The revision process of a novel can be daunting to us amateur authors. Upon completing my first draft, I took Stephen King’s advice from ‘On Writing’ and put the draft away for six weeks. Meanwhile, in the intervening couple of months, I read several writing books and outlined a plan for completing my first revision. What I found in the draft process was verity was the key to success for me.
To start, I made a second draft file on my computer. Since I use Scrivener, each chapters edits begin by creating a snapshot for comparison to the previous version. I’m not sponsored by Scrivener but have found many of the offered features have the author in mind. For example, the snapshot feature allows you to see the changes between different drafts.
In the first draft, I focused on character development/motivations/truth and plot structure, along with glaring spelling or grammar errors. However, the rubber met the road in the middle, requiring a lot of sequence moving and chapter swapping to get the flow right. I deleted portions of chapters and rewrote new sections to enforce the developing themes of the story.
One of the themes to emerge was the concept of growing up. When we are children on the cusp of young adults the new freedoms we experience are accompanied by more responsibilities. With this theme in mind, it was easy to find passages to alter or rewrite to enforce it.
After the second draft, I decided to include a couple of alpha readers to at least let me know if I was on the right track and to tell me if there were any major plot holes. For me, the alphas were my mom and my wife. Up until this point, no one had read the whole book, and it was exciting to receive their comments.
What I got most were notes about wrong word usage and confusing sentences. However, they did point to one weak spot where a character wasn’t using common sense to solve an easy problem. The feedback wasn’t disappointing, but it didn’t present a clear path forward. So after another gap of time to let the book mature I began the third round of edits.
In this round, I read through the chapter editing with the comments from my Alphas. Next, I pass through using Diana Urban’s list of 43 words to cut from your book. I control+F all these words highlighting them in yellow. I also put the text into Hemingway, which is a useful little editor. It notes the use of passive voice, adverbs, and which sentences are hard or difficult to read. The sentence difficulty can be ignored for creative writing, but I do highlight the uses of passive voice and adverbs.
With everything highlighted I read through the chapter again, rewriting or replacing most of the adverbs and passive voice. This tightens up the pacing and helps with the flow of the language. As a result, this method strengthens my ability to spot superfluous language and places to tighten up the story. Whether you are an adverb evangelist or not when they are ALL highlighted it is glaring how many there can be. My method is to cut the ones not adding value to the story or characters, which tend to be about 75%.
Once I complete the process of removing or un-highlighting these issues I let the chapter rest for another day or two. When I come back, I read the chapter out loud, recording it with my iPhone. Any sentence I trip or stutter over gets marked for revision. If it sounds ugly read out loud, it needs tweaking. I’ve also discovered while reading out loud my mind will often reach for the correct verbiage. In this way, the method often suggests the required edits. I listen to the recording the next day to see if any other portions of the text stand out.
With these changes to my revision process, I am making more progress in this draft than I did in the previous one. It is catching mistakes and problems because I’m looking at the words in a new way. Consequently, adding verity to the revision process is vital. This can be achieved even by changing the font on your computer document or printing it out (yes this can be costly) to help the text appear fresh to your eyes. Our brains are great at ignoring repeated information, so anyway we can wake them up is good.
My plan after this round of edits it to give it to five or six beta readers to get their opinions on any remaining issues. Once those are back, it will be one more round of edits, and then this manuscript should be good to go. Hopefully, some of these concepts have sparked ideas for your next round of edits.