I’m back at it: Novel revisions are officially underway!
I reread my manuscript last week, taking four days to read all 300+ pages. I was a little bit terrified to start this process, but my goal was to keep an open mind as I read through the draft. I’d had positive feedback from the two agents who read my work, so I knew the manuscript wasn’t completely terrible. I’m definitely aware that it’s too long, and that I should be cutting around 20 000 words to get the book under 100 000 words. I also had some vague ideas about changes that might improve the pacing or develop the characters. In general, though, I’m trying to be as objective as possible.
By the end of my read-through, I’d made 20 pages of notes. (I know, I am nothing if not systematic!) The biggest surprise was how obvious some of the manuscript’s flaws were, right from the first couple of chapters: one of my secondary characters was taking up way too much space, and the draft’s pace felt breakneck, without any slower scenes to let the reader catch their breath.
I was, however, happy to find that there are whole scenes, characters and subplots that are working well! I won’t have to do much work on these sections, which is a huge relief. My last draft was nearly a complete rewrite, but I won’t have to use the same approach this time. These successful elements feel like solid pillars that I can build the rest of the book around.
Interestingly, I think the second half of my draft is much stronger than the first half, with more psychological depth to the characters, better pacing and more interesting chapter structures. The shift in quality coincides with my time at Banff, so that experience seems to have made a lasting difference to my writing!
I’m not sure yet how I’ll approach this round of revisions: a checklist? More note cards? I’m sure some kind of diagramming will be involved.
As a first step, this week I went through the manuscript and highlighted all the sections that featured that one over-inflated character, then I opened up Scrivener and deleted these from the draft. When I checked my word count again, I was astonished to see that I’d cut 16 thousand words out of the manuscript! What a great start to this round of revisions!
Rebecca Morris 