Revision.
Re-vision.
To see again.
How can you see your writing from the detached perspective necessary for revision when you’ve been immersed in it for so long?
Here are five ways you can approach your manuscript with a fresh perspective.
1) Put It Away
Take the longest break possible between finishing your draft and starting to revise. Time away from your work will give you the emotional and psychological distance you need to see it anew. Unless you’re bound by a contest or contract deadline, let your book-length work rest for weeks.
I can see you scoff at this! I know, many of you are in a hurry to publish these days. Now insta-publishing is possible for everyone. But publishing in a hurry, or submitting to a magazine or contest in a hurry, is not always good thing.
2) Change the Scenery
If it’s your habit to write on a computer, print a hard copy of your manuscript for review and/or change the font. You might be surprised by how reading your work in Helvetica rather than Times New Roman not only changes how your eye sees the work, but how your mind sees it, too.
Similarly, try revising in a different place or time of day than you create.
3) Read it Out Loud
Hearing your writing takes it out of your head and gives you a new opportunity to see it (hear it!) with revitalized attention. Read your manuscript out loud from beginning to end, even though a long work might take several days. Resist the urge to stop and tinker with a sentence or scene. If you come across something that needs work, mark it for further review and move on quickly.
You might also try recording and playing back your reading or having a trusted friend or writing partner read your work to you.
4) Take a Bird’s Eye View
Okay. This may sound crazy, but give it a try.
Spread a chapter or two out on a long table—or on the floor—so you can view each page individually. Look at your pages from above. Do you see pages with walls of unbroken text or long dense paragraphs (all narrative)? Do you see pages with nothing but short, loose paragraphs (all dialogue)? Do you see sections where all the paragraphs are virtually the same length? Mark these sections for review, because they may indicate issues with an imbalance between dialogue and narrative or problems with proportion, rhythm, or pacing.
A few words about “proportion” — a concept I don’t see discussed very often, but one that is often an issue in manuscripts I read. If you give a lot of space to the description of a character or place, your reader will will assume that the character or place is a critical element of your story. If it turns out later that it’s not, your reader will feel manipulated, fooled into focusing on something that wasn’t important after all. Not a good thing. (It’s one of those throw-the-book-at-the-wall moments.)
5) Do It Again
Retype your entire manuscript (or a problem chapter). This tactile approach — going over your work word by word — is bound to spark new ideas.
What do you do to get a fresh look at your manuscript? What worked and what didn’t work as an approach to revision?
Erwin Wunderlich
Hi-#1 is actually easy these days given the snail’s pace of getting an agent or getting a publisher, which takes forever though it is worth it just to gauge what the pros think about your opening pages or marketing possibilities (and make further revisions). And, of course, you are likely working on a sequel or trilogy (next) manuscript during the delay time as well, probably in a similar era which may uncover something new to add to the MSS out on queries. Remember, putting out quality work is important to attracting loyal readers, self published or not.
Niki Kantzios
Really good ideas: thanks. I especially like to read stuff out loud. You can hear repetitions or teeth-gritting assonances immediately!
Jerry Tabbott
Heard these before–except for the spread it on the floor idea–and all are good. As for the “spread it on the floor idea,” ProWriting Aide’s (and probably Grammarly’s) software offers quite a helpful analysis on rhythm and pacing. I’d recommend ProWriting Aide. It saves immense time on editing and rewrites, although it–no solution–should be considered definitively complete.