33. Redux/Editing
Writing is like golf. In golf, we celebrate pars and birdies and eagles, but to shoot a perfect game your score must be 18 on 18 holes, and nobody shoots an 18. Nobody writes a perfect short story or a perfect book either, but just like golf, practice makes progress. (That phrase is compliments of David Roth, musician-songwriter extraordinaire.)
We all need to rewrite, and if we aim for publication, rewriting is essential. For each of my novels I do 6 major rewrites (and rewrite many times within each rewrite).
1. Voice. This rewrite consists of only a few chapters, those in which I introduce each of my POV characters for the first time. Does the voice I’ve chosen fit the character?
2. Plot. Does the plot hold together? Have I done a good job of laying out the problem facing the main character/s and of resolving that problem by the end of the novel? Is the climax at the optimal point in the story (almost at the end)?
3. Eliminate the Lazy. Have I missed major opportunities to draw my reader into the characters’ lives by telling instead of showing? Telling is the easy way; showing takes more work.
4. Research. Have I incorrectly mentioned something as fact when it is not? That’s so easy to do and usually happens with something that we take as a ‘given.’ Ask an author who’s done that – like me – it’s embarrassing!
5. Words. This is a ‘find and destroy’ mission, a chance to eliminate inferior words and replace them with glowing prose.
6. Errors. A check for typos, grammatical and spelling errors.
We’ll discuss each of these editing modes over the next few weeks.
Your Assignment for this week: If you’ve finished your first draft, take a break. Read very good authors and think about your next novel if you wish, but stay away from the novel you’ve just finished. You need a little ‘breathing space’ in order to give yourself a fresh perspective.
Blessings!
Sue
Count your comments as an epiphany for me, too, Kaydee. I had never compared the two processes – writing and drawing. Great insight!
I just realized I had a subconscious assumption that when a writer is writing a novel, with “so MUCH writing,” that most of the text is laid out the first go-’round. The parallel can be drawn to my own art work…I go back and add layers and layers and ever more detail as I go along. I don’t paint the final picture painting every detail from, say, the top down. I rough in the big picture (plot), add colors and detail (voice?), and finish off with adding highlights and those touches that make it “sparkle” (fancier vocabulary). I never really thought, for instance, that you “could” go back in your novel and work specifically on voice, or the fancier words…For some reason, though it sounds silly, this is kind of a little epiphany for me, LOL! How fun!
Absolutely, Laura. That break away from writing helps me gain a whole new perspective on what I’m doing.
Breathing space is SO important. It really does help us gain new perspective.