Revisions are like rabbits, they multiply without your consent
Like many of you, I’m deep in a revision cycle for my WIP right now. What else are we supposed to do in the middle of a pandemic, right? Plus, if you’re participating in NaNoWriMo, you know that you have heavy editing in your near future.
Last night, I came across a chapter I had written that was so convoluted that there was no way I could move forward. Everything was too internal, the character didn’t feel honest, the pacing was off.
So, I brushed off my process for dealing with chapters like this and decided to share it with you instead of getting started immediately on those edits myself. Do what I recommend, not as I do.
- Admit defeat
You’re editing, the end is in sight, and you come across a chapter that just doesn’t flow as well as the rest of them. Or maybe your character’s voice is off. No matter the reason, this is a panic-inducing moment for most writers.
Breathe.
This is the scariest part of the process so just be gentle with yourself.
You KNOW this story. You KNOW what you meant to say. Just the same as when we’re relaying a story about our weekend to friends, sometimes we need to correct ourselves. We misspeak or skip a detail and have to backtrack.
Defeat is the beginning of a process. Give into it and dig in.
2. Figure out what the main purpose of the chapter is
You had something in mind when you sat down to write this chapter. There’s crucial information here. Make a list of what you need to say with this chapter. Mine looked like this.
It can be one point or multiple but if there are multiple, you may begin seeing the writing on the wall. I knew as I looked at my list that there were too many points to get across here. I was still in denial though.
3. Figure out what’s standing in the way of that purpose coming through
Another list! Why can’t you get your aforementioned points across accurately? Is there too much monologuing? If so, maybe you need to bring more characters into the scene to create dialogue. Is it not matching your characters voice?
If you can identify what’s standing in the way, you can begin to weed them out of the revision.
4. Multiple documents open
I don’t kill my darlings, I send them to a slush pile. I have a running document where things are exiled. While revising a particularly irritating chapter, I like to have several documents open at once. I tend to use traffic light terminology for these documents. Green is the in-progress editing page. Yellow is for things I’ve removed to be inserted back in- perhaps in a different order or with more people involved in the scene. Red will be the slush pile, or things that have been cut completely as they get in the way of my chapter’s main purpose.
5. Accept more work for the sake of the work
You have to be honest with yourself. If you’ve done all of this work only to come to the realization that the POV or chapter order needs to change, then you have to put that work in. Maybe not that day, sleep on it, fortify yourself, eat a carb, but commit to it. Ultimately, for me, it meant realizing that the chapter had too many crucial points to make and I needed to separate it into two. I immediately went to bed.
But here’s the truth. At the end of the day, that’s what revision IS. It’s a puzzle. You have to fit the pieces in correctly, not smash the sides down in. order to make it fit. It’s going to be more work but it’s going to make your manuscript so much better.
