Sunday, March 3, 2013

Novel revision next steps


I’ve finished the big read of my novel, made brief notes in my notebook – not on the book itself – to remind myself what inconsistencies and repetitions I’ve found, and I’ve hung the whole book, page by page, on six by eight foot, quarter inch foam board panels on my hall wall. (I used Moore aluminum push pins. And by the way, each board has space for thirty 8-1/2 x 11-inch sheets, which allows me some room to grow).


Novel storyboards

Now I’m ready for the next step: i.e., experimenting with first person narrative. I am going to see if I can rewrite a couple scenes in first person. If that works I'll take on the job of rewriting the whole book in first person. If not, I’ll move on to Part Two of my novel revision process: rewriting and fleshing out the later chapters of the book to catch them up to the level of the first eleven chapters, which I’ve worked over several times already. 

Then I’ll start the real revision, starting at the top. It looks like I have months of work ahead of me.

4 comments:

Jessica Bell said...

Wow, look at all that! Good luck with the 1st person narrative :)

madeline40 said...

Thank, Jessica. I know. Changing to 1st person is a huge and daunting undertaking. I'll see how it goes.

Unknown said...

That is huge. I just changed my whole book from present tense to past tense and that was uber tricky. Now I'm rearranging chapters such that certain voices may have to be transformed back to present tense. Hopefully not... Best of luck!

madeline40 said...

Kate, I'm also changing from present to past tense. So double huge. Good luck with your book as well. Let's compare notes later on.