Friday After Hours Forum

November 20, 2009

Revision for All

 

Mary Rosenblum:  Hello everyone. Welcome to our Friday Forum.  I wanted to talk about revision tonight.  That's something that most writers either love or hate. Very few are lukewarm about it.  But it does help to approach it with something along the lines of a strategy. And knowing when to STOP revising is often the hard part!
To start with, I find that the least useful revision is the one that you do the minute you get to the end of the piece.  You finish the first draft, you immediately start from page one and you revise.  About all you're going to do right then is to fix any glaring spelling errors, typographical mistakes and the like.  It's not very effective.   Why not?  Because you still have your nose pressed against that page. You know what you wrote (or intended to write) you know that it worked and you can't see anything except what you put on that page. You're just not going to see weak spots, think characterization, logic errors, and the like.

 Just put the mss away!
If you're on a hard deadline and you can't give yourself a couple of weeks (the minimum I recommend), then distract yourself from it.  For two days work on a new story, read something fun, entertaining, and very different from what you wrote,  do anything to put that story out of your head. You want it gone. Vanished. Wiped off the chalk board.  I myself -- who is way too impatient to wait to revise something -- have found that starting a new short story and working through the first draft of that, effectively purges the project I just completed. And then, as I go back to work on that earlier project, the new story can 'cool off'.  But that's my system.
Picking up a good 'light reading' novel and getting lost in someone else's story for a few days can do the trick, too.  What you are trying to do is to, as I said, purge that piece you just finished from your short term memory. You need to go back to it with 'clear eyes'. That is, you no longer see what you meant to write on the page. You see what you DID write.
  Do you alternate novels and short stories? It seems a long wait between revisions of novels.
Mary Rosenblum:  I do alternate novels and short stories, Charie. As you say...alternating novels can really slow you down.    Whatever works for you. You simply want 'clear eyes' when you read that draft.  If you read it as if for the first time, you'll see the weak spots, the zits, the clunky scenes.  You're no longer seeing what you meant to write, you're seeing what is on the page. Oh, dear. Did I do that?

What is the first thing you revise?
Mary Rosenblum:  DLB, I revise from the 'big' to the 'little'.  My first revision is to fix any structure problems.
Should you try to revise every problem you see when you first see it or work on certain things first?  Or make a list of things to fix?
Mary Rosenblum:  I keep a 'revision file' as I write the first draft, making notes to myself. "Plant Erin's interest in Pam in the second chapter.... foreshadow the black wolf before Chapter 5'  That sort of thing.  If I go back to fix those things as I think of them, I bog myself down, wipe out my forward momentum.  When I'm ready for my second draft, I sit down with the printed file of revision notes. As I revise I keep referring to it. Plant Erin's interest...okay I can do that in the barnyard scene in Chapter Two, at the end.  Foreshadow the black wolf...let's see, when the trapper comes by to borrow tools, he can mention it.
Mary, that sounds very organized.
Mary Rosenblum:  Well, it was much less organized on the first novel, Jane, but that first novel was not only a LOT more work because of it. LOL  It's not hard to do.  Every time you think of something you should have done, write it down.  My revision file can include a lot of scraps of paper with notes scribbled on '’em.  I might be driving to the grocery store and realize that if the MC meets this guy early, it makes more sense that they hit it off later...so I write it down.
That's my system. It's horrible. Dozens of pieces of paper that I get too overwhelmed to refer to.
Mary Rosenblum:  Ah, I think of it as playing with a big jigsaw puzzle.  Here's this piece of sky and it has to go above that bit of the lake, and that goes above the rocks in the foreground...
Is rearranging chapters part of the structure revision?
Mary Rosenblum:  If you need to, Charie. I’m pretty good about roughing out my basic plot arc, so I don't often have to move whole chapters, but once in awhile I do. Think of it as building a house. You want to get all the walls and the roof up and solid before you start with the sheetrock, the fixtures, the tile work and paint.  Once you're happy with what happens when and to whom, you're probably done with your second draft and the events unfold as you now want them to.  That, by the way, is when I give my mss to my readers. They can just live with the misspellings and so on and too bad.  The story is structurally sound and I want feedback on that.  Now, for the next revision -- draft three -- I forget about structure. It's solid.

Is point of view consistency part of structure?

Mary Rosenblum:  Draft three is when I look at POV, characterization, and so on, Charie. I may have heard from my readers about those things, or maybe not.  But this pass, working on a draft three, I'm focused on characterization ....not just my main characters, but all characters. I use body language, tweak internal narrative, make sure that motivations are clear. I'm immersed in my characters.
Okay, so how I have a third draft with a solid structure and sound characters. Now I’m going to start putting a gloss on it.  In this pass, I pay attention to visual details and language. Some people turn that into two drafts -- visuals first, then polish language on the next.  I go through a scene and make sure that readers will see what I see.  That's not always the case!
Then I simply read for rhythm and flow of language. Tweak sentences, get rid of a few stray to-be verbs and the like.  Make it pretty.
Do you read your work out loud to yourself?
Mary Rosenblum:  Sometimes, DLB. I've found it helpful to read into a tape recorder and then listen to yourself.  Sometimes what works on the page is not good if you're going to do a reading.
Do you have someone else read it  out loud as well?
Mary Rosenblum:  That's the absolute best, awlop! If you can get someone to do it for you.  You'll hear every zit, bump, and rough spot in the piece!
Mary, I've work shopped sections of novels many times, but never the whole thing. You must be reading others' work in exchange for them to read yours, is that right?
Mary Rosenblum:  Yes, Jane. That's the only fair way to do it.
Do you ever use non-writers for your readers?
Mary Rosenblum:  I do, charie. A friend of mine owns a mystery/sf bookstore. She's a GREAT mystery reader, not a writer. She has read every mystery I've written as a draft. If I can get the story past her, it's good to go. A good reader is a good reader. Doesn't have to be a writer.  Don't be afraid to give your draft to different people for different reasons.
So don't let those who don't normally read your mss?  People who are not big readers, are they good for reading mss before being published?
Mary Rosenblum:  Well, DLB, they may not be very useful to you and they may actually be detrimental. If  they tell you 'oh, I can't understand this, you should explain it' is it because they don't read much? Will someone who DOES read understand it just fine?  You have similar problem if you give something like SF to a non SF reader.  They're likely to want explanations that would bore a regular SF reader if you actually put it in.
Here is the most, the absolutely MOST important part of revision. Write this down! Preferably on your foreheads!.

ONLY YOU KNOW WHAT YOU ARE TRYING TO DO. YOU HAVE THE LAST WORD  I've seen some novice writers without much confidence ruin stories by trying to do everything anyone suggested.
If you are doing a trilogy, or series, do you have the reader read several, or one at a time?
Mary Rosenblum:  Well, charie, it depends on how soon you need feedback.

I was thinking in terms of not boring a series reader with too much background from previous books.
Mary Rosenblum:  Yeah, charie, that is always a concern. You have to make the world clear for new readers and can't bore loyal followers. Same issue with mystery series.

When do you know the mss is ready to be sent to the publishers?
Mary Rosenblum:  DLB that 'when do you quit revising?' issue is huge.   Forever revision is a very good way to keep from ever getting a rejection, eh?  My rule of thumb is that when you're only changing words -- not content -- you're done. You can polish those words forever without really changing the saleability of the story.
I've heard that advice before
Is the editor's suggestions your next draft?
Mary Rosenblum:  Yeah, Charie, for novels, once you have sold the book, you're going to get a list of editorial questions from your editor sooner or later.
If an editor suggest chages do you have to take them or can you leave them too?
Mary Rosenblum:  You can discuss them, DLB. Generally, the contract is contingent on a 'satisfactory draft'.  If you and the editor can't work that out, then you're not going to publish the book with this publisher. But I've found that the editor and I were always on the same page with the same goal...a really strong book. If he or she wanted this effect, I could come up with a different way to get it, or I could use his/her suggestion.  The editor has to be happy with the book before it goes to press...his/her reputation is at stake here as well as yours. I've said 'no I can't do that' to editors on occasion and given my reasons.  Gardner Dozois, editor of Asimov’s, suggested a darker ending for a novelette I sold him a long time ago, when I was just starting out. But that would have killed off a character I meant to use later. So I told him I couldn't do it.  He was fine with that.
Remember...you and the editor are working together.  I don't care about words, I care about my story. If the end result is a stronger story, I don't care what words I change.  But I have met novice writers who broke out in hives if you asked them to change anything. That's a terrible handicap.  Means you're not going to progress very fast. And it means you're going to have to turn in something an editor doesn't have to fix at all.  Never be afraid of trying new things in a story. I've changed main characters, completely altered the plot, plugged in new characters...
You have the original. Save it. Then try new things and save them as separate files.

Do you make a copy, edit that instead of the original, in case you like it better than the revision?
Mary Rosenblum:  I would always do that, charie.  Save that original.  Then you can do whatever you want and if you decide you hate this chapter or scene or what have you...delete it. You have the original.  Novice writers have a tendency to treat a draft as if they had carved it on a stone tablet.  For heavens sake! Think of it as a set of legos.  Pull off those blue bricks, and slap on some yellow ones. Turn them into battlements. Hmmm..does it look better? No? Pull 'em off again. Mess around. You can REALLY surprise yourself. Some of my best stories happened because the story was stuck, I smacked it with a hammer, reassembled the broken pieces with a few additions and amazed myself.   Too often, revision is treated as an extended spell check session. Make it more than that.  Remember...you have that copy!  You're not risking anything.
How helpful are critique groups with suggesting revisions Mary?
They're great, Pam, as long as you listen to the various suggestions critically and see what does and does not work for your story. They're great for pointing out weaknesses (four people say the same thing).

Do you have a logic inconsistency file?

Mary Rosenblum:   Oh, charie, for a novel..and particularly for my mystery series...I kept a careful logic file. You can spend HOURS looking for specific details (was his pickup a Ford or a Chevy?).
What is a logic file?
Mary Rosenblum:  mg...character eye color, the breed of dog she owns, the color of her house, the type of car she drives...so when you refer to one of these details 230 pages later, you can still remember. When you have a novel's worth of characters, you NEED to do this.
So don’t be afraid of revision.  Let the piece ‘cool off’, make a copy for backup, and then let yourself go. Rearrange things.  Try new stuff.  Play with it!