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Romance on the Rocks

Where Happily Ever After is always on Tap!

How do I revise thee? Let me count the ways….

February 25, 2016 by Jenna Penrose

How do I make the steaming pile of first draft I created during NaNoWriMo into something people will love as much as I loved the initial idea?

Revise, revise, revise.  typewriter-584696_640

Everyone has their method. Here’s mine….

First Pass:
Load manuscript onto kindle, sit down and read straight through, only stopping to comment as a reader.

What do I need?

  • Calibre to convert to .mobi
  • Time for a dedicated read-through
  • Notepad and pen for old school note taking
  • Willpower to not fix typos or wordsmith

What am I looking for?

  • Inconsistencies, plot gaps, things that make no sense.
  • Goal-motivation-conflict of characters: is it in the story? Is what the hero/heroine want clear before the first major plot point?

Revise…… then:

Second Pass:
Change layout to two column format using Times New Roman. Reduce line spacing to 1.5 or single space. Bind along top.

What do I need?

  • My local Quick Copy shop. (I could do it with my cranky old ink jet, but why torture it and myself?)
  • Highlighters, sticky notes. Sometimes a blue pencil if I’m feeling feisty.
  • Distance from work & patience with myself.

What am I looking for?

  • Motivation of characters.
  • Character journey/change through the story. Did the hero/heroine change by the end? How? Why?
  • Review secondary characters: any who could be eliminated or merged with others? (Beware the cast of thousands)
  • Find and follow the story threads—make sure all threads flow through and wrap up. Don’t drop a thread half way and leave it hanging.

Revise…… then:

Third Pass:

  • Get a writer friend to read and comment. Usually a “high level” or “first pass” read – checking for continuity, plot holes, parts that make no sense, parts that make them want to close the book.
  • Read all comments. Think through them and determine how they could make story stronger. Change as appropriate.

Revise….. then:

Fourth Pass:

  • Get a writer friend (a different one at this point is a plus) to do a read for the story’s flow/emotion/language. Think of it as a voice check. Very important when you are learning, as sentence structure and flow aren’t natural skills for all writers.
  • Read all comments. Think through them and determine how they could make story stronger. Change as appropriate.

Revise….. then:

Fifth Pass:

  • Go through the story and really look for missing punctuation, wrong words, homonyms.
  • Make sure all formatting is clean.
  • Accept all changes (if tracking changes) and create clean copy without any old versions of track changes hanging around (check Word help for how to do this)

Fix myself a drink and call it a job well done.

Next up: the hard part. Submission

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Filed Under: ALL, Jenna Penrose

Comments

  1. Lori Ann Bailey says

    February 27, 2016 at 5:48 pm

    I’ve usually had several drinks by that point. 🙂

    Thanks for sharing your process and I think you nailed the title of this blog post.

    • Jenna Penrose says

      February 28, 2016 at 7:04 pm

      I know as writers get more experienced they often do more than one of these steps together. A good goal for all of us!

  2. G.G. Gabriel says

    February 28, 2016 at 3:16 pm

    Great post! I am going to try Calibre. 🙂

    • Jenna Penrose says

      February 28, 2016 at 7:05 pm

      It can be a very useful tool. Check out some of the simple video/web tutorials if you need help getting up & running. I love it for putting my drafts on Kindle!

Trackbacks

  1. ReBlo – How do I revise thee? Let me count the ways…. | Brickley Jules says:
    March 11, 2016 at 8:54 pm

    […] Source: How do I revise thee? Let me count the ways…. […]

  2. Jenna versus the Mountain says:
    June 25, 2016 at 9:17 pm

    […] I dug into my revision process I realized that my draft is, shall we say…..not polished. And the ending doesn’t work. And I […]

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