In another day or two, I start the revision process on my novel. I’ve thought long and hard about how I’m going to go about the revisions, and have come up with a method that I think will work for me.
First, I’m going to read through the novel, with a notepad by my side. I won’t be marking up the pages in any manner — that comes in a later stage. What I will be looking for in this first read-through are major changes that need to happen. I’ll be looking for chapters to add, chapters to remove, major pieces of the story that have to be changed because the plot changed later in the book. I already have a few things that I know need to be added in, so I’m also going to look at where those should be fit in, and if existing chapters should be reordered. I’m going to try to avoid rewriting small passages for clarity purposes on this go-around, with the exception of the battle that would not end. That is one ridiculously long passage that is going to get rewritten this time around for flow and clarity.
After I make these major changes, I’ll be printing out copy of the second draft, sticking it in a binder and sticking the binder on a shelf for about a month. Before I sit down and do line edits, I need separation from the material. While I’m pretty well separated from the early parts of the book, the end is fresher in my mind and the major revisions will be also.
After putting it aside for a month (during which I will be performing other writing/publishing based tasks), I will do line edits — going line-by-line revising the story. Once the third draft is done, I will have to decide if I want to do another round of line edits, depending on what I think of the story.
Once the line edits are done, it goes to my first round beta readers. While they have it, I will be doing other writing/publishing based tasks, waiting for their input. Once I get it back from them, I’ll go through, make necessary revisions, and then it goes to my final beta reader. If it passes that test, it goes out to agents.
Now this is the current plan for the revision process. It’s definitely subject to change, in which case I’ll post the revised revision process. We’ll see how well it works based on the results — since this is my first time doing revisions, I may find some things unworkable. I do know the hardest thing will be setting it aside for a month and trying to ignore the book’s existence.
It looks like a good plan. You’re definitely correct to look for the “big picture” problems first. Too many people think that revising and editing means proofreading little things like spelling and punctuation errors. None of that really matters until later on.
I have to admit that doing my own revisions was a long process. I changed a lot and then my beta readers suggested other changes and so I changed a lot again. Sometimes it seemed never ending and sometimes the changes weren’t just little things, but stuff that took a lot of work. But in the end…it was definitely worth all the work.
Yeah — I knew that there were going to be big picture issues in the middle of the first draft, since parts of the plot evolved. I also knew that I’d be taking care of the battle that would not end.