While I've been letting Water Magic sit for a month, I've been working on a new novel, a young adult science fiction set in a Martian colony. It's been fun and exciting writing new characters and a completely different story, and I'm enjoying the change in genre. But nevertheless when the thirty day quarantine on Water Magic was up last week, I was filled with curiosity, joy, and terror to return to the world and characters of my first novel.
My impressions so far? When I started reading, there was relief. Thank goodness! This isn't as bad as I thought it might be. In fact, a lot of this is really good. I'm a genius! Then I moved on a little bit to a series of chapters I'd written in the very beginning. Ouch. This sucks. I'm a hack! Delete, delete, delete. And it's pretty much gone back and forth between those two voices ever since. The good thing, I think, is that I can recognize when the writing is terrible. Knowing what to delete, rewrite, revise--that's half the battle. The other half is actually replacing it with something good.
My plans are to finish reading the draft, then draw up a revised outline, making notes on all the changes I need to make. Then I'm going to open a new Scrivener document, transfer over whatever text I'm going to keep from the rough draft, and fill in the gaps from there.
I'm curious to know--what are your methods for revising? Do you outline and make notes, or do you keep everything in your head? Do you struggle with what to keep and what to throw? And at what point do you bring in beta readers?
I've never gone a revision on a full novel, but my time is coming at the end of March. I have revised short stories though and I think a physical copy really helps.
ReplyDeleteI like marking things up with pen and highlighters. Even if a physical copy costs a fortune to print, there's no internet to distract me and it's really easy to take down notes on certain scenes that way.
My overall revision plan is to finish the manuscript, take a break from it for a while, do a rough edit, and then try to find some critique partners. I have a lot of issues with my first draft that I know about and don't want people to focus on when I'm begging them for help. After that edit, maybe then beta readers? It probably all depends on how it goes though.
Sorry it took so long to comment on this post...
ReplyDeleteI've been doing final revisions on my WIP :-)
My method is to do a scene-by-scene outline then, as each chapter is written, I immediately go back and revise it (reading aloud as I revise).
Naturally, my outline often must change as I work forward but I still need that framework.
When I reach the end, I go through again, and as many agains as the "integrity" of the book demands--the book "speaks" to me about when to stop revisions...
With this book, I've sought feedback from long before I started writing. I needed input on the story idea.
I've gotten as many eyes on the manuscript as possible; including, of course, my editor...