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You have marinated, read your book as a stranger, and now you are ready to edit. Today we are going to talk about some Elements of Revision and a method for going through your own manuscript. It’s pretty simple.
Ask yourself the following questions. Makes lists. Muse. And then take action, step by step, to improve your book.
1) What’s extraneous to the story you are telling, no matter how much you love it? Cut.
2) What’s missing? Make a list.
3) What doesn’t make sense, needs deepening or grounding or motivation or connecting to the rest of the story? Make a second list.
4) Other Questions to Ask Yourself:
a. Does the structure stand? Is it strong?
b. Does the POV work? Is it consistent throughout with the expectations set up in the beginning?
c. Does the time frame work?
d. Is there a ticking time bomb or sense of urgency or forward momentum?
e. Are the stakes high enough? Is the character’s motivation believable and strong? Do you care what happens and does the character?
f. Do the characters come to life? Are they either “likeable” or engaging or both?
g. Is the setting shallow or is it vivid or compelling? Is the setting anchored in character or story, or is it distracting?
h. Is the dialog strong and effective? Is there’s too much or not enough of it? Does it do more than inform the reader?
Remember, no book is the mere transcription of your first happy impulse. Close attention to your writing at this stage is what makes the difference between a person who has filled a page and a person who has made a book. Take it one step at a time. And organize your project in a way that makes intuitive sense to you, according to how you work best.
Happy Writing!
It’s funny because these are all questions that I have been thinking about since I have recently finished reading the MS as a stranger. I must be on the right track. I have made no edits, but I can clearly see the problems, if not the fixes to the problems. Much, much needs to be done.
What I see as a reader is that the interior monologue sections in the first third of the book can mostly be cut- I have no attachment to these ramblings. The stuff that captivates me is Scene, scene, scene as in dialogue, relationships. I need to hone my dialogue skills. I can cut the getting to and fro, and around South India by rickshaw, cab, train, bus… boring!
POV- I’m beginning to listen to my intuition that my stronger writing is when the POV is a character very distant from me, (julie) as in the POV of the Indian night watchman. Not sure how I will handle POV at all yet.
I’m beginning to feel that my protagonist, Lucy, needs to have a pressing motivation to be in India other than to look for her aging aunty- that her internal drive has to be stronger. I think she is fleeing something at ( from) home, and that this synchs up with her duty to find her aunt. She encounters danger in different situations, but I’m wondering if I can set the whole thing up so that she feels the danger, or the danger that will ensue if she doesn’t find her friend Nita and her aunty. Emotional and physical danger. I’m posting my homework assignments as well. ( Premise, character grid, theme.)