| It looks like this is the week. Road Trip of the Living Dead will be off to my beta readers for their oh-so helpful critique (see Mark butter up betas). Then it's on to revision time (actually in the short break, I'll be attempting a website update and catchup on some interviews that have been sitting in my inbox). I know lots of people who refer to this period as "revision hell," but I don't mind it so much. My thing. As I'm writing, I keep a pad next to the laptop. I edit the shit out of Chapter One. It's my basis. It's the one place I can count on to not need revision. It makes me happy. Then I write Chapter two and three. By three I'm making notes on two. What's been left out, what needs to have been left out. I keep up this way through the whole manuscript. So before I let myself type "the end", I go through my list and start doing the fix. Not that I'm all that linear. I may be writing Chapter five and think of something that needs to be in the previous 2 chapters. But I don't go back and fix it yet. Not yet. My first draft can be the biggest piece of shit in the world. But it's still off to the Betas, including my agent, my wife, other writers, and me. Yeah, I'm one of them. I don't need a whole lot of time to separate from my work before I can critique it. I jump right in and slap it down. I can do it because I write all over the place. By the time I've finished the draft, I've never read the manuscript straight through. Maybe that's weird. I don't know. From there I just pray that there aren't major changes necessary, rather little fixes, punching up or down humor and personality traits. Building suspense through expanded description. That kind of thing. I hope. I hope. On my final run, I tidy the grammar, hunt for weak verbs, minimize adverbs and dialogue attributions. At least that's the plan. It's my first time running it this way. Happy Hour was more slipshod and random. I'll let you know how it turns out. So now, I'd like to know what you've got. What revision tricks do you pull out for that first draft, second, third, or what have you? |
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That's a great idea on revision. I tend to go start to finish on the writing, then come back and do start to finish again. Then I quickly get bogged down since I'll change something at the end and then forgot to alter it earlier, etc. If there aren't six noons in a day, it's not a T.M. Thomas novel.
I write the same way -- punch through making notes of what needs revising as I go. It means that I spend a lot of time making sure things are consistant, but I don't see the point in revising as I go along because I'll just end up changing things later as the plot dictates.
Yay on sending RTOTD out to betas!!!
Carrie: We're not doing well at maintaining the cover story about busy lawyers.
I'm like you with chapter one. I can't move on until I'm happy with it. Then I write straight through, tweaking things here and there. For draft two I have to sit down and replot, figuring out where to add or delete scenes. Once that's done it's pretty tight and I just need a beta read. The last pass if for layering in cool details and catching annoying typos.
Todd - I also tend to keep the plot pretty basic so I don't have to reorder, but, yeah, notepads: they're not just for doodles anymore.
Carrie - it's not off quite yet. I'm still hammering out the climax and then I'll go through my pad. I'm sticking with Friday!
Jaye - replot? What are you talking about? There'll be no replotting. I haven't allotted time for that!
I plow through the whole manuscript. I leave myself notes in the middle of the text like (GO BACK TO CHAPTER ONE AND ADD NECKLACE, DUMBASS!!) and bold it so I notice it. Then when the book is done, I print the entire thing out and go over it with a red pen. I really stress printing it, because it's an entirely different creature than it is on screen.
And then I jump into revisions. Word choices I hate, I circle. If the sentence sounds weird, I circle. I don't use editing symbols, just circles. Some pages have very few circles, and some pages are a gigantic circle. ;)
I put aside the hard stuff (adding scenes, fleshing out a pov) in a 'notes' pile. After I'm done with the page-by-page markup, I tackle the notes pile until I'm done.
Maybe I'm the only systematic weirdo out of the lot of us. Could be. :)
Hi Jill - I do the red pen thing when I read it through the first time, but I usually go ahead and write in new sentences, word choices, etc. Into the margins with lots of lines and arrows.
Snap - I've got to get chapter one completely right. After that I try and do a fast draft, but normally end up editing as I go and as a result by the time I finish I'm up to version 36 and the stupid thing still needs lots of work.
As well as line editing, I normally check that my heroine is motivated and that it's her decisions that are driving the plot. Oh, and I kill off the million 'thats' (that) have managed to sneak in there!!
I write, write, write, going back only to make important changes as I go (or more often I just make a note to do so.) Like if I add something later that I need to foreshadow, or whatever.
Then when it's done I do a preliminary edit in the file. Adding, removing, strengthening subplots, whatever basic structure stuff I need to do. I do a second edit right after to catch whatever typos and stuff I didn't the first time.
Usually I'll let it sit for a few weeks then, then print it out and do an edit with pen, writing changes in the margins and changing/adding dialogue on the back of each sheet if necessary. Then I add all those in.
So no, Jill, you're not the only one who does systematic edits!
Oh and I forgot to add, I usually send it out to betas after the second or third on-screen edit, so I can use those suggestions too on my final paper edit.