Revision is a scary word, a scary idea, hard to start and overwhelming. Over the course of the past two weeks, revision is all I have been doing and I am here to tell you that “revising is a process more dreaded than dreadful” (Burroway 341).
I have always been afraid of the “R” word. No joke. Ever since I began writing it has been a block to me. Just like with the journals, I have been under the impression that revising would ruin the integrity of the story and take it from its purer form. In this case I am right. It does take it away from its “true form”, but like a diamond goes through many stages of cutting and polishing to produce the gorgeous sparking gem we recognize, a story must go through the same process. While in the cooling stage of first drafting, your diamond is in its roughest and purest form. Don’t be afraid to chip it out of that dirty piece of coal and polish it to perfection (or at least as close to it as you can get, anyway).
This is what I have been doing with my first 25 pages of Disconnect, and I’m happy to say I now have a solid prologue and first two chapters.
Back to the quotation by Burroway, revision is harder the longer that you are not doing it. As I began pulling apart my manuscript (a feat that took a good week’s hard work between classes and riding buses), I discovered that I was actually enjoying myself. I liked returning to old work I had let cool off over the semester while I moved forward with narration from different sections of the book, and seeing how much my character and narrative had developed as I fleshed the story out. Additionally, I found I kinda like the way red lines, scribbles and margin notes look across my sheets.
When I finally finished marking up my manuscript, it was time to take to the keyboard and hash out all my notes. This was the hardest part for me. Once I had all my notes figured out, I needed to bring them to life, make them real. Seeing as my deadline was fast approaching, it took three days of at least 8 hour sessions a day to finish.
I’m going to be frank with you. It sucked. I felt like I made it worse. It’s been a week and a day exactly since I submitted what I had to my professor and still have not gone back to read what I did. I’ll go look back eventually, but not until I have made sufficient distance between me and those chapters.
Now as you are revising your own work, I would highly recommend a few things:
- Look for sentences that are unnecessarily long and wordy
- Look for descriptions you could succinctify
- Ask yourself questions like “Would my character really do or say this?”, or “Is there a way I can show this through dialog/action rather than telling?”
- Allow yourself to explore the possibilities. Keep in mind that if there is a gun on the mantle in Act I, it has to go off by Act III.
- Keep every draft you complete. I have a program called Scrivener on my laptop that works wonders for this. It has the option to create folders and sub folders that can house multiple revisions and things of the like.
- Don’t get discouraged. It takes you nowhere. If you are feeling down, go talk to your wonderful IR and they should have no problem cheering you up.
- Reward yourself when you finish. Why wouldn’t you crack open that stash of Cadbury’s Eggs? Or ice cream? Or chocolate bars? Believe me when I say you deserve it.
The Plotter's Apprentice 