You type THE END and heave a great sigh of
relief. DONE. You pat yourself on the back.
But wait! In today’s world, this is only YOUR
FIRST DRAFT. Now the hard work begins.
Revising and editing are a writer’s most
important functions in the telling of your story. In the rewriting stage, you
have to move away from the subjective author who loves every sentence you’ve produced
and become the tough critic. Switching hats is very difficult.
This is why most successful novelists
belong to reading groups who serve to critique each other’s work. But before
you expose your baby to a third, fourth or even fifth “eye,” you need to
produce your best effort. That means stripping down your baby and redressing
it.
Where do you start? Frankly, one rewrite
won’t work. You can’t fix everything with one shot.
THE
STRATEGIC APPROACH TO REVIEWING YOUR FIRST DRAFT
When you reread your manuscript, you need to
examine NINE concerns. Focus on one at a time for each revision you write.
1.
What is the spine of your story? Some
authors refer to this as their THEME. This is a harder question than you think.
You may assume it is simply what the story is about, but it isn’t. Your spine
serves the same purpose as your backbone does for your body. It holds your
story together. In my novel, THE CONSUMMATE TRAITOR, the obvious theme is
treason. When I reread my first draft, I
had to measure every character‘s thoughts, feelings, motives and actions
against this underlying theme. Yes, it was a gruelling exercise, but it was
worth it because readers say I succeeded in suspending their disbelief. They
could not figure out who the traitor was until the end.
2.
Are your protagonist and main characters well-rounded and
believable? Have you explored their conscious and
unconscious desires, their strengths and weaknesses? Does your protagonist have
a “fatal flaw” she or he must overcome to achieve a heroic or extraordinary
outcome? In my novel, one of my heroines does not recognize her own self-worth.
She strives to please and over compensates to prove her value.
3.
What is the overall conflict driving your suspense? What rival or adversarial force must your protagonist beat? This is
the challenge that drives your plot, and as the story continues, this conflict elevates
the tension. It can be a person, group, force of nature or aspect of the
protagonist’s own character that stands in the way of achieving a desired goal.
Conflict leads the hero or heroine to make a critical decision, one that
embraces either victory or defeat, and forces the individual to face the
truth: Who am I and what do I really want?
4.
Is the development of your plot logical?
I remember reading a spy story in which the two protagonists reminded each
other that their hotel room may be bugged, and then, while in bed, they go
ahead and discuss their plan to reveal the villain. I read on hoping this was a
decoy to suspend the reader’s disbelief until the surprise “twist” resolution.
If the room is bugged, why are they telling the enemy what he needs to know to
intercept them? Maybe it’s deliberate
and we’ll find that out later. Alas, no. The author never caught this flaw, and
for me the story imploded.
5.
Is the structure of your story progressive? This even relates to individual paragraphs and sentences. Does your
character react before an action even happens? For example, there is an
explosion. Does your character dive for cover before the sound or after? You can’t react to something that hasn’t
happened yet. The character must duck AFTER he or she hears the bang. This also
refers to the order of your information. Your characters need to move forward
with new insights or conclusions, not rehash what is already known.
6. Does your opening sentence immediately grab your readers’ interest? If it doesn’t, does the first paragraph? If it doesn’t, will
readers even read your first chapter? Let’s
look at the first sentence of my new novel, COVERT DENIAL: Rhys
Jamieson froze. Do you want to know why? Then you have to read on.
7. Do you ‘tell” more than you “show?” Some
authors introduce a new character by writing what amounts to a biography
including appearance and background. Today’s readers don’t like feeling
overwhelmed with such description. It’s better to weave in the details as
needed, when your reader wants to know, for instance, or when it is critical to
the story. This way the reader becomes a part of what is going on rather than
an observer.
8. How do you treat your dialogue? You’ve
seen it – one line after another of conversation until you no longer know who
the speakers are. This stems from a need to speed up pacing, but it can be
taken too far. Dialogue serves two things: to reveal what distinguishes your
characters from one another through quirks in their speech and to convey
information. Good dialogue presents a balance that magnifies what your
characters are doing, thinking, noticing, and feeling as well as where they are
located when they speak. What your dialogue should NOT DO is be a short-cut to
adding information crucial to your story. Too often you end up with an
unnatural conversation that is awkward and off-putting for your reader.
9. I leave line editing and
proof-reading to my last draft, and I have a few tricks to make it easier. First,
I search and replace a list of “boring”
words with stronger action words or adjectives. This short list causes agents
and book editors to wince: was (passive),
by the fact that, very, so, then, felt, great, big, would, could, or against. Suppose you wrote, felt angry. What action can your
character do that shows he is irked? Barry’s
eyes flashed. He slammed his fist on the desk. “Are you crazy?” That is a stronger picture. Second, be careful
with words ending in “ing.” Often it signals an imperfect past tense (was working) that is easily corrected
with the simple past tense (worked).
Keep your text active. Avoid passive verbs.
A
retired Canadian journalist, Bonnie
Toews is a veterans’ advocate, who uses fiction to bring attention to
conditions she has found at the “crossroads of humanity.” In novels of wartime
intrigue and suspense, she expands on true events to reveal the political
betrayal of our military veterans. The first novel in her “Trilogy of Treason”
– THE CONSUMMATE TRAITOR – is available at amazon.com http://www.amazon.com/Consummate-Traitor-Bonnie-Toews/dp/1461015383 and on her web
site
You've listed some excellent points to remember in the rewriting stage. Thanks.
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