Revision Tip: Take a Holiday!

Today's Tip:

One of the most commonly repeated pieces of advice for revising is to take some time between writing your draft and working on revisions.

What I usually do is set a story aside for a couple of months while I write the first draft of another project (because there are always more stories waiting for me to write). I don't like to rush. Revisions require incubating time as well as writing time.

Useful link:  Jessica over at Bookends Literary Agency gives an agent's perspective on taking time for revisions.

Happy Holidays! This is my last revision tip for the month -- I'll be back in January (well-rested and with a good chunk of my novel revision done).

Revision Tip: Choose the Right Details

For the month of December, I really need to concentrate on my novel revisions. So instead of my usual Marvelous Middle Grade Monday and ABCs of Writing Middle Grade Fiction I'll be posting short revision tips from various sources.

 Today's Tip:  

Details add sparkle to the story (and can sometimes cut down your word count).

It's a little weird to think that putting in details can actually make a story shorter. But one of the things I’ve noticed while revising is that sometimes a carefully selected word or phrase can replace an entire sentence.

I think it’s important to make sure the details you choose are ones your main character would notice. For example, my current novel has a lot of smell-related details since my main character has a keen sense of smell. 

Watch for:

 - sentences where the main purpose is to state a description (often starting with "It was..."). These can sometimes be eliminated by using a descriptive phrase or by showing how the character reacts to the description.

 - sensory details that are vague, rather than specific. For example,  It smelled delicious vs. It smelled like the gingerbread cookies her grandmother used to bake.

 Cool Quote:  “Description does nothing to move a story forward on its own. It’s how it interacts with the characters that makes or breaks it.”  Janice Hardy, Description 101: Is Your Description Helping Your Story or Holding It Back?  The Other Side of the Story, April 21, 2011

Over at Chocolate for Inspiration, my critique buddy Christina Farley talks about her revision process – she has one phase of revision that's just for getting the details right.

Revision Tip: Experiment, But Save It

For the month of December, I really need to concentrate on my novel revisions. So instead of my usual Marvelous Middle Grade Monday and ABCs of Writing Middle Grade Fiction I'll be posting short revision tips from various sources.

Today's Tip:

Make good use of your technology.

Since I’m writing on a computer, I easily can make as many drafts as I like and no one will see them. That gives me the freedom to try things out in a different way to see if that makes for a stronger story. I can cut out a character, add new chapters etc. Sometimes I save separate paragraphs of bits of the story that I liked but didn’t fit with my new vision. Then if I need to, I can go back to them or use them somewhere else.

Watch for:

-  save different versions of the file under a different name

-  backing up files is critical

Cool Quote: “…unless you make big changes, a revision isn’t worth doing. If you go out on a submission round and get roundly rejected, you’re not going to solve your problem by going back to the page to tweak a few words here and there.”

Mary Kole, Big Revision, December 7,2011

Revision Tip: Scenes as Building Blocks

For the month of December, I really need to concentrate on my novel revisions. So instead of my usual Marvelous Middle Grade Monday and ABCs of Writing Middle Grade Fiction I'll be posting short revision tips from various sources.

Today's Tip:

Each scene is a step towards the final big event that happens at the end of the story.

Can you tell I’ve been learning from The Plot Whisperer? One of the things I do as I revise is to check my story, scene by scene, to make sure each scene has a purpose.

I also think about the characters in each scene, what their goals are for that scene and how the scene contributes to their overall goal. I’ve been noticing some interesting ways my character’s goals interact, leading to scenes that have more than one purpose in the story. Watch for:

- scenes with no apparent purpose:  they need to be cut or amped up (even if the writing is amazing)

- scenes where too much is happening: sometimes they need to be broken up

- scenes that repeat in terms of the pattern of events or structure 

Cool Quote:

 “…it wasn’t until I learned to see scenes on a micro level—as needing goals, obstacles and turning points of their own—that I became a publishable writer.”

 Lena Coakley,Some Thoughts on Scene Structure, posted on her blog November 30, 2011.

Paying It Forward

How is your December going? So far, my revisions are coming along (slow but steady). People I care about are getting all kinds of good news. My Christmas shopping is well underway. My younger daughter is actually cleaning out her closet without being asked (I'm stunned). And I won a Kindle!

Yesterday, I received my brand new Kindle in the mail, courtesy of Karen Strong. She has an awesome blog for writers (and I'm not just saying that because I won her giveaway). Karen's generosity has inspired me to be more giving too, so in addition to the charity donations I already do at this time of year, I decided to make a donation to First Book, an organization that helps connect books with kids who need them.

Then I saw that Six Teaching Authors (another great blog) are donating to First Book too. Wow! It's great to see all this kindness and caring in our world.

P.S. My daughters are both very excited about the Kindle, and now we're shopping for some good reads. Any suggestions?

Revision Tip: Working on Structure

For the month of December, I really need to concentrate on my novel revisions. So instead of my usual Marvelous Middle Grade Monday and ABCs of Writing Middle Grade Fiction I'll be posting short revision tips from various sources.


Today's Tip:

Learning about book structure from reading and analyzing published books in your genre can be really helpful. I find I get the most out of this process if I do it myself, but there are some great ones out there on writer blogs (for example, see Laura Pauling's Plot Busters posts). When I get stuck on a plot issue, I often turn to one of my novel analyses to see how other writers manage to get their plots to fit together.

Cool Quote:  "Analyzing a book through dissection turned out to be one of the most concrete and most helpful revision strategies I tried...the power of the dissection process was that I came to these same conclusions on my own by analyzing how writers I admire created books that I love."

Katherine Schlick Noe, Revision: Turning Spilled Milk Into Ice Cream blogging at From the Mixed Up Files on August 5, 2011.

Revision Tip: Telling in Dialogue

For the month of December, I really need to concentrate on my novel revisions. So instead of my usual Marvelous Middle Grade Monday and ABCs of Writing Middle Grade Fiction I'll be posting short revision tips from various sources.

Today's Tip:

It's easy to hide telling in dialogue. It can also create situations where your dialogue feels off, because you are telling something in your dialogue that doesn't match with what is being shown in the story. Watch for:

- adjectives that explain character emotions, e.g. she said in surprise

- attributions that explain dialogue, e.g. he barked

Cool Quote:  "Every time you insert an explanation into dialogue, you're cheating your readers of a little bit of one of your characters. Do it often enough, and none of your characters ever comes to life on the page."

Renni Browne and Dave King, Self-Editing for Fiction Writers.