JENN McKINLAY: I'm on my second round of revisions for my first fantasy WITCHES OF DUBIOUS ORIGIN, which comes out in October of next year. Now, I like revisions--even second rounds--because I know it's my chance to get it right.
However, revisions are complex. If you change one thing in a scene on page 300, you have to go back through the entire manuscript and make certain that whatever you changed matches all of the previous mentions. It can be a crazy maker. And after you've gone through the manuscript fifty or sixty times, you start to feel as if you're chained to it, which is why I call it the revision dungeon.
Appropriately for this book, I believe revisions are where the magic of writing truly happens. While the first draft lays the foundation, the real art lies in refining your ideas. Here is my list of techniques to make the revisions process successful.
Step Away First: After completing my first draft, I take a break. I like to take a few weeks to work on something else in between the rough draft and revisions. A fresh perspective helps me see my work more objectively and spot errors like a character's brown eyes suddenly becoming blue.
Focus on the Big Picture: I do not toil and nitpick over grammar, that's what copyeditors are for and they'll get their chance soon enough. Instead, I ask myself: Does this piece achieve its purpose? Are there gaps in logic or pacing?
Trim the Fat: Be ruthless with unnecessary words, sentences, or sections. Concise writing is impactful writing. My greatest weakness is writing in passive voice as in "She was strolling leisurely across the room" when it should be "She crossed the room." *I learned this from a keynote speech Mary Higgins Clark gave.*
Read Aloud: Hearing my work helps identify awkward phrasing and inconsistencies in tone or rhythm. Plus, it makes talking to myself (which I do a lot) seem normal. "Just reading aloud, nothing to hear here."
Get Feedback: I share my work with my plot group. They have their own strengths -- one is fabulous at adding conflict and the other takes the plot in uncharted directions. Fabulous.
Edit in Layers: Start with a wide lens and catch the big stuff first. Then zoom in until you get to the petty details and can unload it on a professional copyeditor. I've learned the hard way, I'll never catch all the double the the's on my own.
To me, revisions aren’t just about fixing mistakes—they’re about uncovering the best version of my writing. I believe if you embrace the process--move all into the dungeon!--then your work will shine.
How about you, Reds? How do you feel about revisions? Any tips to add? Readers, how much do inconsistencies, plot holes, etc. disturb you when you're reading?
I might easily ignore little things, but plot holes and inconsistencies are problematic for me when I'm reading. They always pull me right out of the story . . . .
ReplyDeleteAgreed. Sadly there's a plot hole big enough to drive a truck through in my fantasy - fixing it today!
Delete"If you change one thing in a scene on page 300, you have to go back through the entire manuscript and make certain that whatever you changed matches all of the previous mentions." OMG, so true and the bane of my existence.
ReplyDeleteRight? Argh!
DeleteSuch wonderful tips! I don't have anything to revise right now l, but I'm bookmarking this for when I do.
ReplyDeleteThank you - hope it helps!
DeleteWhat Elizabeth said -- the list is so very helpful. Little inconsistencies when I am reading don't bother me much when I am really engaged.
ReplyDeleteI am an extremely forgiving reader.
DeleteI have much the same process, Jenn, and also enjoy it!
ReplyDeleteI do. I'm always amazed that a book I thought was pretty good can be so much better!
DeleteI'm that reader who notices if the guy's sparkling blue eyes have suddenly become a deep brown. I appreciate the work that goes into revisions and understand that it is way more than character eye color. This is a very good tutorial for readers about the work authors do to create the books we love. I really can't wait for this one, Jenn. I love the novellas that first introduced the room in the museum with the magical books.
ReplyDeleteThank you, Judy!
DeleteI love your approach to revision, Jenn. It's so true; as some famous someone said, All writing is rewriting. As for plot holes and inconsistencies: NO! Please, no. They bug me and tell me that along the way to getting the book into my hands the writing/editing ball was dropped by one or more people on the publishing team -- AND THAT ANNOYS ME. I'll easily forgive a typo or two, but bigger mistakes just NO!
ReplyDeleteSame!
DeleteSuch good tips Jenn--can't wait to read this one!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Lucy!
DeleteJenn, you've hit all the editing basics. Plot holes, dangling plot threads, characters who had a poodle mix and suddenly, they're walking a shar pei are not acceptable.
ReplyDeleteLOL!!!
DeleteMaybe I am more forgiving than other readers since 90% of the books I read are ARCs. So I ignore typos, changes in character or place names etc. But if there's a huge plot hole / inconsistency that takes me our of the story, I do notice & hate that.
ReplyDeleteYeah. Me, too.
DeleteThanks for the peek behind the curtain. I do notice plot inconsistencies and grammar problems. Occasionally the problem is me. I remember one plot inconsistency that bothered me. I went back through the book, and it had been explained (very briefly in a one-liner) and I had just missed it. Recently I read a book (none of the Reds were involved of course) and there were several word choices that were just wrong--for instance she used "sublimated" when she meant "supplemented". Not sure how that got by all the eagle eyes.
ReplyDeleteOof, sometimes I'm amazed at what an author, editor, and copyeditor can miss.
DeleteAh Jenn, we readers need to be much more appreciative of authors! We need to understand that there is so much more than 'just' putting a story on the paper. I think it shows when you, or any other really good author, puts the time in to make sure there are as few as possible little inconsistencies. But be sure that there are some of us who will notice. Definitely looking forward to reading this one!
ReplyDeleteThank you, Judi!
DeleteThank you for sharing this process and how you approach all those steps so we can have a polished finished product. Please know that I can't speak for others, but I am grateful for all the hard work you and other writers have put into the final version that hits the bookstores and libraries. As for inconsistencies, there have been a few books I've read where I just had to stop and return to previous chapters to see if I'd missed something. Example, I was reading an adventure/thriller book and there was an intense chase scene and some question of whether they would survive. The next chapter, they were all present and accounted for, but you never found out how they extricated themselves from the dangerous situation. That drove me nuts!
ReplyDeleteSometimes the eye color or hair color changes can irk me. I wonder if I'm still reading about the same character. I think I'm just one of those people who automatically edits as she reads. It doesn't matter what I'm reading or if I'm writing, I seem to have a built-in edit mode. Typos bug me. I figure if I'm paying good money for a book, I should get one that is error free. Keeping in mind that I have a fixed income so that might influence my perspective! --Victoria
All very valid points, Victoria! We appreciate you!
DeleteTwo things that bother me – well 3 really, but the grammar one still seems to be unresolved. I will just have to ignore ‘ands’ and ‘buts’ as the beginning of a sentence, and the lack of ly’s on adverbs.
ReplyDelete1.) When the bad guy/murderer/creep appears after 50% of the book has gone by. What? Where did this come from? There is one author who does this quite regularly, and once that character appears, you can just add – aha – he did it! I don’t mind if there are lots of red herrings, and the main one might turn out to be the least obvious – “you see reader, you must pay attention, as I did tell you in chapter 3 the necessary details” – but don’t just plop a new character in.
2.) I have completely forgotten #2. However, I will add, the use of ‘they’ as a pronoun. I know, politically incorrect on my part – but bear with me a minute. You are reading along (or listening along) and ‘they’ is used. It never fails that I am forced to stop the flow of the story and look around the literary room where I currently reside to see who else is in there because I thought there was only one person, and then I can just hear someone say – “gotcha!”. It interrupts the flow of the story. This subject comes up more and more frequently at Book Club and it is not only the older ones of us who have this problem. There must be a better way of resolving this issue around the use of pronouns.
3.) This was not the one I forgot, but another so may I introduce the continual repetition of what was once a good descriptive phrase of a regular character. Sure, use this same phrase that has been used through all the books of the series in this new book as a continuity thing, and perhaps reuse it once or twice more, but not in every other chapter – no, please just stop. Just use her name – no descriptives. We know the characters, and have them perfectly visualized in our thoughts, so just the name creates all the things that you need to know. Consider if you mention your sister in a conversation. Do you need to know every time, that she has blond hair, three legs and eats popcorn for breakfast on Sundays, as a reminder every time her name comes up? You can probably retrieve this information from your own memory.
4.) Thought of it – poor presentation of all I need to know. It may be my ignorance of the subject matter, but it is your promise in writing the book on this subject to provide me with all I need to know. We are currently watching a tv show where after 2 of 6 episodes, I find I have to go to Wiki afterwards to find out the details of the situation that seem to be missing from the production (it is based on a real happening). Just because you have done copious amounts of research, and have huge amounts of background in your head, please do not assume that we, your readers have the same. It may be the first time that the reader has been introduced to this subject, or it may be the 23rd – either way, please try and fill in enough of the blanks to allow us to follow the plot.
Happy editing (or writing!)
Margo, you reminded me that I am perturbed by writers who overuse a word like "amazing." I read a book that within the first 5 or 6 pages everything was "amazing." It worries me that one cannot use a thesaurus and find another word that fits the situation. I also agree with you about the repetition of descriptives of characters. A mystery I was reading had a character who had "six-pack abs." Every single time he was featured, his abs led the way. Made me wonder if he even had a brain. ;) -- Victoria
DeleteExcellent list, Margo! I can relate to so much of this!
DeleteJenn, I recently edited a manuscript for a colleague. She, her husband (her first reader) and I all missed the same detail. She caught it when she was preparing the manuscript for publication. No matter how many eyes on a page, sometimes things will slip through. I can forgive some of them--typos, a double 'the,' etc., as long as there aren't too many of these. I can't forgive major inconsistencies, plot holes, or sloppy research--somewhere along the way, those mistakes should be caught by author, editor, development editor/line editor, copyeditor, proofreader.
ReplyDeleteAgreed. Those double the's are slippery buggers!
DeleteI agree, so exciting!
ReplyDeleteI power through my first draft as fast as I can, just to find out what the story is. Then I have the great joy of starting over and excavating and molding it… I enrich the themes, and take out all of the artifacts that are left over plot ideas that never went anywhere, and tighten tighten tighten. I absolutely love cutting.
It’s such a joy to see the story I meant to write emerge from the clutter.
Because here is also where I find the clues and parallels that I never even realized I was writing. That’s so great.
I absolutely am yearning to read this, Jenn !
( Oh, and typos and broken continuity— that’s a little bit of a different kind of mindset. Those are sort of extra credit treasures I find along the way. )
Xx
Hank, I love this description of your writing adventure. I feel as if I'm on an archaeological dig discovering historical artifacts. Thanks for sharing this! -- Victoria
DeleteSo what you're saying is we're word archeologists. I dig that :)
DeleteHA! I saw what you did there...
DeleteSmall inconsistencies might not bother me, depending on my mood! But I get really annoyed with clear errors! In one book I read quite a few years ago, a minor character’s car was stolen. In the next chapter she drove that car to someone’s house. No mention of the car being found, or by whom! I reread everything in that book from the time the car was stolen. There was never any mention of what happened to the car after it was stolen, or that it had been recovered!
ReplyDeleteDebRo
Oh, wow.
DeleteJENN: Thank you for the tips! Love that photo of "revision dungeon". Just the right description of what I was thinking! Witches of Dubious Origins sound very intriguing and I look forward to reading it next year! Will the novel be published before or after Halloween?
ReplyDeleteAs a reader, I am usually more forgiving, especially when reading FICTION. There was a new series by a new to me author. The copyeditor for that series missed the different names for the same person. This character was engaged to Gavin in book 1 then in book 2 the story included a wedding and the groom had a different name! In ebooks, I have noticed more typos than in printed novels.
We're hoping before Halloween! Names changes are soooo confusing!
DeleteI find inconsistency annoying because I assume that I missed something and feel obligated to go back through what I already read. It interrupts the continuity and the enjoyment of the story
ReplyDeleteI have read stories where the season or time of day has changed from one chapter to another and then goes back again to the original time frame or ,a group of people have finished the meal in a restaurant and then suddenly, on the next page, they are just ordering from the menu.
A number of years ago I read a book in which one of the characters was killed off and in the sequel he reappeared alive and well.
I won’t even get into spelling and grammatical errors.
I have mentioned this in previous posts, but one of the worst errors I have come across was when someone who was a real person appeared in a story which took place several years after he died.
This was someone who was an internationally renowned person and I felt there was no excuse for that type of error to occur. I couldn’t continue reading the book because I could no longer trust the author to provide accuracy in the rest of the story.
I can't believe a copyeditor let a dead person come back to life! Oy.
DeleteI agree with Diana that e-books seem to have an inordinate amount of typos. I don’t know much about the publishing process, but logically I thought a book goes through the same editing steps whether it’s going to be published in digital or paper format. And I agree with Margo’s point about pronouns: “someone” needs to devise a pronoun to accommodate the new definition of “they” without usurping the older meaning of more than one person. To answer your question, Jenn, I notice typos and inconsistencies. I don’t think it’s unreasonable to expect a character’s name to remain the same throughout the book, unless an explanation is provided for the change. Maybe that’s just me being picky… — Pat S
ReplyDeleteYes, that's what killed ebooks for me. The quality just wasn't there.
DeleteJenn, I hope you get out of the revision dungeon sooner rather than later.
ReplyDeleteI tend to go with the flow as I'm reading. For an error of some kind to take me out of the story, it has to be pretty major because I have to catch it when I'm not trying to nitpick stuff. Referring to an off day at the start of a chapter and then a couple pages later in the same chapter and same day saying that you are in the midst of a workday is a plenty bad timeframe mistake. Or putting Maine on the coast of the PACIFIC Ocean...
Like I said, it has to be pretty major. One minor inconsistency I caught in a book I was asked to read for review was someone referring to "Spiderman". Being the comic book aficionado, I immediately knew it was supposed to be "Spider-man", so I let the author know and they let the publisher know in order to fix it in the final draft.
Most of my writing for the year is done outside of my best of the year lists. I did the one for concerts already. I'm not doing a movie one this year because it would be pathetic. I'm not sure if I'm doing one for books because I haven't felt that I've read enough to make a decent list but I'll probably still make an attempt.
And I have my best albums of the year list to do too. That might make us cellmates in a way because I'm trying to cram in some of the albums I've been behind on doing reviews for so that my Best of 2024 list will be a bit more encompassing of what I've listened to this year.
Hi-ho, Hi-ho, it's off to the CD player I go...
My Cassette Chronicles series is done for the year but it has been renewed for a 9th year so I'll have to start working on that soon.
Welcome to the Jungle...er...Dungeon, Jay. We shall commiserate together. Good luck on the deadlines. Glad to hear the Cassette Chronicles will continue.
DeleteOh my goodness I totally agree on how important editing is. And how easy it is to just pick up a "blue pencil" and line edit when what's needed is a much deeper story edit (where you will probably delete long passages (that you never need to line edit) and add even more, and every story change has a ripple effect to what comes after.) My motto: work large to small, when it comes to editing. Story arcs come first. Then scenes. Then...
ReplyDeleteYES! large to small. 100%
DeleteEven though I once wanted to be an editor, and I always check my husband's correspondence now and when he was in the Army, I'm really not too picky. I really don't see how a book gets published without a few slip-ups. And, especially these days, with my brain being how it is, I doubt I notice mistakes. Also, one should be able to get over minor mistakes in a great story. I will ask this to the authors though. I am not a fan of readers complaining to authors about something they think is off in a story. I think those people should try writing a book themselves and realize how much work it is. However, in a somewhat different circumstance, if an author you read faithfully and who might even be considered a friend, has an inconsistency in his/her book that does stop your reading and have you going back to check its first appearance, do you think the author would want to know. Possibly, it's a hardback and could be corrected for the paperback? I'm in favor of keeping one's big mouth shut, but, authors, would you want this knowledge or resent it?
ReplyDeleteNow, I have to go get ready for my guests. Catriona McPherson and her husband Neil are coming to see me, and we're going out to eat tonight. Then, Catriona and I will probably have breakfast in the morning. I am thrilled with this honor of her visit. Of course, I had to get through Philip having appendicitis this weekend and being operated on for that. But, he's in good shape now and even says he will feel like going out to eat with us. I'm not sure about that. We'll see. I can't wait to hear my favorite accent in the whole world. Scottish, of course.
Kathy, I saw on Facebook! So glad Phil is doing well! Have a great time with Catriona and Neil! xx
DeleteI always like to know mistakes so I can have them corrected for the ebook at least. Have fun with Catriona - she's delightful! Happy that Phil is recovering. Phew!
DeleteJenn, commiserating with you. Such good advice on the editing process!
ReplyDeleteThanks, Debs!
Delete