Anna DeStefano's Blog

Once you have a draft of your novel, WHAT do you do with it? How do you make it better? Last Wednesday, we talked about deconstructing your story so you could see its various parts and come up with a rewriting plan. Now let’s get down to it–what parts of your book should you consider pulling out of the tapestry, fine tuning (or overhauling), and then weaving back in?

Last weekwe left off with the protagonist, and you’d isolated the parts of the book that showed his/her character arc to the reader. With your POV scenes flagged, you have a visual road map to how your treating this important story element–the lens through which your reader sees and feels and experiences the story. Exactly what is someone who doesn’t live in your head getting out of how you’re handling your protagonist?

Let’s start with some things you can see just with the “flagging” technique I described last week:

• Look at how often that character is in point of view. Are there large stretches when we’re in the antagonist’s POV or a secondary characters’? Is there not enough variety, and you need to work in more alternative looks at the action in your story and show things more from the perspective outside your protagonist’s head?
• Look at how you open each POV scene. Is it always in dialogue? Always in narrative? Always in action? Always coming or going from somewhere? This may seem simple, but it’s the type of pattern we follow can get into in drafting and not even realize it. Mixing things up from a single character’s perspective at times can add a fresh look to a scene.
• Skim through the character’s POV scenes. Do you see a lot of dialogue with no external observations or internal thoughts? Too much internal dialogue and only sparse dialogue. This kind of review can give you an immediate feel for what might need work for a single character, no matter what you’re doing with the rest.
• Read each of the protagonist’s scenes in the first half of the draft. Can you clearly see his/her build up to and reaction to the inciting incident first turning point and midpoint of the story? Is he/she changing in each key place in the story, and is that clear in from his/her POV?
• Do the same for the key turning points in the second half of the story.
• THEN (this is more story structure detail than I usually summarize, but here goes), look at his/her emotional reality at the Inciting Incident. (more…)

David Kaplan says in A Creative Approach to Writing and Rewriting Fiction, “The purpose of writing a story is to rewrite it.” I taught a brief intro to revision a couple of weekends ago. There wasn’t nearly enough time. I like to teach this part of the writing process hands-on, over several hours at the very least. An entire day as part of a retreat is best–that way writers can bring in their WIPs and dig into the techniques, fussing about until they figure out how some if it works best for them. But the response to our limited time at this conference was overwhelming positive, regardless, and I promised my students I’d get more specific out here in my How We Write blog category. So…here ’tis. More details to come in the following weeks. Then maybe we’ll tackle my approach to planning through character. But let’s start with my very favorite thing–rewriting!

Like the above quote says, no book’s done with just a single draft in your pocket. Not even two drafts, if you aks me. You’re not done, just because you have your first thoughts down on paper (or in the computer). Once you’ve got that good stuff behind you, it’s time to make it even better!

Feeling a little cranky yourself yet?

Yeah, this motivational post is going to be a little heavier on the tough love than most.

Finishing  your first draft is just the beginning. It’s merely the end of your planning. For those of you who don’t outline your plot and character ahead of time (I’m shaking my head now. Can you hear the tense spots in my neck popping while I do it?), the draft is your only planning. But for even those of us who put serious thought into what we’re going to write before we actually do, we still don’t know for SURE what’s going to happen until that magical creative thing that is putting words onto paper happens, and the story itself takes over.

I’m a firm believer in the creative flow of drafting. The power of discovery. The synergy of planning and experience and momentum combining to create something magical. BUT… That something magical, that completed draft, is only the beginning. It’s not everything it could be. It’s not ready to leave your mind and your heart behind. It’s not all it can be. Which means, it’s time for the REAL work to begin…

Kaplan tells us that ”You need three things to be a good fiction writer…talent…a knowledge of craft…and just as necessary, a devotion to revision, to the merciless re-working of your writing until it is the best it can be.” And he (and Jenni and I) aren’t talking about looking for typos or grammar errors or tweaking your prose so it pops just so, though all that’s important eventually.

What I teach to craft students is re-writing, not copy editing or proof reading. (more…)