The Empty God - Revision Process

[moonmomma]

I've begun revising The Empty God, and since this is going to be such a huge task (it's 137,000 words) I thought I'd share notes about the process, in hopes my experience might be helpful for others working on revisions.

First thing, since this book is so long I've thought that I would type in one chapter's worth of revisions at a time instead of my usual process of going over the whole book with red pen and then typing in all the revisions. But this book is so long I'm afraid that by the time I get to the end, I'll have forgotten what all those cryptic labyrinthine notes, arrows, circles, and asterisks back at the beginning mean.

The problem with that, I discovered today, is what if, as I'm going along, I think of other changes that need to be made to earlier parts of the book? I keep my pages after I've typed in the corrections, but it would be hard to tell the red markings I've already typed in from the ones I just added.

Then the answer came to me: use a different color pen!! If I think of something after I've already typed in all the red corrections, I'll mark it in blue or green or purple!! ;D Yay!

And onward.

EDITED TO ADD: And after I go back and make revisions in blue ink on pages where I've already typed in the red revisions, I'll stick a post-it note hanging off the side of the page so I'll remember I need to go back to it and type in the blue revisions.

I'm pretty impressed with myself for thinking of this.

[moonmomma]

All righty, I think I'll talk a little more about the process I'm using to revise "The Empty God." Since this book is massive (the draft is 137,000 words) and I don't want to be revising it forever, I decided to give Holly Lisle's "One-Pass Revision" (hollylisle.com/fm/Workshops/one-pass-revision.html) a shot. Actually, calling it "One-Pass" is a bit of a cheat, since she says somewhere in there that this is her process *before* she sends the book off to her publisher. Once it's there, she and her editor do one or two more quick revisions. Since I'm my own editor and publisher, I get to do those one or two additional revisions myself. So I don't have to have a perfect book at the end of this first go-through. (It won't be perfect anyway, no matter how many times I revise it, but there comes a time when you have to call the project finished and move on.)

Anyway, to do this revision process you need a printed-out copy of your book (I like to punch holes and put it in a binder, just to keep everything together), a red pen (and maybe also a blue pen; see the above post), a spiral notebook (perforated pages would be nice, for if you have to write additional paragraphs or scenes and then put it in the binder), and a pad of post-its. This is a slight variation on Ms. Lisle's supplies; it's what feels comfortable for me.

If you have everything together, then it's time to start!

to be continued...

[moonmomma]

Okay. Once you have all your revision stuff together, you start by making sure you know what your book is about. This is important! I've read published books where the author can't seem to decide what the story's about, and it's very frustrating. Knowing what it's all about will help you stay on task and produce a coherent piece of fiction. This is detailed on Holly Lisle's site: hollylisle.com/fm/Workshops/one-pass-revision.html. In the notebook, write:

1. a theme or themes for your story. I have a tough time with "theme;" I don't usually write thinking about Larger Issues. Some of the ones I came up with for "The Empty God" are "Love conquers fear and weakness, give strength to do seemingly impossible things;" "Two opposites can combine to make something greater than the sum of the parts;" "Knowledge should be freely available to all, not restricted to an elite few."

2. A summary of your story, 25 words or less.

3. The storyline for the main character(s).

4. Summary or blurb, like for a book cover, of your story.

I also added:

5. The title, and what it means

6. Character profile and development summary for your main character(s).

For example, for Professor Rossony I wrote

1. Priggish, fastidious, somewhat OCD, exacting
2. Devoted to teaching; pedantic, prone to lecturing
3. High expectations of himself and others
4. Distant, unfriendly - protecting his secrets from being discovered, himself from being hurt.
5. Ashamed of his cultural/ethnic background
(and some others)

End of story-
1. the same, but less rigid about things.
2. same
3.same, but less forbidding - students more comfortable with asking questions, for example
4. open and friendly - has revealed his secrets to a few people he cares about, they embraced him rather than rejecting him. his basic good nature is now free to show through; becomes well-liked.
5. has embraced certain parts of his heritage and background.

just an example. this exercise, in theory should help you make sure the characters are acting the way they should act and developing the way they should develop through the story.

tomorrow: tackling that manuscript.

[moonmomma]

tomorrow, ha ha.

Anyway, here's the next installment in revising my novel using Holly Lisle's One-Pass Revision Process.

Once you've got your supplies and you know what your book and characters are about, you start reading through the manuscript. This method of revising is scene-based, so what you do is take each scene and ask yourself, Does this scene belong in the book? Does it have structure, conflict, and development? (One note I made for myself - "Emotional tension builds, then suddenly back to business") Are the characters behaving the way they should at this point in the story? Are there problems with the continuity - characters who randomly appear or disappear, contradictions with other parts of the story (character X is blond in one scene, a redhead later in the book - and DIDN'T dye her hair, or a dead grandma suddenly comes back to life), characters who end up having to be in two places at once, etc.

This is where you will basically work on the overall structure of the story. You'll add, delete, combine, break up, or move scenes; keep your characters developing the way they're supposed to, take care of any problems with continuity, dropped plot threads. You'll also see where you need to cut out excessive description or (my case, since I usually "write short" in the first draft) add description. You'll need to check your balance of action, dialogue, and narrative (basically, where you're telling what's happening, usually in summary form).

If I need to insert more than a short paragraph or two, I like to write it on a piece of paper from my notebook, tear it out, and insert it in the binder next to the page where it goes.

You'll want to keep notes in your notebook of changes you make - for example, you decide to cut a servant who keeps popping up uselessly, or you change someone's name, or decide that the events of the past took place 800 years ago instead of 1000.

Post-it notes are great for marking where you're going to move a scene from one place in the story to another. For example, I want to move a big chunk of story to an earlier place - I label it A, put a post-it sticking off of that page labelled "A", then use another post-it labelled "A here" to show the page where A will end up.

This isn't where you're going to polish your prose, but you do want to get rid of any obvious clunkers, as well as making sure your "voice" is consistent (formal? informal? humorous? archaic?) and that your characters are speaking appropriately for their character. Clean up tangled syntax and garbled descriptions, make sure your sentences don't all start with the same word. Get rid of unnecessary exposition and all the boring "hello, how are you?" "I'm fine, how are you?" bits of dialogue.

This is a messy process. As Ms. Lisle says, "Your manuscript will look like it was savaged by rutting weasels." Rutting rabid weasels, I would add.

She suggest dividing your manuscript into three piles as you work: the pages you're working on, the ones where you've made edits, and the "clean" pages. I prefer to keep everything in a three-ring binder to keep it all together. Besides, I never have any unmarked pages. If I have so much as a paragraph with no red ink on it, I go back and give it a closer scrutiny.

I work a chapter at a time; see the first post in this thread for more on that. With a shorter manuscript you'll probably want to go through the whole thing before you start to type in your changes.

It's a long, painstaking process, and I find I can't edit for more than an hour (with breaks) at a time. But it's rewarding as you begin to get the feeling of taking that big unformed chunk of prose that is your first draft and beating and whacking it into something resembling a readable piece of fiction.

[moonmomma]

Okay, now that I've described the One-Pass Revision process as I'm using it, I'll make some observations on how it's going.

First of all, this is going to take forever. I think that's mostly a function of how long my manuscript is and the fact that I have limited time to spend on it. Holly Lisle says she can do this revision process on a 120,000 (or something like that) word manuscript in two weeks. But then, she's a full-time professional author and I'm not. On a good day I can spend maybe 2-3 hours all together on this. Plus I'm stopping after every chapter to type in my changes while I still remember what all those circles and arrows and brackets and cryptic notes mean. But, progress is being made, slowly. I'm almost done with chapter 5.

I take one scene's worth of pages out of my binder at a time, so I can concentrate my efforts on the scene and not get carried away just reading. Then I start reading through the scene. If I find my mind starting to wander, I stop and make a note of where I want the scene to go, because probably what's happening is it's just meandering without any sense of direction. So I'll jot down in the margins (in pencil, so it doesn't get mixed up with my red pen) "Romantic tension increases, then suddenly back to business" or "Perarre knows Roric is up to something, keeps trying to pin him down, he tries to pretend he doesn't know what she's talking about, then tries to brush off her concerns, finally tries to change subject by referring to their private relationship, Perarre not amused."

Once I have the direction of the scene in mind, I can go back and re-work it to follow that direction. Ideally, each scene should have its own little story arc: setup, climax, and maybe conclusion (unless you're leaving it as a cliffhanger). This isn't where I'm trying to polish the prose to perfection, although I'll correct any real clunkers. This is where I'm looking to see if the scene works, if it belongs, if it's in the right place, if the characters are behaving the way they're supposed to, correct the continuity (the time frame I'm referring to in my story was 1000 years, I changed it to 800 years, and also changed the name of the Empire where it's set), see if there's places where the description needs to be trimmed or (in my case, since I tend to "write short" in my first drafts) filled out.

As one scene is finished I put those pages back in the binder and then take out the pages for the next scene. I try not to quit working in the middle of a scene since it messes up my train of thought; I try to think of each scene as a unit.

[moonmomma]

More revision tips: Thinking ahead.

As you revise, you might do things like change the name of a person or place, or change the spelling, or something like that. Make note of these in your notebook so you'll remember to carry the changes all the way through the story. If I need to do a search and replace because of a changed name or spelling, I note it like this: "old word" ---> new word with a box around it. I put all of these on the same page. As I type in my changes, I refer to this page to make sure I replace everything that needs to be replaced.

Plot points might also change, which you'll need to take into account later. For example, I changed something in Perarre's backstory, and Roric is aware of this previous event/relationship in her life. This will make a significant difference in how he reacts when... (shoot, I don't want to put in too many spoilers) from how I wrote it in the first draft. So I'll jot down on my page of revision notes how this change will affect the scene where Roric is reacting - his thoughts, the emotional process he goes through, the conversation he has with his mentor about the situation.

Write these kinds of changes down when you make them, to avoid continuity problems later on.

[moonmomma]

so, how's it going, you may be wondering. (or not. ) Slower than I'd like, I haven't worked on it for several days because we had to clear my manuscript binder off teh kitchen table because my husband's family was coming over for supper, and then I was tired and busy and never got it back out. (should go on the Excuses board) But back at it again today.

I'm past the first section, which needed a lot of rewriting because of characterizations, backstory, setup, stuff like that. Things should be more straightforward, for a while at least, from here.

I'm thinknig that just for laffs I might scan a few of my marked-up pages and post them here.

[moonmomma]

Well, now that I've finally finished this monster revision, here are a few reflections on the process.

The "one-pass revision" is much more likely to really be "one-pass" if you are an experienced author with a relatively clean first draft of no more than 80,000-100,000 words. Having a contract deadline breathing down your neck probably helps, too. ;D For me, with this 137,000-word monster, it was just too much to try to do everything at once. So I'm looking at two more revisions (hopefully no more than that) - one to take care of the extensive list of "revision notes" I made this time around and to fix a lot of other issues - like characterization and description, and the second one to polish things up.

With the "one-pass revision" method, the prep work was helpful to focus myself on what I'm trying to accomplish with the story. I have to disagree with knowing your theme before you start the revision; for me, theme, if there's one present, grows organically from the story as you work it into shape.

The scene-based approach is helpful in hammering out your basic plotline and structure, as opposed to working by chapters or other units. Evaluating each scene for its purpose in the story and for its own internal structure is a good way to make sure your story stays on track.

The list of different things to look for in revision as presented in the one-pass revision instructions is also useful. Though, like I said, for me it was hard to keep it all in mind at once.

Now that this revision is done, I'm going to print it out in a different font than I used before (supposedly this helps you see it fresh) and then set it aside for a few months while I work on some other projects.