revision!

[jazzfish]

I have a first draft! I finished something! It has all the awkward inbetween bits filled in with text other than "And then they explain this part"!

... only it's awful. The pacing's all off, the characterization changes midstream, there are plot hooks that don't connect to anything and other parts of plot that desperately need hooking earlier. In short, it's a first draft.

I've never really gotten anything to this point before, not with something I thought actually had any potential. So I'm basically going to be making up my process as I go. (Current writing process: entire story in an OpenOffice document, with a .txt of notes and deleted scene fragments open beside it.)

How do you go about revising? Any useful tips?

Comments

[revolutemind]

Upon getting something I'll regard as a draft, I try to let it sit for at least three weeks before taking a look at it again. If I look at it and still hate it, back off the desktop it all goes. Then I'll catch a wild hair one day, try to get back to the house still on fire, to chop it to bits. Then I sit back, read the hacked mess, and start the whole compulsive process over again.

Tips? Boy, that's like giving tips about how to catch fish. Can one counsel patience? Be very, very satisfied with hitting a leg double your first-at-bat. Maybe sacrifice fly is better. I've had to teach myself how to do this, and I'm still not very good at it.

Good luck.

[sweet_sparrow]

I have to agree with revolutemind, let the story rest a while so you can look at with fresh eyes. And if you can, find a betareader or two for their feedback to add into your considerations.

Read through it (a couple of times) and take more notes for you to use. The fresh eyes can really help with that, though if you're a seats-of-your-pants writer, that may not work so well. Don't try to fix everything at once. Chances are you'll end up doing that anyway because you're rewriting the whole darned thing, but sometimes it can help to fix things in stages.
"Start with the massive problems. Take a break. Read over it again. Fix the now-biggest problems. Take a break. Read over it again. Etc." until you're happy with it, that kind of stages.

But mostly... Just try approaches until you find what works for you. The only thing that comes close to being a must is taking a break from it for a while to give your brain a chance to rest and come back to it revived and ready to see what is instead of what you think may be.

Congratulations on finishing the rough draft and good luck with the rewriting! ^-^

[stripped]

I have to echo the take a break from it that's already been said. I've been sitting on one novel I finished in December. About a month ago, I reread half of it and realized that one novel was meant to be two. I tucked it back on the back burner until my brain coughs up what's going to need to go into those 35k words to double them in size.

I also have to echo the importance of a beta reader. Critique is painful. It's really hard to let someone read what you've written and point out the flaws to you (even though you know they're there). But it's important, and no published writer out there does it without having someone who reads their work first and offers critique. I have a more recent novel I just finished, and I've heard back from two of my four first readers, and one was... well, she was the one I knew I needed opinions from most, and she entirely tore apart one of my major subplots because she couldn't find a reason for it to be in the book. Now, this doesn't mean the subplot is bad, or wrong, but that if she couldn't see why it was there, I hadn't done my job as a writer in laying the groundwork for it to make sense. I knew there was a problem with that particular subplot and talking to her made solutions take form in my mind, and I've been jotting down notes for the last few days, trying to figure out how I can rework it.

But having someone to talk to, having another pair of eyes, this is critically important. Let it rest. Absorb critique. Let the back brain figure out how to fix it, and then (as has already been said) attack it one major problem at a time. Look at characterization first maybe, and while you're fixing that, take note of the plot hooks that are unwoven so you can figure out what to do with those on the next pass. Continue to refine the characterization in the second pass, while you work on plot, because it will be affected by it. Just keep slowly refining your process.

For the record, I have a habit of taking months and/or years to revise things. Sometimes letting things sit really does make it come crystal clear. At least it does for me.