Friday, January 10, 2014

Rewriting Step One: Admit You Have a Problem

Right now, I’m in the middle of some pretty heavy revisions on my Blue WIP.  My wonderful and dependable alpha even had a hard time getting through it.  It was a big experiment of 2013, trying to write without an outline and it ended up in a pretty big disaster. 

This novel was a sequel to my Red WIP (now ready for submission, yay!) and I wasn’t quite sure where I was going with the story.  Fast forward to November when I got the idea for the third book in the series. 

Series.  Did I seriously just write that?  Wow. 

Anyway, this book was the story of another one of my characters, set several years after the sequel.  The world had changed, and many of the changes occurred because of what happened in the second book.
Or, at least what SHOULD have happened in the second book.

But I was stuck.  I couldn’t figure out how to fix all of the errors in the second book and still have it bridge from the first to the third book.  Then, a week ago, my husband and I took an impromptu road trip to see my family.  9 hours driving through the snowstorms of Wyoming gave me plenty of time to think.  And not get distracted by the internet or anything else.  I pulled out my brand new tablet and took notes of what I wanted to keep.  And what I needed to scrap.

Usually, when I write stories, I start with the outline.  But I already had the basic idea for this novel.  After all, I’d already written it.  All I have to do is completely rewrite it and fix all of the parts that don’t work. 

Fortunately for me, I knew exactly what wasn’t working for the story.  Most of the characters.  Because I hadn’t planned, I didn’t know what they were doing or where they were going.  So this time, I started out with character bios.  I don’t go too in depth with most characters, but with these ones, I pulled out an excel sheet and made a table of all of the characters.  I then wrote their motives and needs.  For every single character.  As I did that, I realized that I was missing a character.  There was no major antagonist, no one whose needs and desires clashed with those of the protagonist. 

Enter Aza.  Let me tell you, she’s quite a character, and very different from anyone I’ve ever written before.  I’m excited for her to come into the story. 


Now it’s time for revisions.  Fortunately, I love those.

11 comments:

  1. Ha ha. I'm in the process of re-writing, but my problem was more along the lines of "I wrote the book starting in 1st grade." Most of the plot was extremely juvenile with some elements stolen from Loony Tunes. I'm fixing that now.

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    1. I've done that too. When I went back to the novel I'd written in high school, I was shocked by how juvenile it was. I did a huge rewrite that included changing the POV. It's better now, but I'm not sure it's ever going to be just right.

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  2. Congrats on having your first in series ready to go - you must be so pleased. I've read that re-writes should be treated the same way as triage - deal with the major flaws (plot, character, etc.,) first then move on to the less fatal flaws next, finishing with editing at the type face (repetition of words/phrases etc.,) last. I did this with my novel - it was hard and time consuming but it worked out in the end. Good luck with your re-write.

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  3. Rewriting is a diiferent kind of writing joy :) villians are always fun to write. I love villains. Good job on having a script ready for submission!

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    1. I'm pretty fortunate that I enjoy rewriting. It's a part that I've never really avoided or wanted to procrastinate. And I'm excited about this villain. She's very different from my normal ones.

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  4. Rewriting is a diiferent kind of writing joy :) villians are always fun to write. I love villains. Good job on having a script ready for submission!

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  5. Rewriting is a diiferent kind of writing joy :) villians are always fun to write. I love villains. Good job on having a script ready for submission!

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    1. Thanks! And I love villains too. They make things much more interesting.

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  6. God, I love villains. My issue tends to be the opposite - I make my protags too unlikable. Good luck with your revisions! I always find it's hard to psyche myself up to start revisions, but once I get going on them, I really get into it.

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  7. That's awesome about the series! I have all my characters in a word doc (spreadsheet was too strict for me) and I make all sorts of lists: physical features, histories, relationships to other characters, their dilemmas, their fears, their strengths, etc. Without that I would be lost. In my first book, a beta told me I kept switching the hair colors of the two top characters. I need those lists!

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    1. I haven't done a spreadsheet before, so it's an experiment, but I've got to say, I like the format. Although... I did copy all of it into a folder in my huge scrivener file, so I don't know if that counts.

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