CHAPTER 5: WRITING IS REWRITING
I have rewritten—often several times—every word I have ever published.
Vladimir Nabokov
James Michener, a writer I’ve enjoyed since the sixth grade, said, “I’m not a very good writer. But I’m a great rewriter.” I personally doubt the first part. But I absolutely believe the latter. Revision is when the magic happens. Even if you’re convinced your first draft was complete garbage, it doesn’t matter, because pixie dust will be in the air as you revise. Revision is of such importance that I’ve heard major writers say, “Writing is Rewriting.” They aren’t suggesting that rewriting is all there is. They’re suggesting that it’s the part that matters most. It’s what separates mediocre writers from great writers.
Writing is rewriting.
And you all want to be great writers, correct? So now it’s time to call to order The Court of Last Resort. Here comes the Judge. From this point forward, it’s almost entirely left-brain work. The judge must scrutinize what’s on the page, objectively and cold-bloodedly, and make a determination about what goes and what stays. Sometimes you have to be ruthless. Sometimes you might even break your heart (a little). But to whatever extent is possible, the judge has to keep sentiment and emotion out of the decision-making process. Judgments must be made based upon a cool-headed determination about how to make the book as good as it can possibly be. This process should elate you, because you know you’re making your work better. But if at any point it starts to get you down, please remember the immortal words of J. Russell Lynes: “No one dislikes to be edited as much as he dislikes not to be published.”
Revision is Essential
Of course you revise. This is obvious. At least, I hope it’s obvious. Who would ever think you would get a book of any quality in one draft? And yet, for a variety of reasons, this eludes many writers, even those I know are absolutely smart people (in other areas). Fleshing out a great idea can and should be an exciting process, even though it takes forever and a day. If you put a climax and denouement on it that pleases you, it’s only natural that you would be excited about what you’ve got. Don’t let that excitement fool you into thinking you don’t need to do any more work. You do.
In addition to writing for several decades now, I’ve also run several publishing houses. I know for a fact that some of the over-the-transom manuscripts we received were first drafts. Believe it or not, some people actually admitted it in their cover letters. “This is my first draft, but I’d be willing to do some editing if you think it needs it.” No, I am not making this up.
Two things I can tell you with certainty. One: Yes, your first draft needs editing, if not a complete overhaul. Two: No publishing house editor in the world today has time to do it for you. The people we call “editors,” at least in the larger houses, spend their workdays in meetings and conferences, not redlining manuscripts. Your book must be largely ready to go or no one will bother with it. Probably no literary agent will either. They simply don’t have time, and why would they want to anyway, when there are so many great manuscripts floating around? They could much more easily choose something that doesn’t need major work.
I have also encountered beginning writers who have a vague notion that their book needs work, but decide to hire outside editors to do it for them, or worse, “book doctors.” Here are my thoughts. First, avoid all people who call themselves book doctors. Second, if you want an editor, hire someone with a track record that shows they know what publishable manuscripts are because they’ve actually written some. I’ve had people arrive at my writing retreats after spending over five thousands dollars on editors they found in magazine ads who gave them some of the worst advice I’ve heard in my life.
You need to learn how to edit your books yourself. And the only way you will learn to do that is by doing it.
Mind you, after you’ve extensively revised and worked the book to the point that you think there’s nothing more you know to do to it, it might be smart to obtain outside opinions. We’ll discuss that later. Be don’t go there prematurely. The all-important early revisions need to be performed by you, because no one knows your story, your intentions, and your goals better.
Here’s something else to bear in mind. Only amateurs think every word they’ve written is written in indelible ink. The people at conferences who insist that their book is perfect are the ones who don’t get published. Their inability to receive criticism prevents them from growing.
Even To Kill a Mockingbird went through several drafts after an editor got it—and each draft made the book better. If Harper Lee had refused to listen, had refused to revise, we wouldn’t have the classic we have today. Here’s the truth: Amateurs fall in love with every word they write. Professionals destroy 95% of all the words they write—because they know they can do better. So they cut, add, revise, rearrange, or whatever the book needs. That’s how you get to a publishable novel. I think Colette said it best: “Put down everything that comes into your head and then you’re a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff’s worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.”
Learn to edit yourself. And be willing to do it.
The All-Important Second Draft
Okay, so you’ve finished the first draft, taken a day off, and now you’re ready to get back to work. Where do you start?
At the beginning. Read the manuscript from top to bottom. As much as possible, pretend that you are not the writer but a causal reader who picked up the book having no idea where the story was headed or what would happen next. Read it all in a sitting or two if possible.
Did you enjoy it? Did you find it satisfying? Or, more likely, if you’re truly being objective, did you find it has some problems?
That’s going to be the focus of your second draft, and probably one or two thereafter. Fixing the problems.
You may begin by performing some major surgery. (I guess now you’re the book doctor.) You may realize that some scenes need to be added. Maybe a relationship isn’t sufficiently developed to create the emotional reaction you want in the denouement. Maybe the climax ends too quickly, or the protagonist prevails too easily. If so, it’s time for a transplant. Add some new scenes.
You may realize you’ve written some scenes that don’t need to be in the book. If they don’t advance the narrative, and they don’t contribute anything else, eliminate them. Excise the diseased cells and the body will be stronger. Anything that slows down the pace, that duplicates material found elsewhere, needs to go. Kurt Vonnegut said that he revised his manuscripts word-by-word, interrogating each word, asking “Does this word have to be in here?” Not could it be there, mind you, but must it be there. If the answer was no, the word was gone. The happy result was terse, taut, finely crafted novels that are still a pleasure to read.
Every writer has their own particular style bugaboos. I tend to overuse dashes as a devise for speeding up the pace of dialogue. Some people overuse helping verbs (was, were, am, etc.). Some people can’t shake degree adverbs (very, really, pretty, clearly, etc.). Some tend to use the same words repetitively. Generally speaking, you never want a word to repeat in a sentence, and the more attention-catching ones shouldn’t repeat in the same paragraph. Maybe not even on the same page. Whatever it is you know you tend to do, these early drafts are a good time to fix it. I told you not to edit yourself as you wrote the first draft, but now you should. Use that Find and Replace function to scour your entire manuscript, removing the offending words and replacing them with exciting, vibrant words.
I’ve included a “Search and Destroy” list in one of the appendices that you may use as a guide for this stage of the editing process. I’ve also included a summary of some of my most important style tips, the ones that most commonly plague the manuscripts I’ve seen at my writing retreats. Run through that list and make sure your book is written professionally. Don’t give agents and editors an easy excuse to dismiss your manuscript. Make the writing just as sharp as it needs to be.
The Third Draft, Fourth, Fifth…
In most cases, especially with beginning writers, there will be other problems that need to be addressed at an early stage. I hope you will be honest and objective and fix what needs to be fixed. Ask yourself these questions:
Do the major characters come alive on the page?
Does the plot move forward at a steady, engaging pace, never slowing, and quickening toward the end?
Is the climax a satisfying resolution to the book?
Does the last page leave the reader with a satisfying emotional resonance?
Nothing can be more challenging than being hard on yourself, but it's the only way to make sure you’ve written a first-rate book. Good writing takes time. One of the biggest problems in the writing world today is that, with the game-changing advent of eBooks and online purchasing, publishers have started encouraging their most popular writers to turn out multiple books a year. The inevitable result is that writers can’t spend as much time on each book as they once did, and the quality of their work declines as a result. (Then sales decline and eventually the publisher fires them, blaming the author, and replacing them with someone they haven’t milked dry yet.) If I could, I would make each reader of this book raise their right hand and swear they will never release a book before they’ve spent as much time as they need to make it the best book it can possibly be. But since I can’t, I will advise you to answer each of the questions above and revise accordingly.
When I revise, I spend one entire pass through the manuscript focusing on character. With crime fiction, mysteries, thrillers, and such, the plot is typically so intricate and important that it’s easy to let the characters become ciphers, stick figures running and jumping through the motions. This is the death knell to writing success, particularly if you hope to be writing for a while. The only reason anyone buys a book in a series is because they like the series character. And no matter how many times you’ve thrilled and delighted your readers, the first time you give them a book that disappoints, there’s a good chance they’ll drop you from their buying list.
As discussed in Creating Character, not all of the dozens of characters in your novel can or should be fully developed. But the main ones, typically the most important four or five, should be unique and interesting, not thinly veiled duplicates of characters found in abundance in television and cinema. You need to make them come alive on the page, to make the reader want to read more about them. So I spend a draft focusing on those all-important characters, making sure they’re doing their job. Remember that your characters shouldn’t all sound alike. If every character’s dialogue speaks with the same voice (probably yours), you’re not allowing your characters to distinguish themselves properly.
I also spend a pass-through making sure the plot holds together. That means every time a character talks about what they’ve done, provides an alibi, or explains what happened in the past, I know whether their explanation is true (and if it isn’t, why they’re lying). It means every time some jaw-dropping, gasp-inducing, chapter-ending event occurs, I understand who committed this horrifying deed and why (even if the reader won’t find out until much later). Basically, I make sure the story adds up. I know there are lots of stories out there about writers who didn’t—Raymond Chandler admitting he had no idea who killed the chauffeur in The Big Sleep, etc.—but that’s probably not going to fly in today’s publishing world. First time someone posts a one-star review on your Amazon page complaining that your story doesn’t hold together, you’re going to wish you’d spent more time on the plot.
Pacing is of critical importance. Robin Cook used to say that as he read novels, he would take his pulse (he’s a physician) to see if the book excited him. If it did, he tried to figure out why. You can probably tell if a book is exciting you without taking your pulse. So if you’re reading your manuscript and the story seems to lag, you need to figure out why. Is there too much talking and not enough action? Is the action simply a blow-by-blow description with no emotional involvement (often a problem for sex scenes, too)? Perhaps it can be fixed with incisive editing, such as varying your sentence length or breaking up long paragraphs. Long paragraphs will always slow down the pace of a book and, even worse, tempt readers to skip them. And if they start skipping, soon they’ll be skimming…and from there it’s a short walk to putting the book down. Don’t give your reader any place where they can cheerfully put down your book.
The climax is probably the most important group of scenes in your book. Readers have waited for it a long time, so you must give them the big deal they want. A quick resolution of a problem the protagonist has wrestled with for three hundred pages will not satisfy. You want to read and reread your climax, making sure it ties up all the dangling threads and gives readers the satisfaction they want. You’re not spending too much time on the climax so long as every time you reread it, you find a way to make it better.
To be fair, there are some books out there, particularly in the world of popular fiction, that don’t seem to conclude with any sort of emotional resonance, and they still survive. Perhaps some readers are satisfied with a book that simply entertains for a few hours. But I think the best books, the ones people remember long after they’ve finished reading them, give something more than just a plot payoff. They give an emotional payoff as well. They provide a moment of sweetness, or a fresh idea, or an unexpected yet insightful twist. Can you put something like that on your last page or pages? If you can, you may find you’ve written a story with far more staying power.
I don’t know how long all this revision will take you. Theoretically, each draft should take a little less time, because each pass there’s less to change. And all of these drafts combined probably won’t take as long as it took to write your first draft. But it will take time. Don’t worry about that. Don’t get in a hurry. Keep your eyes on the prize. Never forget how tough the publishing market is. If you’re going to break in, you’re going to have to give this work everything you’ve got. Your plan is to produce a book so fantastic that agents and editors will kneel before you and take your book where you want it to go. So it’s worth the investment.
By the time you’ve completed drafts focusing on your personal bugaboos, character, pacing, plot, etc., you’re probably at the end of your fifth draft. At least. Good for you. It may be time for a break. But just to be sure, go through all the questions in the Fifth Draft Checklist in the Appendices. If you can answer all those questions in a way that satisfies you, fantastic. You’ve earned a break. You can take a week off now before you proceed. In fact, it’s a good idea to do so, because I don’t want you to get to the point where you’re so sick of reading this you can’t work on it any more. That would be disastrous—because you’re not done yet.
Ask yourself the difficult, more detailed questions in the Checklist. All of these questions are based on the problems I’ve seen most frequently in well-honed novels I’ve either edited or seen at retreats. Is there any reason to like your characters, or to care about them? That’s essential to sustaining reader interest (even bad guys can be liked, in a perverse way). Does the protagonist’s motivation deepen as the story develops? Do the obstacles become more daunting? Do the stakes increase? Is the story predictable? Does this story say what you want it to say? These questions may direct your attention to work that still needs to be done. If so, don’t hesitate to do it. At this point, we’re talking about minor surgery. But those minor touches need to be made. Every question on the checklist is there for a reason—to make sure your manuscript has the essential elements that have made books successful since the dawn of storytelling.
Don’t sell yourself short now. Keep revising as long as you can make it better.
And when you’re finished with that? All done?
You wish. Now it’s time to proofread. Did you think you’d already done that? Wrong.