A 7-Step Guide to Big Picture Revision (With Bonus Checklists!)

January 22, 2014 8:43 am

The “Now What?” Months are here! In 2014, we’ll be bringing you advice from authors who published their NaNo-novels, editors, agents, and more to help you polish November’s first draft until it gleams. Author Wendy Mass guides you through big-picture revision… complete with handy questionnaires:

Ah, revision. My favorite part of the writing process. It’s my favorite because if I’m at this stage, that means I’ve typed “The end.” Even though it’s only the first of many times I’ll write those same words at the end of the same manuscript, it’s still a huge milestone.
You’ve already done the hard part. You put your butt in the chair and wrote a novel! Here’s what comes next:

Insert page numbers and print it out, double-spaced.
Take a deep breath and slowly dive in.

• Mark the places that make you laugh or cry.
• Mark where you’re bored or confused or where words are repeated too close together.
• Note if too many sentences start with “I”,
• if there is not enough description or too much,
• or if you have too many or too few passages without dialogue.
• See if you used ten words when two would do,
• notice when you lose track of who’s speaking in a section of dialogue,
• or if a character seems to wander into and out of the story without impacting it.
• Cross out those passages you meant to delete in the first draft.
• And while you’re not really concerned with line editing just now, you will certainly catch small errors.
• If you have friends whose opinion you trust, this is a good point in the process to ask them to go through your manuscript with the same objectives in mind. If a few people stumble over the same areas, you know where you need to pay attention. 

Now, go back through the manuscript again and write a list of all the scenes in each chapter and the pages they are on. This isn’t as painful as it sounds.

You only need a few words of description for each section: Electricity goes out (21-24), ring bearer loses the ring (110-111), teacher goes to hospital after swallowing frog (83-86). You get the idea. This will essentially provide an outline of the story.

Here come the highlighters! Look at your list of scenes. Use a different color to highlight each subplot.

• Do some of them only show up a few times?
• Are some introduced too late in the story?
• Are any unresolved?
• Do some do nothing to advance or mirror the main plot?

When you are done, anything that is left un-highlighted is your main plotline. Read these over.

• Are there holes in the plot?
• Would it help build suspense if plot points played out in a different order?
• Is there enough of a character arc?
• Does the action start too slowly or quickly?
• Do you quickly see what it is the character wants, and do they have to overcome enough (evenly-spaced-out) hurdles before reaching a satisfying resolution?

Try to answer these questions, jotting down notes directly on the outline. By the time you’re done crossing out and drawing lines and arrows all over the place, these handwritten pages won’t look pretty. But that’s okay!

Now the fun part—diving back in. With your colorful plot outline by your side, open up your document on the computer. Make corrections and changes as you go.

When you are done with this round of revision, re-write the list of scenes so that they reflect the current state of the novel. This will likely look quite different from the first outline.

Now look at the list in a different way.

Do some chapters have only three scenes and some have ten? Are some scenes one page long while others are four?

This might be okay, or it might indicate that your pacing is off.

If you’re writing for young readers, you will likely want to keep your chapters fairly consistent. Even more seasoned readers may feel pulled out of the story if they sense the pace slowing down or picking up erratically. Look for ways to fix this—sometimes it can be as easy as adjusting the length of the chapters, but you may have to get in there and lengthen or cut some scenes.

Ask yourself if each and every scene moves the plot forward. Does it offer up new, vital information, or new insights into a character?

If you feel one section of an otherwise unnecessary scene is important, pull it and find another place in the story to insert it. The rest has gotta go.

It can be hard to say goodbye to a chunk of writing, especially when you’re convinced it’s the best writing you’ve ever done. Paste the passage into another file marked with the title of the book and the word, “Extra”. You can always use it again some day. 

Once this big picture revision is over, you can do it again if you feel your book changed a lot.

Otherwise, you’ll be able to start doing line edits. Eventually you’ll get to the point where you’re basically just “prettying it up” which is the name I’ve giving to the process of finding better words, adding colorful descriptions, and amping up the emotion.

During the rough draft process, you were immersed in your story, living inside your imaginary world, breathing life into it through words on a page. Now it’s time to step outside of it and look at it objectively, as though seeing it for the first time. This is where you will turn a whole bunch of scenes piled on top of each other into a single, flowing narrative. Have fun, but take your job seriously.
If all goes according to plan, your tale will end u

p living in someone else’s head. Respect the reader and do right by them. Always keep in the front of your mind what you are trying to achieve with your story—what you want the reader to come away feeling and thinking. This will guide everything you write. Good luck!

Wendy Mass is the New York Times best-selling author of 14 novels for young people which have been translated into 15 languages. Her most recent books are The Last Present, Pi in the Sky, and the upcoming early reader series Space Taxi.