#just plotting out the next few chapters and refining them and oof

[radioactive-earthshine]

Just thinking about Kon's clone rights narrative and how much we were robbed of. Thinking about how much it has to bother Kon to see over and over again the tired narrative of "it's okay if this person dies, it was just a clone so it doesn't count."

[letswritesomenovels]

My Revision Plan

I’ve been posting a lot about finishing a first draft of something new. So I thought it might be helpful if I also included my plans about what to do next. 

Step One: Preserve the Draft

I work in Scrivener, so my first step is to compile, save, and preserve my draft. For me, this means I’m:

Capturing a snapshot of the current version of my chapters in Scrivener, so I can keep editing the main ‘manuscript’ files without losing access to the current version.

Exporting and saving the entire manuscript as “[TITLE] - First Draft - July 2020″ so that as I finish further revisions, I’ll always know which version this one is. 

Emailing the draft to myself, saving it in iCloud, and printing it. Whatever it takes to ensure its safe keeping. This way, no matter what happens--if my computer falls into a pool and is destroyed--my entire first draft of this book will be safe somewhere. 

This way, I can revise and edit and generally make a mess of things again without having to worry that anything I do going forward is going to affect the contents or completeness of my first draft. 

Step Two: Second Sketches 

I don’t want to dive into the editing process just yet, so before doing a serious re-read or re-plotting my entire book, I’m going to set about re-sketching my settings and characters. 

In my first drafts, I treated my settings and characters as flexible. When I realized something about them wasn’t working, I changed that thing and kept going. Events changed locations, buildings changed distance from one another, Three of my characters had abrupt job changes in chapter ten, when I realized I could remove an extraneous plot and weave their storylines into a more central plot by doing so. Somewhere immediately after I tell the reader my protagonist has glasses, I forgot to ever mention them again. 

This means my initial character and setting sketches are all--well, not useless, but not quite useful anymore either. Now that I’ve figured out where and what things and people need to be in order to make the story work, I’m writing down new “character/setting rules” to guide me through my first revision. I want to make them consistent. 

For settings, this means I’m going to go through and decide on:

A “map” of the locations of the story and figure out exactly where things are in relation to one another

The layouts of individual settings 

What specific places look, smell, and sound like 

The “rules” of the world 

For characters, this means I’m going to go through and decide on their:

physical characteristics

personality and backstory

relationships both with other characters and the world around them

character arcs: their wants, their fears, their internal conflicts, and how they’re supposed to be growing and changing throughout the novel

And if I decide my protagonist does wear glasses, I’m going to make sure she’s wearing them throughout the entire story. 

Step Three: Read

Writing Advice

In the next few weeks, I’m going to read and reread books and blogs on writing. I am going to soak it all up. I’m going to learn or remind myself about what makes a story good. Refine my knowledge of writing craft. These are the ideas that are going to help me make my revised draft better than my first one.

Fun books!

I’m also going to read for fun, especially the books I was avoiding because they were in a similar genre/category to the one I was drafting. I want to know how good the “competition” is, and also see those “writing rules” I’ve been reading about in writing advice books/blogs in action. 

The First Draft

Finally, I’m going to crack open my own book. 

This is the hardest part of a revision: critically reading what I’ve written so I can prepare to tear it to pieces and rebuild it. 

Oof.

For this, I recommend changing the font, either printing it out or putting it on an e-reader, settling down in your favorite spot to read, and reading it in one go. I’m probably going to print mine out and put it in a binder. This will help me see it with the eye of a reader/editor instead of an author, and hopefully help me put some emotional distance between me and the work I’ve done. 

I’m going to keep a notebook nearby and take notes about things that are working, things that aren’t working, ideas for changes, and other stray observations (like words I’m using too often, or where I’m repeating myself, or abandoned plot points, etc.). 

Step Four: Re-Outline

This step itself has many steps.

Step One: Identify the core idea of the story. In clear terms, write out in one or two sentences what this story is about, English-major style. ie. “This story is about a girl finding the courage to pursue the life she wants, not the one her parents have planned for her. Her struggles are reflected back on her when she encounters the ghost of a princess who cares so much what history thinks of her, she’s letting its opinion turn her into a literal monster.” 

Step Two: Outline the events in the story as it currently exists. 

Step Three: Evaluate how well it conveys the core idea, and how the current structure works. Identify:

the purpose of various scenes (ie. inciting incident) 

Extraneous scenes/plots/characters

Plot points that should be in the story but are missing

Key moments of character arcs

Events that support the core idea

Events that either don’t support or work in opposition to the core idea

Step Four: Rebuild the outline so that the story has a strong structure that supports the core idea. 

Step Five: Share

I know I’m going to struggle with figuring out exactly how to rebuild my story, so I’m going to share both my first draft and my unfinished plan with my writing friends. I’m going to ask them for their ideas and advice. With their feedback, I’m going to solidify my plan for my new outline, hopefully a bit more confident that it’s the right one. 

I know not all people have a group of writing buddies they can easily do this with. If you don’t have a critique group, don’t sweat it. It helps and it’s worth an attempt to try to find one, but it’s not a vital step.

Step Six: Revise 

Finally, I’m going to go through my work chapter by chapter: editing scenes, trashing scenes, and writing new scenes entirely from scratch until I have a manuscript that’s hopefully much better than the first.

If I revise this book like I did my last one, I’ll probably polish the chapters as I move through them, so that when i’m done, some chapters will be on their twelfth drafts, some will be on their second, but overall it’ll be the best version of the story I’m currently able to write. 

--

It’s a lot, and it seems like a very daunting process from my current standpoint, but finishing the first draft seemed daunting too, just a few weeks ago, and I got through that process. With time and effort, I’ll get through this one too.