Guest Post by Jack Smith
You can handle novel revision in many different ways—probably too numerous to mention. One method: You can rework pages one at a time, trying to get everything right before going on. A second: You can take the novel section by section, attempting to get everything right.
Or how about this third
method? Once you have a fairly complete draft, just commit yourself
to twenty-page sessions of revision.
Unless you hit real snags, you can do
this in about two to three hours.
Here’s the kinds of things to look
for/work for:
-Characters
that seem rather flat. What can you do to spice them up a
bit? Maybe some interesting description? Maybe an interesting
remark in a scene? (If this changes the nature of the scene too much,
this will of course require more time and effort.)
-Plot
details. Did you leave something out? Do you need to take
something out that you won’t be dealing with after all? Do you want to
echo something or foreshadow something?
-A
descriptive passage to make a setting
more interesting. Or a setting more important?
-A passage
that is confusing or cumbersome to read.
-Bloated
sections, whether expository, descriptive, or scenic where you could cut
some and achieve more impact.
-A hint at
theme or idea, whether in character thought or dialogue.
-Dull
writing that needs spiced up to fetch your reader’s interest more.
Okay: All of this sounds like the typical
fare. But what’s daunting is a long laundry list of changes you so often
face before you can put your project to rest.
But do it in twenty-page sessions where
you can make incremental progress. If you’re absolutely burned out,
do it while you’re watching TV. Do it while you’re listening to
music. Some days you will simply read over the twenty pages and not
expect to accomplish a lot because you just don’t have it in you to get very
serious. But you’ve still gone over those twenty pages, and you’ve taken care
of the kinds of problems that really jump right out at you (or some of them
anyway). Other days you’ll feel more like revising, and you can dig deeper and
make more content changes (e.g. rewriting scenes) or structural changes (e.g.
relocating a section of the novel) that seem too daunting on certain
days. On the days you don’t feel like tough work, just note what you need
to deal with later.
Revision at twenty pages a day is usually
doable, and it’s not a huge task to face. Over time you’ll probably
accomplish a lot. In three months, you will have gone over a 300-page
novel six times. Surely something will come of that.
Write
and Revise for Publication , Writer’s Digest, 2013, and Hog
to Hog, winner of the George Garrett Fiction Prize, Texas Review Press, 2008.