Writer's Craft Article
Fiction Fundamentals: Writing
Elbow Grease, Part 2
Revision
by Karen S. Wiesner
Based on Cohesive
Story Building, Volume
2: 3D Fiction Fundamentals Collection
In this three month, in-depth series,
we're going to go over what could be considered the grunge work in building a
cohesive story. Revising, editing, and polishing require a little or a lot of
writing elbow grease to finish the job and bring forth a strong and beautiful
book.
In the introduction to this
series, we discussed the process of entering the revision mindset. In this
second installment, we'll go over all things "revision".
STAGE
1: REVISING
Marguerite
Smith said, "Motivation is when your dreams put on work clothes." Revision can also be aptly described as
when your dreams put on work clothes. The process is equivalent to getting on
your hands and knees to scrub a filthy floor until it shines. It's the grunge
work of being a writer, but it's well worth the effort you put into it. And
revision and editing and polishing add a very definite extra layer to your
story. Without it, your story probably won't read smoothly, nor will it shine.
What's
the best way to revise? Below, we'll discuss ways to go about revision
effectively.
Minimizing
the Work
Let's first
talk about the difference between the revision process and the editing and
polishing process, because these, too, are separate jobs that can--but ideally shouldn't--take place at the same time.
These
writing processes are similar to what builders face. It's not unusual to
make design changes during construction, but builders want to minimize them.
Moving a wall, for instance, can be expensive, especially if it's already been
framed in and drywalled. During construction, periodic visits are made to the
building site in order to monitor the home's progress. This allows the owner
and builder to detect problems earlier and therefore take corrective action.
In the same way, in the
process of writing a book, you want to minimize major changes to your book,
like rewriting an entire story thread, or adding, deleting, or revising
multiple chapters--they'll cost you a lot of time and effort (hence the need
for an outline, where these kinds of revisions take only a fraction of that
time and effort). If you've gone back to your outline often while writing the
first draft to make sure your story is progressing the way it needs to, you'll
detect problems early and be able take corrective action. This prevents major
revisions at the end of a project, when you've already committed hundreds of
pages to a solid structure. Terry Brooks said about this: "I believe,
especially with long fiction, that an outline keeps you organized and focused
over the course of the writing. I am not wedded to an outline once it is in
place and will change it to suit the progress of the story and to accommodate
new and better ideas, but I like having a blueprint to go back to. Also, having
an outline forces you to think your story through and work out the kinks and
bad spots. I do a lot less editing and rewriting when I take time to do the
outline first."
What most writers call
revising is actually just editing and polishing. Revision is the larger of the
two jobs. We'll talk more about editing and polishing, which should be minor
buffing up, later. Revision may or may not be major, especially if you've
started with an outline. But it does involve tweaking characters, settings, and
plots; and possibly rewriting, adding to, or deleting one or more scenes; and
incorporating major research. When you revise, you evaluate (and fix) any of
the following:
-Structure
-Character, setting, and plot credibility
and the cohesion of these elements
-Depth of conflicts, goals, and
motivations
-Scene worthiness
-Pacing
-Effectiveness of hints, tension and
suspense, and resolutions
-Transitions
-Emotion and color
-Hooks and cliffhangers
-Character voice
-Consistency
-Adequacy of research
-Properly unfurled, developed, and
concluded story threads
-Deepening of character
enhancements/contrasts and the symbols of these
Revision is redoing or
reshaping in an effort to make what's already there better, stronger, and, of
course, utterly cohesive.
Maximizing
the Benefits
After
you've completed a first draft and allowed the book to sit for a long time, the
next step is revision. While I used to do this step off the computer on a hard
copy of the book, the work involved after the revision done by my own messy
(practically unreadable) hand, having to make all those corrections within the
story file on my computer, became too immense. Literally, there was never a
single page that didn't have countless changes, additions, or deletions. I now
find this job a world easier to do on the computer.
I
strongly believe that revision should be done as quickly as possible, with as
little interruption from the material as possible. This won't compromise the
quality of your revision, I promise--just the opposite, in fact! Ideally, if
you can set aside a block of time of about a week (three days is generally the
maximum time it takes me, but I always allow for a week) to work exclusively on
the revision, you'll find that your story
will be more consistent, and you'll remember details much better. In my case, I
remember things photographically--I could argue that I memorize the entire book
during this time, and any error will jump out at me as I work. During revision
days, I may even be woken from sound sleep because a glaring error in some
portion of the book will emerge from my subconscious. The whole book is quite
literally laid out in my mind, ready to be accessed at a moment's notice during
this short revision period. If revision on a project is broken up over a period
of days or weeks, especially if you're working on other projects during this
time, the book will most certainly suffer from consistency issues, and possibly
even structural and cohesion problems. If you can set
aside that crucial, uninterrupted block of time to focus on revision, your
story will benefit from it immeasurably.
To get
started, make a list that organizes the revision items
in need of your final attention during this time. Fix firmly in your mind those
details you need to attend to while reading your book from start to finish. Check
off what you've finished at the end of each work day so you'll know what you
need to deal with when you come back to the revision.
Yes,
during this time you'll be working on fixing more serious problems, but you
probably will be doing some editing and polishing during this stage as well.
You're there; it wouldn't make any sense to not clean up something small but
not quite right that clearly needs a little elbow grease. However, what you're
really looking for during the revision is anything in your story that doesn't
work or doesn't make sense.
One
way I keep my project consistent is to have a notebook next to me while I'm
reading to revise. I jot down the timeline and various other details, including
the page number the detail is mentioned on. If I later have a question while
revising about, say, when a certain event took place, I can always look in the
notebook to make sure I've kept those facts consistent. Whenever and as often
as this detail is mentioned in the story, I'll write down the page number for
it in the notebook. I might decide to change the fact later, and this way I
have a list of all the places affected by the change.
You
may have very little left to do to make your book closer to perfect once when
you complete this process.
Next
week, we'll go over stages 2 and 3: Involving critique partners and setting the
final draft aside.
Happy writing!
Karen S. Wiesner is the
author of Cohesive Story Building, Volume
2 of the 3D Fiction Fundamentals Collection
http://www.writers-exchange.com/3d-fiction-fundamentals-series/
https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/writing-reference-titles.html
Karen
Wiesner is an award-winning,
multi-genre author of over 150 titles and 16 series.
https://karenwiesner.weebly.com/
http://www.facebook.com/KarenWiesnerAuthor
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