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oEPISTLES FROM A GOBLIN PRINCESSo
REVISIONS <Cue the Spooky Music>
Posted 21st August 2011 at 09:46 PM by Teresa Edgerton
Updated 23rd December 2012 at 06:18 AM by Teresa Edgerton
Updated 23rd December 2012 at 06:18 AM by Teresa Edgerton
Instead of the entry I was planning to post this time, I've decided to post this one instead because it seems more timely in terms of discussions taking place on the forums. (Weekly posts are beginning to be too much, so I'll probably be adding something every 10-14 days.)
Some writers love doing revisions. Now that they have taken care of the basics they can have fun filling in the details. Others regard the process as sheer drudgery, after the purely creative phase where ideas flowed freely. Most are intimidated by the amount of work ahead. It doesn’t have to be that way.
One way to avoid being intimidated is to remind yourself that you don’t have to fix everything at once; you can do this over successive drafts. See this as an opportunity to deepen your connection with your world and characters. Also remember that whenever you look back on your most recent draft and think to yourself, “This will never do” it means you have learned something that you didn’t know before you began: maybe something you can apply to the next draft, maybe something you can apply to the next book. People without the capacity to learn always believe that everything they write is perfect, without editing, without revision. If you can see your mistakes, you can learn to fix them.
On the first pass you should concentrate most of your attention on the most serious problems. Look for places where you went completely off -track in terms of the plot and/or characters. Do your characters act in a manner consistent with their own needs and desires, or do you think that readers will see your hand manipulating them? Does the dialogue sound natural? Do all of the characters, regardless of their age or condition in life, sound exactly alike? Are there flaws in your worldbuilding? Have you created a society that is simply untenable, located vast woodlands in the rainshadow of the mountains, and established your landlocked nation as a great power at sea? This is also the time when you may have to rewrite the beginning to incorporate all of the new things you learned — in terms of your craft, in terms of your story — by the time you were writing the final chapters. This can be one of the most enjoyable parts, because you can actually see your progress. Look for plot holes, but also for missed opportunities.
You should make the most drastic revisions first, because they might require more substantial cuts, more sweeping changes, than you anticipate. There is no use polishing a scene or chapter to perfection if it going to be cut or largely rewritten, and not least because it will make it that much harder to find the gumption to cut them out.
But before you make those drastic revisions, consider this:
When a major problem first comes to your attention, the task ahead may seem overwhelming, as you imagine that the only way to fix it will involve ripping out large sections and rewriting them from scratch. It could mean that, yes, and it often does, but sometimes small changes can achieve much. A sentence here, a paragraph there, sometimes a rewritten scene or chapter, may throw an entirely new light on what you already have. As all parts of a novel should work together to tell the story, so subtle changes in one area may impact others in surprisingly effective ways. It's like the ripple effect when you throw a stone into a pool of water.
If an agent or an editor asks you to make a specific change, take a few days to think things over before convincing yourself that it goes against absolutely everything you mean the book to be. Speaking from my own experience, I’ve*often found the idea I utterly reject one day may look much better the next, because all of the time my conscious mind was saying, “No, no, no,” my subconscious was busily at work transforming that idea and fitting it into my original scheme. Almost invariably this meant the changes involved were fewer and smaller than I originally thought. In such cases, what it usually amounts to is altering the reader’s perceptions rather than altering the plot or characters.
How does this work? In the first chapters of a book readers are forming impressions, of people, places, invented societies, impressions that might prove indelible — like hating a character you want them to like. In the absence of other information, they may take the only details they've seen as representative of the whole. So suppose that your protagonist makes two or three cutting, sarcastic remarks in the first chapter. All through the rest of the book, he is kind, understanding, sympathetic, but readers have already made up their minds that he has a sharp tongue and a malicous sense of humor. They are looking for sarcasm in everything he says, and because they are expecting it, of course they find it. You love the dialogue in the first chapter: it’s clever, snappy, your writing group applauds it. But it gives a false impression of your main character. Change those three lines and you alter readers’ perceptions. With no false impression at the beginning, they can see that character for who he is; instead of sarcasm, they read sincerity into everything he says. Yes, sometimes it can be just that easy.
So the first thing you should do when faced with a problem is determine whether you can fix it with such small, subtle changes, or if major surgery is required. The catch, of course, is that even when you know in your heart that surgery is indicated, the sheer amount of work involved may send you scuttling for a box of bandaids instead. You need to be honest with yourself, never leave things as they are only because it is the easiest way, and don’t keep scenes, subplots, or characters that no longer work simply because you have developed a sentimental attachment. Learn to be ruthless. You may be pleasantly surprised by the result. I once had to throw out and rewrite an entire third of a book. I've never regretted doing so, because in completely rethinking that part of the book I came up with something I liked much, much more. (In addition, it gave me an incredible sense of virtue because I was willing to sacrifice so many chapters for the greater good. Enjoy your triumphs. You can fix the things that still aren’t quite right in the next draft.)
The second thing to do is try to think of changes that will be organic to the story.
Before you attempt to invent your way out of a problem, look to see if the solution is already there. Frequently it is. Suppose that you are writing a mystery novel. You have devised a fiendishly clever way for the murderer to poison his victim, and he pulls it off. But when revising the novel you suddenly realize that he has made a serious mistake, one that will inevitably lead to another character putting the evidence together and accusing him of the crime — long before you want anyone to so much as suspect him. To avoid this happening, the murderer must claim another victim, but without the meticulous planning that went into his previous crime, and with the first weapon that comes to hand. There is absolutely no reason for you to invent an antique dagger of oriental design (and then explain why it’s there), if you have already put a loaded revolver on the mantlepiece in an earlier chapter.
Your job, when this kind of problem comes up, is to search through your book for that loaded revolver. If it isn't there, then, yes, it may be necessary to introduce something new, but look for the revolver first.
(Continued in next post because the whole article contains too many characters.)
REVISIONS
How to Handle them and Still Retain Your Sanity
Part I
How to Handle them and Still Retain Your Sanity
Part I
Some writers love doing revisions. Now that they have taken care of the basics they can have fun filling in the details. Others regard the process as sheer drudgery, after the purely creative phase where ideas flowed freely. Most are intimidated by the amount of work ahead. It doesn’t have to be that way.
One way to avoid being intimidated is to remind yourself that you don’t have to fix everything at once; you can do this over successive drafts. See this as an opportunity to deepen your connection with your world and characters. Also remember that whenever you look back on your most recent draft and think to yourself, “This will never do” it means you have learned something that you didn’t know before you began: maybe something you can apply to the next draft, maybe something you can apply to the next book. People without the capacity to learn always believe that everything they write is perfect, without editing, without revision. If you can see your mistakes, you can learn to fix them.
On the first pass you should concentrate most of your attention on the most serious problems. Look for places where you went completely off -track in terms of the plot and/or characters. Do your characters act in a manner consistent with their own needs and desires, or do you think that readers will see your hand manipulating them? Does the dialogue sound natural? Do all of the characters, regardless of their age or condition in life, sound exactly alike? Are there flaws in your worldbuilding? Have you created a society that is simply untenable, located vast woodlands in the rainshadow of the mountains, and established your landlocked nation as a great power at sea? This is also the time when you may have to rewrite the beginning to incorporate all of the new things you learned — in terms of your craft, in terms of your story — by the time you were writing the final chapters. This can be one of the most enjoyable parts, because you can actually see your progress. Look for plot holes, but also for missed opportunities.
You should make the most drastic revisions first, because they might require more substantial cuts, more sweeping changes, than you anticipate. There is no use polishing a scene or chapter to perfection if it going to be cut or largely rewritten, and not least because it will make it that much harder to find the gumption to cut them out.
But before you make those drastic revisions, consider this:
When a major problem first comes to your attention, the task ahead may seem overwhelming, as you imagine that the only way to fix it will involve ripping out large sections and rewriting them from scratch. It could mean that, yes, and it often does, but sometimes small changes can achieve much. A sentence here, a paragraph there, sometimes a rewritten scene or chapter, may throw an entirely new light on what you already have. As all parts of a novel should work together to tell the story, so subtle changes in one area may impact others in surprisingly effective ways. It's like the ripple effect when you throw a stone into a pool of water.
If an agent or an editor asks you to make a specific change, take a few days to think things over before convincing yourself that it goes against absolutely everything you mean the book to be. Speaking from my own experience, I’ve*often found the idea I utterly reject one day may look much better the next, because all of the time my conscious mind was saying, “No, no, no,” my subconscious was busily at work transforming that idea and fitting it into my original scheme. Almost invariably this meant the changes involved were fewer and smaller than I originally thought. In such cases, what it usually amounts to is altering the reader’s perceptions rather than altering the plot or characters.
How does this work? In the first chapters of a book readers are forming impressions, of people, places, invented societies, impressions that might prove indelible — like hating a character you want them to like. In the absence of other information, they may take the only details they've seen as representative of the whole. So suppose that your protagonist makes two or three cutting, sarcastic remarks in the first chapter. All through the rest of the book, he is kind, understanding, sympathetic, but readers have already made up their minds that he has a sharp tongue and a malicous sense of humor. They are looking for sarcasm in everything he says, and because they are expecting it, of course they find it. You love the dialogue in the first chapter: it’s clever, snappy, your writing group applauds it. But it gives a false impression of your main character. Change those three lines and you alter readers’ perceptions. With no false impression at the beginning, they can see that character for who he is; instead of sarcasm, they read sincerity into everything he says. Yes, sometimes it can be just that easy.
So the first thing you should do when faced with a problem is determine whether you can fix it with such small, subtle changes, or if major surgery is required. The catch, of course, is that even when you know in your heart that surgery is indicated, the sheer amount of work involved may send you scuttling for a box of bandaids instead. You need to be honest with yourself, never leave things as they are only because it is the easiest way, and don’t keep scenes, subplots, or characters that no longer work simply because you have developed a sentimental attachment. Learn to be ruthless. You may be pleasantly surprised by the result. I once had to throw out and rewrite an entire third of a book. I've never regretted doing so, because in completely rethinking that part of the book I came up with something I liked much, much more. (In addition, it gave me an incredible sense of virtue because I was willing to sacrifice so many chapters for the greater good. Enjoy your triumphs. You can fix the things that still aren’t quite right in the next draft.)
The second thing to do is try to think of changes that will be organic to the story.
Before you attempt to invent your way out of a problem, look to see if the solution is already there. Frequently it is. Suppose that you are writing a mystery novel. You have devised a fiendishly clever way for the murderer to poison his victim, and he pulls it off. But when revising the novel you suddenly realize that he has made a serious mistake, one that will inevitably lead to another character putting the evidence together and accusing him of the crime — long before you want anyone to so much as suspect him. To avoid this happening, the murderer must claim another victim, but without the meticulous planning that went into his previous crime, and with the first weapon that comes to hand. There is absolutely no reason for you to invent an antique dagger of oriental design (and then explain why it’s there), if you have already put a loaded revolver on the mantlepiece in an earlier chapter.
Your job, when this kind of problem comes up, is to search through your book for that loaded revolver. If it isn't there, then, yes, it may be necessary to introduce something new, but look for the revolver first.
(Continued in next post because the whole article contains too many characters.)
Total Comments 2
Comments
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All good thoughts. (But then I enjoy revising, so it's preaching to the converted!)
One small point I'd like to add -- if it does come to tearing out bits, whether odd paragraphs, pages or entire chapters, keep them safe somewhere. It's always possible that the two paragraphs of description which slowed down chapter 1 to a crawling pace fit perfectly into the mood of revamped chapter 14, and illustrate the thoughts of the different POV character better, to boot.Posted 22nd August 2011 at 02:43 PM by The Judge
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I do cover shifting things to where they are more relevant in Part II, but I neglected to mention saving them first. Many is the time that I've had to frantically dig through the wastepaper basket looking for the hard copy of a brilliant passage I deleted from the computer file, and suddenly realize that it works somewhere else after all.Posted 23rd August 2011 at 09:07 PM by Teresa Edgerton
