How to Revise Your Novel

AKA Here we go again

You’ve finished your novel and 80,000+ words sit before you. After you’ve done the happy dance, after your mom has said it’s a wonderful book, after you’ve winced because your critique group put their fingers on the holes you knew about but hoped they wouldn’t notice, it’s time to edit.

So how do you revise your novel? The answer is the same as the answer to a lot of writing questions: revise using whatever method works for you.

I just got a copy of Manuscript Makeover by Elizabeth Lyon. In the introduction, she presents three completely different ways three prominent authors revise their work:

• 32 pages of revision for every single final page – Dean Kootz
• revise no more than 3 times, then start your next work – Dean Wesley Smith & Kristine Kathryn Rusch
• throw away the first 2 drafts, keep and polish the third – Jonis Agee

more spooky buds

As Lyon notes, “These examples represent but three philosophies of revision, but as many methods exist as there are writers.”

I’ll admit, throwing out my first and second draft did not occur to me. But now I know it’s an option. As is revising every page more than 10 or 20 times. I haven’t tried that, but it could work for me.

I am going to finish reading Manuscript Makeover first, just in case I find something else I want to try before the 32 Page Revision Method.

You’ll know when something works for you. If you’re not sure where to start, find out what other people do and try that out. If it works, remember it and do it again. If it doesn’t, try something else.

Thomas Edison: If I find 10,000 ways something won’t work, I haven’t failed.

Oct 22, 2009

Tags: editing  |  revision

Categories: writing