ReVisiom Revision�

Making Sense of all the Writing Advice and Polishing your WIP

With L.J. Longo

-- and the angry voice in L.J.’s head

Revision

• Who hates revision?
• Trick question
• The answer is

EVERYONE

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(I found a lot of memes…� Just so many)

Revision

• The old man is wrong.
• First drafts are always shit (said Hemingway) and their only purpose it to exist (said Gaiman).
• No muse is coming down from the Heavens putting a perfect story into anyone’s head on word at at time.
• So don’t abandon the art. Beat the old man. Beat him to death!

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-- correct

-- well, that took a turn

Revision

Two kinds of revisors:

• In-process reviser
• Usually revising/editing surface issues as a way to procrastinate finishing the WIP.
• The “I’ll do it later when I have more time to focus” reviser
• Usually about to start a brand new book and never look at this novel again.

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They don’t actually revise.

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Revision

Most people think of revision as a big thing you do all at once in a few weeks. Read the manuscript once, correct spelling errors, maybe correct a couple of missspelled badly placed sentences.

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They try to REVISE ALL THE THINGS all at once.

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Revision

This leads to people being overwhelmed with the revizions process.

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Next time pick a -- topic you can spell, moron

If you’re like me, you start calling yourself names and then give up. It’s much easier to write a shiny new project which will, of course, get perfect on the first draft.

Revision

Butt he But the other day while I was meditating* I realized most writing advice that you see on social media and in craft books, is not for the first draft.

It’s for revison

Reenvison

Damn it, it’s for the re-write.

*I was scrolling Pinterest

-- two years ago

Let’s parse out the revision process into smaller chunks.

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Revision

Before I go any further, I want to share the best craft book on Revision. It’s by Tiffany Yates and it’s called…

Intuitive Editing

• My bits about the Macro and Micro are directly from Yates and she has a ton of really great advice on what to look for at every step of the way. Excellent little craft book.
• I broke the process down even further into an 4-part to-do list and I expect writers to source their own writing advice from the internet, other craft books, and their own tortured souls.

Rezlikevision

Four Part To-Do List

• Re-Envisioning
• Advice on Theme, Messaging, Big Picture Story-telling
• Macro
• Big Picture Advice on Characters (arcs, development, deepening), Plot (logical flow, motivated action) and Structure
• Micro
• Pacing, voice, immersion, everything else.
• Line-edits
• Don’t lie to yourself, you know what line edits aer are.
• Spelling, grammar, filler words, pretty, effective sentences.

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-WTF, is this?

Step one One

• Finish the ENTIRE story.
• You might be a pantster or a plotter, it doesn’t matter at this point. You have a Draft!

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• Be super clear about the story.

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• WRITE your pitch, your synopsis, and your blurb

Step One: Re-Envisioning

For real, write your synopsis and tell yourself the story in its smallest form.

• Do you like the themes?
• Does the story end where and how you want it to?
• Is it all there?

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-- For those of you who don’t know, L.J. is not a linear writer. This moron “outlines” in note form and then fills out the scenes after she writes the end. This means that characters will reveal the same pertinent and emotion information to each other several times, and real juicy dialogue repeats, and occasionally, when L.J. isn’t sure how to bridge a scene, the whole story will devolve into a different genre for shits and giggles.

Step One: Re-Envisioning

For me, this step is a lot of re-reading and re-ordering. I’ve sometimes changes POV characters or determined a different tense would serve the story better.

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You’re giving yourself permission to take everything you’ve written and re-write it.*

*heads up, this crazy b*tch does that at Step 3

Step 2 Teo Two: Macro

This is where you revisit all the advice about Structure, Plotting, and Character Arcs.

• Apply your beat sheet, your three-act structure, your heroine’s journey, and whatnot, NOW.
• Ensure that stakes are rising, that the urgency builds the way it ought to.
• Make Strong choices. Nothing is neutral in fiction. No pulling punches.

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-or double check it if your one of those writers

- Unless you write for hallmark.

Step Two: Macro

• Focus on big cuts
• Cut characters
• Do you have two comic reliefs?
• Cut repeating events
• How many times do they run away without changing their tactic?
• Cut subplots that are no longer serving the story.

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• No

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• Only if I have time.

Tell them about how you cut the first third of your thesis.

DO IT!

Save your darlings and reuse them in other stories.

Step Two: Macro

• It’s okay to “Tell”
• One of my big issues is I feel the need to show every scene. I’m learning to ‘sum up’
• If you’re telling, do it with clever narration, like Lemony Snickett or Terry Pratchettt.
• Cover more with less
• Can you combine any scenes?
• Is the plot logical.
• Loose ends?
• Sensical motivations?

- ok, now you’re just being silly

Step Three: Micro

• Okay, rewrite you’re synopsis until it matches all the higher level changes you just made to fix the Structure, Plot, and Character.
• All your characters are making motivated choices, the plot is hitting the right beats at the right time, and the structure is sound.
• Now, Retype it all.

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Told you –

this b*tch was crazy.

Step Three: Micro

• Before I defend myself against… myself, this is the stage of the revision for all the rest of the writing advice:
• Scene work, improving voice, pacing, punching up the POV, sentence by sentence immersion, foreshadowing, spending time on dialogue to make sure your tortured characters never get to say exactly what they mean to say…
• I break this into two chunks because I hate myself that’s my process.

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Step Three: Micro

• Scene work:
• I go through every scene and look closely at the first paragraph and the last.
• In Scrivener, I use the meta-data tab to record the first lines and to categorize what type is it (dialogue, description, action, thought) and I do the same for the last lines.
• Make sure it’s got a good hook on both ends.
• I try to cut some more and move the edges of the scene closer together, since I have a problem with intros and outros.
• I also try to figure out what the scene is doing to contribute to the rest of the piece.
• This is a great time, btw, to write a detailed synopsis, since you can distill the scene down into a few words.

Step Three: Micro

• The Re-type
• Sometimes with novellas, I do the retype and the scene-work at the same time. Nothing makes you consider the importance of the scene better than having to literally retype each word.
• Yes. I do mean re-type.
• I open the story in one page of scrivener and a blank doc in the other and re-type. This makes me choose and reevaluate every sentence, every word.
• Often times, I come across a section and I’m like, “yeah, that’s perfect” and I copy and paste that. But frequently, I add better details, shorten the word count, and get a cleaner draft.
• This also gives me, the non-linear writer, a chance to make sure that all my moving things around still makes sense and that the story flows.

-Obviously, you’re not crazy. But try this method out on a short story once, just to make sure.

Step Three: Micro

• Even if you don’t retype everything, this is the step where you look at everything sentence by sentence.
• Are the details correct?
• Is it immersive?
• How’s the world-building?
• Good balance of show v tell?
• You should be able to see the whole very clearly now, and you’ll be able to foreshadow, perfect prophecies, heighten character arcs with dialogue.

Step Four: Line Edit

• Now you can look at grammer and speling.

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Damn it, L.J.! -

• This where I move my WIP off of Scrivener and into Word.
• The first thing I do it do a search and replace and highlight all the filler words.
• Words like “was”, “is”, “start to”, any thing ending in “ly” or “ing”
• I also search for my personal problem words like “lightening” and “hte”.
• Once those words are a bright neon blue, I re-read the manuscript again, for the last time, fixing any spelling errors, revising those sentences with the neon to make the verbs stronger.
• Then I type “The End.”

Revision

• That’s about it.

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• Until you sell the story and meet your editor.

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Revision

• I hope this was helpful to you.
• If I have any time, I’ll take questions.
• If I don’t have time, please find me on Facebook. I’m the L.J. Longo with the planet and blue hair.
• Find this PowerPoint and the filler word sheet at www.gracefulindecency.com

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