Little Red Marks

Posted by: kerrynangell

With the help of NaNoWriMo, SoCNoC and many other writing challenges a lot more writers are reaching the end of that first draft. Inevitably editing comes next and out comes the red pen.

For many writing is the fun bit. It's creative, you can shut your inner editor into a padded cell and weave your characters and plot into a masterpiece. The next stage for the story is editing. Editing is the analytical bit. This may or may not be your thing but it's the other half that makes your story whole.

There's an important distinction to make between editing and rewriting. It many cases these are interchangeable and describe the process used to get a first draft novel to a polished state for submission or publication. Editing is usually associated with changing the words in sentences, dialogue and description. It's about getting the detail right, changing your words so that they sing. But before you can change the detail the story needs to be right, the scenes need to be in all the right places and you have to have the right cast of characters. Rewriting is about removing, adding and changing scenes. It's about getting the bigger picture in place so that you're only editing the detail that is going to stay.

I'm as intimidated by a raw first draft as any writer. The thing that keeps me from giving up is knowing how I can go about improving my story. I've completed 22.5 hours of editing as part of NaNoEdMo and I can see the path ahead of me.

I had set aside my novel after finishing it in early December. March was coming up quickly so I printed out the manuscript. It sat on my desk for another week and then it was NaNoEdMo time. I read through the novel, relearning the story, marking what I liked and summarising every scene on an index card in one or two sentences. Now that I knew what I was dealing with it was time to see if I could deal with it.

I used the Burn It, Bury It, Let It Live quiz to identify theme, story, my hero, conflict, why the story mattered and what I loved about it. The index cards came in very handy when identifying conflict. Instead of having to read through the whole manuscript I just needed to shuffle through the cards, marking which scenes had conflict and which didn't. I scored high enough to Let It Live and went on to flesh out these things using part one of the One Pass Manuscript Revision.

I wasn't able to summarise the story in back cover blurb style because the detail of the plot didn't match the theme and story that I had decided I wanted it to be about. Out came the index cards and I removed all those without conflict. This left 26 scenes and a whole lot of gaps.

I used a combination of three structures to prompt me: the three act structure, the thesis structure and the hero's journey structure. All compliment each other and are a great way to structure any novel. Samantha Graves and Lani Diane Rich do a great episode on the hero's journey on their podcast Will Write for Wine. I followed this through from notes until I got into Act II then I needed to listen to the section again (starting 30 minutes into the episode).

At this point I had a handful of new scenes that were in loose chronological order and my existing scenes all on index cards. I identified my subplots and remembered what I had learned (from where I can't recall!) about resolving the subplots in the opposite order to which they were introduced. I needed to see the big picture and at this point the index cards became to big and awkward to lay out to gain this view.

I tried out the various writing software I have to represent rows of subplots and columns of cards and scenes that I could easily move around and space out. Nothing worked and then I remembered an application I had trialled a couple of years ago that I thought had what I wanted. I downloaded Writer's Cafe and launched the Storylines application. I was away and running. I hit the 5 storyline, 30 card limit of the trial version in the middle of my outline and immediately purchased it. Another hour and I had the full 36 scene outline with physical index cards to match.

This is how I created my editing map. I know where I'm starting with my rough draft, I know my end point with my outline and I know how to write and edit to make the changes.

Even if you're not participating in NaNoEdMo this month there are some great editing resources including articles from published and unpublished writers, weekly pep talks and a weekly podcast featuring well known writer-podcasters.

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15 Mar 2008 22:55:13

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