Where does most of your writing happen?
In the draft stage, probably. It has to, right? Where once there was a blank page, now there are 90,000 words.
Now, where does most of your story telling happen?
It can be tempting to say that most of our storytelling also happens in the draft stage. It’s the place where we are literally telling ourselves the story.
But a strange thing happens when we’re drafting…
- We can be distracted and lose a thread
- We can get new ideas we are excited about including
- We can subconsciously return to one image/theme/emotion over and over again
- We can tell a different story than the one we intended to
Like the frog in the boiling water, these things happen slowly, over time, so we don’t notice that our manuscript has heated up into something entirely different from what we started with.
The problem is that our mindset might not have shifted because our brains are weird and what we think we’re writing and what we actually wrote might be completely different.
It isn’t until we pause, take a break, and reread what we wrote with fresh eyes that we are able to see what we actually did.
This is why revision is so important.
Revision is an opportunity to see your true story. To excavate the themes and emotional heart of your story. To readjust and elevate.
Revision allows you to take all those magical things your subconscious was doing behind the scenes that leaked onto the page, all this amazing rough material, and turn it into something brilliant: Your story.
Drafting is key, but revision is paramount.
So how do you do it? How do you make the most of this pile of sand in your sandbox.
- Take a break. Leave your story for a few days at the very least, weeks if you can. Read other things. Write other things. Just give yourself some distance to view your story with fresh eyes.
- Read in a different format from the one you created it in. For me, that’s changing the font, putting it on my e-reader and physically reading in a different room than the one I wrote in.
- DON’T MAKE EDITS YET! Seriously, I know it’s tempting when we’re reading through to start scratching things out and making changes. DO NOT DO THIS!! Have a legal pad or something next to you and jot down whatever you notice, but keep it big picture – plot holes, character motivations, pacing, etc… You will pass through this manuscript so many times that typos or names that changed halfway through or continuity errors can get fixed later. Do not let them occupy your time now or tempt you into line editing this early.
- Do take a few notes about anything that surprises you – those magical thematic things that developed, images that repeated that you want to highlight even more in other places, symbols that suddenly appear, quirks in your character you can maximize.
Once you can see what you’ve got and what you still need, it will make your revision much more effective. And, armed with a plan, you will be able to not just write, but tell a story with heart and emotional resonance.
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Monica, love the idea about changing the font and reading our draft in a different place from where we wrote it. I never thought of that before! Thank you.