Does it work in itself?Can an author step back from his or her work and see it the way an eventual reader will? Not easily, but we can at least try, and that’s what I hope to achieve with the second revise.
At this stage I’m trying to evaluate the work as a whole, and to do that I need to look at its chief component, scenes. Three questions need to be asked of every one:
Does it work in itself?
Does it work as part of this section of the book?
Does it work in the whole scheme of things, from beginning to end?
Sometimes you get scenes that are lovely but expendable. A dumb blonde starlet that’s talked her way on to the set through nothing more than looks. They have to go. Sometimes a scene reads perfectly well but jars with what came before or what comes after. This needs attention.
And sometimes the thing raises a problem – some narrative link, some unanswered question – that needed to be addressed elsewhere, perhaps miles away in the story, and wasn’t. So either that has to be written in elsewhere or the source has to be removed.
One simple, unshakeable fact joins all these issues: you can only see them if you read the whole thing from beginning to end without serious interruption. It’s fatal to try to read and rewrite at the same time. The final polish is for the third phase of the revise, or later, not now.
Here’s a tip to help you turn from author into reader: abandon the computer and go back to paper. Print out your manuscript, go into a room away from the PC and the internet, and read it from first page to last. Then, if you have the time and energy, print it out again but this time landscape, with two book pages on each page of paper, so that it looks like spreads in a paperback book.
You will be amazed how much you see that is fresh if you simply change the format of your book’s appearance. Different typefaces, different sizes and layouts reveal issues and, especially, repeated words that will pass you by on screen. When readers have a book they see two pages at a time, not one. As authors and editors we tend to focus on the paragraph in front of us and check how that works against the three or four around it. That simple change in print format should let you view everything in the broader context your eventual audience will experience.
Can you do this on one of the new ereaders or tablets such as an iPad, Kindle or Android tablet? Yes, up to a point. Getting a Word file on to your reader can be a bit tricky, but newer apps, such as Scrivener and Apple Pages, will save directly into ereader formats. Such devices as Kindle or iPad do a very good job of making your draft manuscript look like a properly formatted ebook, and headings will usually appear as chapter links. The drawback comes when you want to annotate your draft. You’re restricted to basic margin notes which can be a bit awkward to type using these small devices. Agents and editors can read and evaluate manuscripts very well this way. Authors who need to make substantial revisions may find the note-taking facilities a bit rudimentary.
Nothing beats paper – being able to sit down with a red pen and scribble away to your heart’s content, making changes, notes, highlights and referring back easily to other sections in the book. My preferred revision method is to print out the whole book as double-page spreads, paperback-style, read them, put the ones requiring attention in one pile, and setting the rest to one side. I then return to the computer with the marked pages and type in the corrections. If you own a tablet you should try reading your draft to see if it helps. But I wouldn’t buy one solely for this purpose, and frankly it’s hard to see a digital device that can possibly compete with pen and paper for author revisions.
During this stage of revision I usually find that around half of the draft pages will need more work back at the computer. If you find you’re picking up only a few for corrections you’re either a fantastic, first-time talent or perilously uncritical.