I took a workshop in novel revision last February and began my
revision work in full force in March. My first job was to make sure every
chapter was complete. In many cases I found I needed to add descriptions,
research details, and dialogue, Once I did that, I could finally say I had a
complete novel draft ready to be revised. That became revision 1 which I
collected in a computer folder called 02. Novel Chapters.
Then, as
advised in the workshop, I printed out a hard copy of the entire draft and read it
through, taking notes in a notebook – not on the draft material itself – to
indicate what fixes I thought I needed to make.
I also
took a couple of detours. I inserted the Prologue into Chapter One and changed
the tense in that chapter from present to past. However, I still haven’t yet
decided to keep or integrate the Prologue into the main text and/or to change the
entire novel into past tense. Hopefully my beta readers will advise me on that.
At this
point I’m working through my second pass-through of the draft and creating
revision 2 that I will place in a folder called 03. Novel Chapters. See my screen shot on how I’ve arranged these
files. Needless to say, I save everything – just in case I have to resurrect
one of the “babies I’ve murdered” in my haste.
I’m lucky
to have specific feedback from my writing group and novel classmates to help me revise
the first few chapters, which unfortunately don't exist for later chapters. So I plan to apply the gist of their comments as I get
further along. I also made a list of things to be aware of as I edit:
- Use Point of view correctly – the hardest part for me to keep straight
- Use more metaphors
- Excessive use of “he” and “she”
- Use action verbs instead of passive voice
- Show emotional response in characters
- Look for and get rid of repetition, inconsistencies, and typos
- Add more specific details that show rather than tell
- Take away definition of foreign Yiddish words; rather use definition in dialogue or description.
My workshop instructor also gave me three
helpful pieces of advice to apply overall:
- Slow down
- Delve deeper into the details
- Draw out the moments.
It’s no wonder it took me almost three
hours to revise the first two pages of Chapter 4 yesterday.
