Maisey’s Guide to Massive Revisions
Well, actually it’s Maisey and Chelsea’s guide, and I hope she doesn’t mind me borrowing from her a bit. We were talking revisions amongst the Sassy Sisters yesterday, and I started talking about how I approach them. Now, I consider myself revision royalty. Not so much because I’m awesome at them, but because I have an astounding ability to get them! Big ones. Half the time they’re rewrites. (I call this my ‘process’, and no, it doesn’t make me feel a whole lot better! LOL)
So what I do when faced with major revisions is: Read over the letter. Sulk. Read it again. Start making notes.
If I’m dealing with a whole rewrite, I just try to absorb all I can, then start from blank page one and go. But if I’m doing true ‘revisions’ I start with one element. Like, character. So I go through and I make notes on what I need to do to alter character. And I start working on that.
Then we come to pacing. So I start examining my pacing, cutting and adding where needed, and a lot of times, I’m still working the character changes in as I do this.
Then say I need to up tension in a few scenes, I would do that next.
Then I do a read through and make sure it’s all coherent and polished. Sounds simple? It’s not really. LOL. But it helps me absorb it all taking it a piece at a time, with my little hand written attack plan.
Now, I shared this with Sassy Sister Chelsea yesterday and she basically backed away from me in terror. She described her process differently, and brilliantly, and I wanted to share the way she does it, so I can offer another perspective.
She described it like painting a room. You paint the whole room, but it might need another coat. And then another, and then some fine detail work. But she doesn’t do it in pieces, she does it in a more whole, complete way. And then she said something I thought was really brilliant, and I’m totally using it too.
She said that if she got to the end, and it was better, but it still wasn’t right, that meant she was actually midway, and not done. I thought that was really brilliant, because I think it’s easy when undertaking revisions to put a lot of pressure on yourself. But you can work on it until it’s done. (now, at some point, you have to just say done, because you can’t tweak forever, but we’re talking bigger issues!)
Revisions, even massive ones, are a good thing. It puts the power to make your book as good as possible, with outside guidance, into your hands.
Our ways are just two ways of…gee…probably 1587 ways to tackle massive revisions. We have The Painter and the The List. What do you do?
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Personally I head straight for the wine rack. When it comes to revisions, I seem to get either minor tweaks or complete rewrites. My process is different every time!
Lucy, thanks for stopping by! I’ve had similar revision experiences. Mostly the rewrites! LOL. And I’ve definitely found there’s been a new element to my process with each MS. Each set of characters, each story, is so different, it’s like learning all over again each time.
I head for the coffee maker, but I think it’s the same idea. A little comfort to take the sting out!!
I’ve had very little experience of revisions but in my naivety I thought the first revision letter would cover everything! LOL! It actually was quite a gentle letter requesting a couple of new scenes and a couple of scene rewrites. The tasks were bitesize and not too daunting and I’m thinking (har har) they must like the rest of it. Yay! So I send it in. Within two weeks I got the next set and this time I needed to totally nuke the previously untouched last third of the story, cut one secondary character completely and come up with a totally different black moment, resolution and ending. The editor is so lovely, she must have known I would have spontaneously combusted if she’d sent the second set combined with the first. But as it was I felt I’d managed the first set and so I must have it in me to have a stab at the (much more demanding) second set.
I now await either set three or a no, as I can’t believe it won’t need more tweaking.
I love to hear about revisions and how different people approach them. I did read somewhere during my endless googling of revision approaches that lists are great, and you should have one column for easily-changed things, then a column for harder stuff which isn’t too major, then a third column for anything huge that you can’t contemplate solving in your wildest dreams. Then you can tackle the easiest column first so at least you feel like you’re doing something productive while you hope your brain will subconsciously deal with the rest. Maybe I’ll try that next time (if I get the chance – crossing fingers).
I love Chelsea’s analogy of layer on the coats of paint. Every time it gets a little better until you have the effect you wanted all along.
Wanna do some revisions for me? I have a book, I’d love to rewrite and sub again and I think I know HOW now but rewriting the whole thing is necessary and that seems like so much hard work – lol!!!
I like Lucy’s idea of hitting the win 🙂
Thank you Maisey and Chelsea – this was a very useful post as I am revising. And you certainly both seem to know what you’re doing (which is more than I can say for me at the moment!!)
Nina x
Charlotte, that was my revision letter experience as well. The first time around. 😉 My first letter focused mainly on the first half of the MS. Then the second one came and was a bit more severe!! Best of luck to you!
Julia, I love it too! It makes total sense to me…even though it’s not what I do!
Rach, it is. But…I find rewriting easier than writing it the first time. So there is that. Doing it with wine sounds even better!!
Nina, I don’t know if any of us feels like we know what we’re doing when we’re in the midst of it. But in the end, when you get some distance, you can step away and see all the good you did! Good luck to you!!
Wow, interesting! And very organized. I’m quite boring when it comes to revisions. Like you, I read the letter and stew/sulk for a bit. Then I read it again. Then after a period of reflection/mourning, I start at page 1 and work through the entire manuscript page by page. When I’m finished, I go through it again and tweak a bit, but usually not much.
I find a lot of the stuff in the revision letter already has its seed in the manuscript, and it doesn’t take *too* much to bring it out. Of course, I’ve had complete rewrites too, but even then I still just plow through from page 1–same way I write the first draft! I don’t think I could do it any other way. I’m not that creative 🙂
It’s only my revisions I tackle that way, and that’s to help me see all the little seeds of goodness I have in there that are starting to grow but need more cultivation.
With the rewrites though? I do the same thing. Just dive in at page one and write straight through, bearing in mind what not to do!! I don’t know if it’s the best way, but it’s the way that works for me!
My first ever attempt at revision was me running the spell check on Microsoft Word. O_o
Since then I’ve gotten a tad more refined. If I revise on screen I make a lot of little instant changes, where as if I revise on paper, I think them through more. The paper & pen plan works better for me, even when it delivers bad news. Take yesterday. I dusted off an MS and printed/revised/reread the first six chapters. ( It’s an MS I’ve worked on COUNTLESS times and this time, I was determined to make it work.) What did I discover? My plot was, well, TOO thick. What I had in front of me would be better for two separate stories. …Unless I wanted the book to be about the plot and not the characters. (I so don’t.)
So that’s where I am. Revise on screen till it feels done. Let it sit for a few weeks (months?) and then print and attack. I get a better “big picture.” Also, I heard someone say once “If it doesn’t feel right, it’s not.” I tend to live by and agree with that adage.
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