Tips for Revising Your Manuscript Without Losing Your Mind
Writing several letters for developmental editing clients over the last week made me realize that revising is something I’ve never talked about here. What do we do after we get the comments, notes, letters, etc. back from editors, beta readers, colleagues, and anyone else we’ve asked to help us with our manuscript? What does a manuscript revision look like?
The obvious answer is that it looks different for every writer, but there are certain things you might expect to see, and definite strategies I recommend no matter what.
Revise from the Top Down
The best suggestion I can offer is to start by organizing your revision and then working from the biggest changes down. When you’ve decided what changes you’re going to make, write them out (start in general terms if that helps) on a sheet of paper—almost like an outline.
For example, let’s say we’re collating the suggestions for our revision and they look like this (I’m making these up for the purposes of this post, none are based on manuscripts I’ve read):
1. Deepen Character A’s backstory. Why do they have trust issues?
2. Do more showing than telling in Ch 5.
3. Side story 2 doesn’t advance the plot or characters.
4. Inciting incident happens in Ch 3, is that where book should start?
5. Dialogue is stilted, make it more natural.
6. Why does Character B kill Character C? Motive isn’t clear.
What order do you work on these revisions? Your first impulse might be to do the short, easy one first and rewrite Chapter 5 so you can cross Number 2 off the list. Or delete your second side story to cross off Number 3.
But wait! Move your list of revision around to something like this instead:
1. Deep dive into my characters heads
a. Deepen Character A’s backstory. Why do they have trust issues?
b. Why does Character B kill Character C? Motive isn’t clear.
2. Inciting incident happens in Ch 3, is that where book should start?
3. Side story 2 doesn’t advance the plot or characters.
4. Dialogue is stilted, make it more natural.
5. Do more showing than telling in Ch 5.
You see as you start working on the big issues first that some of the other issues take care of themselves.
Character Revisions
Personally, I always recommend looking to your characters first. They will help you more than you expect. So if the question has to do with motives, believability, depth, etc. don’t jump right back to the page. Jump into their heads. Ask them why: why do they have the trust issues? Why do they need to kill the other character(s)? And keep asking why. Building and deepening your characters isn’t just about the characters themselves, it can help you discover ways to reveal them on the page. That side story your beta reader thought didn’t contribute anything and you should get rid of? You might discover that by adding a little to it, the story actually helps your detective uncover crucial facts about their suspect and motive, therefore deepening the reader’s understanding of all of your characters. Getting more comfortable with your characters can also help you with dialogue problems you may have.
Starting Over
Don’t be afraid to start over. What can that look like?
1. Where does my book really start?
We all think we know where our story starts. But does it? If you were to tell someone about your idea, would you give them all the backstory first, or start with the bang? That inciting incident that jumps your characters into action? Or the fallout? The incident has occurred and your characters are figuring out their new normal, which of course will be anything but normal! This can be 1, 2 or more chapters past where you started your first draft, so don’t be discouraged if you get suggestions about cutting early chapters to start later.
It may not be common, but it isn’t uncommon, for an editor to ask if you’ve thought about telling your story in first person instead of third person. Or dual point of view. I know several authors who have gone back to books they’ve published and re-written them from omniscient third person to dual first person and republished their books.
Why do this? Often (like the authors who republished their books), that’s what the market wants right now. It isn’t right or wrong, but if it’s common it is more likely that an editor will suggest what others are doing to keep to genre expectations. Does this mean YOU need to do this? Only if it feels right for your characters and their story.
3. Structure changes
This isn’t something that will come up often if you’re writing a typical genre novel, but if you’re experimenting with something like telling your story in parallel timelines, for example, you may get some suggestions on alterations. If you plan to do experimental fiction, I recommend reading what others have written and, most importantly, reading interviews by those authors on their writing and editing processes. And be prepared for a lot of work with your own editor to get to exactly where you want your manuscript to be.
This is also true in nonfiction and is the process I’m going through with my revisions. I knew when I gave my developmental editor my manuscript that the structure wasn’t right, but I didn’t see a solution. I was too close to the work and had been for too long. When she gave it back to me, she had a few suggestions for different structures that worked better than what I’d been using. What I chose to do involved rewriting pretty much everything I’d done, but I felt that the result would be much stronger than what I’d started with. I’m still rewriting, so we’ll see how goes!
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