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“I believe more in the scissors than I do
in the pencil.” - Truman Capote
National Novel Writing Month 2008 (NaNoWriMo) ended November 30 leaving me with 66,103 words of a novel which I now must expand and revise. It seems there are as many methods of revision as there are novelists. Some writers make only a single pass through, but a very thorough one. Others revise draft after draft. How do you handle it?
For my first NaNoWriMo in 2004, I simply did writing practice in response to prompts which I had created. My only parameters were that the topic had to relate to golf or my father. I wound up with 50,000 words worth of little essays. No plot. No consistency. I spent the next four years completing it.
I began the revision process by simply printing out all the pieces. I double spaced them, 3-hole punched them, and put them in a three-ring binder in chronological order. Unfortunately this chronology spanned my entire life and reached back into my father’s as well. I took this binder to a coffeehouse and spent three days reading it all the way through. I tried to figure out which pieces were workable the way they were (very few), which bits needed to be chucked (many) and which parts might work with revision (some).
Next, I stepped waaaaay back from the individual written pages to think about the whole story structure. I stepped so far back that I wound up in grad school to study plot and characterization and other aspects of craft. I looked at what and where the climax would be and the different turning points that would lead the characters to the climax. I figured out the story’s timeline and the overall shape of the thing. I chopped the NaNo book into pieces again and, according to where I thought they fit in the timeline and story arc, I rearranged them using tools like yWriter and index cards and lots of weird outline type things to actually move the ideas and the huge wads of text around. I found holes the size of small countries so I spent tons of time writing new scenes to fill them.
Once I felt I had all the pieces in all the right places, I went through and polished, polished, polished correcting grammar and punctuation, tightening the dialogue, and checking for unnecessary repetition of words. When I was through, I had probably read every word in that book four or five times. I wish I could say it was perfect, but every time I pick it up, I can still find a place to tighten and polish, revise and correct.
I would love to hear from folks who have tackled revising a book-length work. How did you approach the revision process? How many passes through do you make? What tools do you use?
For those of you who have a draft to revise, good luck! May the rest of you have one soon.
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5 comments:
Congratulations on your achievements, Nina!
Years ago a colleague told me "You can't write long--that's why you write poetry." She was right. The most obvious evidence of that came when I decided to write GOLF IS THE DEVIL'S GAME (fiction). First, I borrowed a successful Faustian theme: the original Broadway play of Damn Yankees! (Not many of you are old enough to remember this hit which later became a 1958 film starring George Abbott, Tab Hunter and Gwen Verdon. (I went to a revival production at the Carousel Dinner Theater in Akron just a few months ago.)
I wanted to do for golf what Damn Yankees had done for baseball. And the Faustian theme was nothing new, so I felt all right about my idea.
Once I began writing, I pretended I was writing a screen play, since a sale of film rights was my ultimate goal. So far, so good.
The ironic surprise I encountered was that, whenever I sat down to work on the book, I was compelled to read the entire work from the beginning EVERY TIME! Yes, I couldn't begin writing until I reloaded the entire manuscript into my brain in order to pick up where I'd left off. No wonder I wound up with just 109 pages! (A novella---which I think works just fine in approaching the film industry.)
I guess I'm trying to say I'll probably never enter a novel writing contest because I CAN'T WRITE "LONG." (And I know it. Some of you probably should get out of there.)
HAPPY HOLIDAZE TO ALL!
---Joe McLaughlin
Dover, Ohio
JosephMcL@aol.com
Nita,
Congratulations on completing your 2nd NaNoWriMo! That's fabulous.
I've been enjoying your blog for months now so I thought I'd post a comment.
I have to say, I think I am in the boat with Joe McLaughlin. No one has told me I can't write long, but I've found it to be true so far.
I did the 3-Day Novel Contest over Labor Day weekend and ended up with drafts for 5 short stories. The problem, as I see it, is I have three characters whom I love & want to write more about, but I am going to have to approach it the way you did your first book - writing it in small pieces.
It was helpful to me that you shared that part of your process: the writing of one piece at a time & putting it all together later.
I am a poet at heart so that's just the way it is.
Best, Kat
@Joe and Kat - Brevity is the soul of wit and all that! I'm pushing my edges and loving it. It's great when we each find what works and run with it.
Hi Nita - I love your newsletter. It's the best literary round-up in Columbus. I've written three novels now. The first I had a baby at the breast so approached it like a collection of short stories - which meant I had to re-write about 30k of words in the back half. The second I plotted carefully but it felt too paint by numbers - although people who like high concept enjoyed it. The third I wrote with toddlers around, and dug deep into my own process for material. It's polished, and I'm trying to sell it. Part of me wants to do an MFA before I write another novel, just to get more ideas in the mix. Thanks for the monthly reminder that I'm a professional writer with a real community here in Columbus! www.cynthiarosi.com
@Write That! Thanks for your kind words and for discussing your process. Sounds like tenacity to me.
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