novel, which I sold based on the first three chapters (that'll never happen again). Every time I felt there was a problem with the plot or the chronology I've already gone back and fixed it, moving stuff, condensing stuff.

So I guess now it comes down to what a reader might think of the story, whether it's endlessly imaginative and delightful enough, if the characters are fully realized and compelling enough. I'm not sure there's any way, short of shipping it off to my agent for an opinion, that I can know that for sure on my own.

[Madison]

How do you all approach revision?

With a lot of chocolate and loud music!

Seriously, I wait as long as I can (usually 3 days...should be longer but I can never help myself) and then print the manuscript out. I read straight through - with a pen, correcting sentence structure, etc., - then when I'm done with that, I write down all my thoughts in a sometimes 6 page evaluation: notes on plot, character development, crappy scenes that made me wince. Then I turn that evaluation into a checklist and jump around fixing those problems. Then I read the thing through again. From there, it's a looser process - rereading, fixing certain scenes, until I feel it's perfect. But it's not, of course, so I wait a few days/weeks and have at it again. Usually takes me a month and a half before I read a finished draft.

The chocolate helps...