The best advice I've ever heard for finishing a draft is this: turn off your internal editor. And many of you have joined the incredible romance vagabonds in VaNo to do just that. Sooo, now that you've completed your word count for the day (you have, right?), I'm going to ask you to do the unthinkable. Turn ON your internal editor.
What??? You just figured out how to turn it off and now you're supposed to turn it on? What if the switch is faulty and gets stuck in the on position? Just grab a crow bar and whack it off again.
What I'm talking about is taking our WIPs and changing them from drafts into well-crafted books. Books that editors will buy and readers will read. How? Truthfully, I don't know. That's why I'm reading as I revise/craft. The most useful tool I've found so far is from a fellow romance writer, Margie Lawson. There's a link to her website on my blogroll. She's put together two fabulous editing guides called Empowering Character Emotions and Deep Editing. I'm using them to rework my manuscript along with a number of other resources. These include:
Plotting and Writing Suspense Fiction
by Patricia Highsmith
Creating Character Emotions
by Ann Hood
Writing the Breakout Novel Workbook
by Donald Maass
Plot and Structure
by James Bell
And of course I'm reading my favorite authors.
So I've set a number of personal goals in units of work rather than pages, since I'm out of the drafting stage. A number of these goals are aimed at helping me germinate my next manuscript while crafting my current WIP. Here's what I want to accomplish by June 30th.
1. "polish" 10 chapters (each chapter =1 unit) 10 units
2. rework villain character development and replot kidnap 3 units
3. Major revisions to 4 chapters (each chapter=2 units) 8 units
4. Finish reading deep editing materials 1 unit
5. "deep edit" 23 chapters (each chapter =1/3 unit) 8 units
6. Print out hard copy manuscript and review for any errors 1 unit
7. Read 3 medical thrillers (next manuscript may be a medical thriller) 3 units
8. take Lisa Gardner's class on romantic suspense (no units)
9. Read my two "how to write suspense books" 2 units Total = 36 units
2. rework villain character development and replot kidnap 3 units
3. Major revisions to 4 chapters (each chapter=2 units) 8 units
4. Finish reading deep editing materials 1 unit
5. "deep edit" 23 chapters (each chapter =1/3 unit) 8 units
6. Print out hard copy manuscript and review for any errors 1 unit
7. Read 3 medical thrillers (next manuscript may be a medical thriller) 3 units
8. take Lisa Gardner's class on romantic suspense (no units)
9. Read my two "how to write suspense books" 2 units Total = 36 units
I've added my own "progress meter" to track my crafting.
We've touched on this topic before in the blog about scenes. Where are you in the craft versus draft process? How do you refine, revise, and craft? What resources can you share with us so that our team came crack the NYT list? Okay--so we can get a contract. We could start there I suppose.
13 comments:
I'm very much in the craft process. I'm supposed to be giving it a quick once-over before sending it to my CP's - Thanks FF!- but I'm fighting the urge to make huge changes. I've already torn this book down to it's essential elements, restructured it, then built into something much more substantial than it started out.
It's funny you should talk about switching the internal editor on and off. I don't do that anymore. The Suzie's House blogs are rough drafts.
Alice
Oops. Posted too soon.
I am still a very big believer in turning the internal editor off in order to get the rough draft done, and don't turn it on again until it is done! If I hadn't learned to do that, I would never have completed anything.
Alice
I also cannot finish (or start) anything without turning the editor off. I really have the most trouble with the start part. Kinda like putting on your running shoes and hitting the road. Once I'm out there, I'm okay.
But once the draft is done, then what? How do you make it better? CPs have proved invaluable for me. Beyond that though, there are techniques that we can learn formally, in workshops, reading etc.
I read somewhere that Julia Quinn doesn't really go through drafts but polishes as she writes. For me this is too difficult. Maybe in another hundred years I'll be at that stage.
Congrats on Suzie's House, Alice. Have enjoyed your postings immensely.
I think I'm in Julia's camp. I've never done drafts or super-huge revisions on anything...that would just kill the book for me. For TRR I had to excise something but its replacement was pretty easy to insert. When I'm stuck I just go back and tweak until I'm ready to write "new" again. The two books I finished before FaLit very probably need some major overhauling but my head's not there anymore. But how I'd love an editor to tell me to make some changes! :)
I just attended a Writer's Bootcamp by Todd Stone yesterday and he had great tips for this. You can find them in his Novelist's Boot Camp book. He suggests making 7 passes through your MS each with a different purpose. First for characters then for objectives, dialogue, description and narrative, action, logic and a misc pass for anything else. He even suggests printing it out, marking all the changes on each pass and then making those changes all at one time.
I'm still in the early drafting stage but this sounded like a very good idea to me.
The first book really had a rough draft. This book I'm not writing the first draft as rough. I don't want to have to go back and polish as much as I had to. After I finish my word count for the day, it's gets a work over to bring it up to par.
Sounds interesting, Terrio. Coincidentally, I just bought Novelist's Boot Camp to donate to a literacy auction. Hmm...auction's not until Tuesday. I may have to read it myself before then or buy another copy.
Bev, I can only hope I get better at this as I go along. Sounds like you have learned a lot from your first WIP.
Maggie, Oh how I envy you!
I don't know. When I start to hear things like "7 edits for 7 different purposes," I must admit my eyes glaze over.
I think I'm just not a person who works well with "methods," be they writing methods or ... other kinds of methods. Although, I haven't really tried it, so maybe I'm wrong. Maybe I'd benefit from that approach.
I'd like to think that if you did that with one book, you could internalize a lot of the techniques and work them in as you write the next book.
As for my internal editor - I've given up trying to turn her off. We've come to a working compromise. I write very slowly. For GOTH, I'm guessing I spent at least 1 hour at the keyboard for every page I drafted. With GOB, I'm trying to cut that down to 1/2 hour or so.
If GOTH gets rejected by everyone who has it now, I'm going to put it through a major edit. I may look at these methods then. And by then, India, I'll be counting on you to tell me which ones were the most helpful!
I've always been more of a revise as I go person, but lately it's cramping my drafting style, so I'm trying to just keep moving forward.
I heard a rumor that you were gonna join VaNo! You can, even if you're just revising. We want you! :)
Well, Tessa, I definitely recommend Margie's outlines--and I do want to join VaNo,Lindsey.
I'm having one of those whatever-made-me-think-I-could-write? moments. Dang that internal editor!
Right now, I'm in the craft process. I'm currently working on Book Two in my YA series and have a goal to finish a first draft by Nov 1st. I met my first deadline of 66 pages just yesterday.
Book One of the series needs to be revised (according to some consistent comments made by some agents) so I'm having another set of eyes look it over. Because, truthfully, I could read that thing three times over and still think it's fine.
FYI - I unveiled my new author site today and am giving away tons of prizes. Just go to www.celisedowns.com/blog for details. I noticed that I'm in your blogroll. While you'll be redirected to the new site, it would probably be easier for you to change the URL in the blogroll.
Very coolio new site Gemini! And congrats on meeting your goals.
I hear you about the other set of eyes. I just found a TYPO!!! in my little one page query that I sent out to MANY people. The brain just refuses to see certain errors.
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