Revision

Hi everyone,

Welcome to my first proper entry. Here goes…

I’m obsessed with revision. And have been for a while. When I finished the first draft of my novel that I’m currently querying, Destructive Magic, I had absolutely no idea what to do next. No idea what to do with the misshapen blob that I loved and adored, but knew was intensely flawed.

There’s so much on writing a first draft on the internet and in books that it’s like entering an endless candy store but come to revisions, all you have is a cramped tiny corner shop. That doesn’t mean there aren’t books, there are and there’s stuff on the internet too, but finding good stuff that really helped me, well I found that hard.

And that’s the thing. Not all writing advice is helpful. It depends on the person and on the project. So I had to feel around in the dark and find what worked for me. What made sense to me.* And over the course of revising Destructive Magic, I found my personalised revision tool box. But it wasn’t easy.

Why am I talking about revisions? 

Well because I’m back in the revision stage. While I was revising Destructive Magic, I drafted a new YA fantasy novel The Search for Magic. That’s what I’m working on now while waiting for replies to my queries for Destructive Magic.

I find revisions hard and intense and sometimes really, really boring. Others don’t. Some authors have problems with the first draft and ADORE revisions. Not me.

I do like the satisfaction of ticking something off my revision list, though, and getting something just right, but on the whole, for me revisions are SLOW and TEDIOUS. And this is because this is where the fine detail happens. This is where you can labor over a sentence for an hour, where you rewrite and rewrite and rewrite. So to break up the monotony and pain of revision, I wrote another novel on the side, enjoying the free flow and creativity of the magic of a first draft.

But now that I’m querying Destructive Magic, it’s time to revise The Search for Magic. Yay! Let the torture begin.

I’ve already done some, since this blog idea only hit me when I was doing my webpage.

What have I done so far?

Well I’ve planned out my story for the first half and revised it accordingly.

Now I’m at the midpoint. Which is messy. I’m an over-writer so tightening up scenes, finding the heart of it, is a key element in my revisions.

 Because my revisions for Destructive Magic were so painful—I rewrote the story three times. Super annoying, but it’s better for it. I hope. No. I know it’s better—I’m trying something new this time around.

The most painful part of the revision process was removing scenes that I loved. I think this is what they refer to as ‘darlings’. There was nothing wrong with the scenes (in my humble opinion as the author, they were awesome), but they didn’t further the new story threads I’d added, so they had to be axed.

 While I was painfully murdering darlings left, right and center, I had an epiphany. That instead of writing The Search For Magic in one giant file, I’d write each scene/chapter in a different file.

Why did I do this thing that was sure to annoy me later?

It was purely psychological. I decided in my revision-induced craziness that if all my scenes weren’t in one document, then it wasn’t a novel. It was raw material. Raw material that I could choose from when it came to nailing down my story in revisions. If a scene didn’t make it into the novel, I wasn’t deleting.

Nope.

I was making an active choice as to what ingredients I was choosing to put into my novel. No more Serial Killer Joanne. Yay, me!

Sounds stupid. But so far it’s been working for me.

For example if I have a list of let’s say five scenes to be put in between two plot points but I only have space for 3, I simply select the ones that further the story the most.

I find it easier to choose three than delete two. Plus it allows me to think objectively. If I only have space for three scenes, then If I want four, I have to combine two scenes, taking the best from both. Maybe the conflict from scene 4 with the setting of scene 5. It’s much easier to rewrite these scenes from the blank page because I’m not messing up my novel. I’m still sort of on a first draft. And I love first drafts.

 Like I said earlier, find what works for you and this works for me. I’m much faster revising The Search For Magic, and I’m finding it more fun. In fact, I’m enjoying it.

Think of my craziness this way. You go into a candy shop (you’ll notice I like candy). There’s so many nice goodies in there but you’ve only enough money for one. You spend time choosing between a bar of chocolate and an ice cream. Both are yummy but you must choose. Yesterday, you had a bar of chocolate so you choose the ice cream. You leave happy and eat it on your way home with a bounce in your step.

Now, you, in an alternate timeline have buckets of money, so you buy both the bar of chocolate and the ice cream. You skip happily down the street on your way home with your bar of chocolate in your pocket, enjoying your ice cream. Out of nowhere a pickpocket comes and steals your chocolate. You want to run after him and tackle him to the ground or ring the chocolate police. At the very least you cry. You mourn your lost bar of chocolate.

One is positive and one negative (even though the very polite pickpocket put your bar of chocolate in a deleted scenes file). I find the positive spin takes away some (not all) of the stress of revision. And that’s a good thing. At least, for me.

Gosh, this post was supposed to be about what I did today and not what I did a year ago. So here’s what I did today. I read a scene that I’d already selected from my raw material. I tidied it up.

It was super messy because I don’t edit as I write, except when I’m rereading to get back into the flow of the story, and next only to fix spelling and typos and general weirdness. I deleted anything that didn’t work for the story and highlighted what I’d call the beats of the scene. The action of it.

Tomorrow I’m going to use what I have to plan out the scene I wish I’d written first time around but didn’t because I really only know the story I’m telling when I type THE END on my first draft.

I hope this wasn’t too boring, confusing or wordy.

See you tomorrow,

Joanne.

* I’ve recommendations of craft courses that I took that worked for me under my writing tips that you can check out.