Revision!

(Sung to the tune of Fiddler on the Roof's: Tradition!)

Thank you for subscribing. This is my inaugural “subscriber only” post, and it comes on an auspicious day. Yes, the flipping of the Senate and the (hopeful) election certification of our next president (providing the current insurrection mob is quelled), as well as Epiphany for you fellow “raised Catholic” folks—but also, for me personally, it’s the 14th anniversary of the first kiss between my husband and I. TMI? Sorry.

I bring this up in a clumsy attempt to approach the very broad subject of manuscript revision.

What do an anniversary of a first kiss and revising a manuscript have in common, you ask? Two words: context and perspective.

Remember those drafts you worked on in 2020? Whether you pushed through a book-length project before, during, or after November (NaNoWriMo), chances are good you have a pile of pages in the cloud (or on your hard drive), and now comes the fun part. Editing, polishing and getting your completed manuscript ready for its ultimate destination. That’s where perspective comes in.

You’ve no doubt heard the wisdom about putting a draft in a drawer for a month or two before re-engaging? That’s because the creator mind and the editor mind operate differently, and that difference is rooted in perspective.

Here’s a non-first kiss correlative. Think about your pre-2020 walks/hikes/outings. Likely, when you needed a break from “the work,” you set out on a day-dreamy constitutional. Got a little fresh air. Entertained some scene or character development issues in your WIP.

Those outings look different now.

Not only do you need to mask up, but if you live in a dense area (or even in a suburban neighborhood), your walks are punctuated by avoiding people. Keeping that social distance. Strategizing low-impact grocery shopping. Knowing your position relative to the physical locations of others.

Those of us who own reactive dogs (looking at you, Mary), may have had a leg up on the strategized walking front. Walking our Rottweiler is a bit like driving a car. Avoiding potential triggers and collisions. But I digress.

The point here is this: writing a first draft is a bit like a pre-pandemic stroll, whereas editing that draft involves strategizing the path forward while eliminating obstacles that prevent the work from arriving, cleanly, at its ultimate destination. In revision, you must hold both a historic and a current perspective. You must know what came before, and how that impacts the context of the narrative in “story present.” You must steer clear of collisions and complications that impinge upon the clarity and promise of your story.

Revision is work. The best kind of work, really. It’s where you take the raw ingredients of your narrative and home in on the best way to translate the story that’s in your head to an audience who stands outside of that head. In order to do this, you must flip the perspective switch. Go from the maker of the thing, to the consumer of the thing. You must also know way more about your characters than you ultimately slap on the page, and contextualize that knowledge within the constraints of language.

So, what tools are available for that?

The good news is, plenty. Here are a couple:

When I work with a fiction client who’s between drafts, I’ll often suggest that they put their characters through the love test. It’s a way to drill down to the essence of a character. Voice, history, first kiss (see, I made the connection!), and other nuanced aspects of intimacy. Obviously, memoirists have the advantage in the intimacy department, but it’s not a bad idea, if you are writing about your life, to engage with the 36 Questions, as the exercise might serve to deepen your connection with your story.

Speaking of connection, the spine of your project, whether fiction or non, seeks to connect to the brain science of storytelling. That’s the main objective in the author-to-reader translation. A fabulous tool to help with this is something I stumbled on a couple years ago, and it’s called the Inside Outline, developed by book-coaching guru, Jennie Nash. Essentially, this tool helps the writer cement the relationship between scenes and the meaning of the scenes for the actors involved. Actor being a key word here, because for the magic to work the reader must be engaged on both an intellectual and emotional level, which comes from the characters creating the scenes through action and consequence.

The IO also helps with creating and/or amplifying the continuity thread of a narrative—tying the cause-and-effect trajectory of your story’s arc to the reader’s sense of logic.

In short, revision is a walk through your story where you become aware of the 360 degree landscape of your narrative. Where you strategize the path from beginning to end. And where you arrive, at long last, at a satisfying conclusion. And maybe a well-earned treat!

Any questions? Comments? You know where to put them! In my next subscriber email (on inauguration day!) I will continue this conversation, and look for a discount special coupon in that next post.