How to revise your rough draft of a novel
Oct. 2nd, 2006 09:49 pm![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
lobelia321How to write a novel, Part Two
Extracts from Jane Smiley's 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel
This is the long-promised follow-on from How to finish the rough draft of a novel which I posted in July. Because once you've finished your rough draft of a novel: then what?
As I said in July: I always try to take so-called novel-writing advice with a huge pinch of salt. This does not stop me from being addicted to how-to books, brimming with novel-writing advice. Jane Smiley is more conducive than most. Here are some of her nuggets of wisdom in condensed and schematised form. Posted here for my own referencing convenience and, as a fringe benefit, for the interests of anybody else as well. :-) Plus some navel-gazingnesses of my own.
Headings in bold. Smiley in Roman. Me and my own mustard (as they say in German) in italics.
Note also that my italic thoughts at the moment are in part geared towards my long-unfinished Karl/Dom fic, begun in 2002 and re-read by me over the week-end. I'm trying to figure out whether Smiley's system can help me to finish this fic.
How to revise your rough draft of a novel
• Your rough draft is neither good nor bad. Your job is not to judge it; you job is to understand it.
For me, this is perhaps the single most useful thing Smiley says in her entire book. I angst terribly over my long fic which is why none of them is finished nor posted. The exhortation to understand and to analyse rather than to judge is worth gold. I keep reminding myself of this, when I write my non-fiction book, too. As Smiley says, you will be tempted to judge, but this temptation must be resisted. I like the idea that the text speaks to me. It wants to tell me something. It wants to be understood! This is also much more helpful than the 'is it good? is it bad?' question. It means you really look at your draft properly.
I think this is also good advice for betaing. I try to follow it when I beta myself: not to tell authors 'this is great! this is bad, fix this!' but to figure out what the text is trying to tell me, and then ask the author: Did you want the text to be telling me this? It's difficult not to judge, including as a beta.
Smiley goes on to say: You will try to decide whether it is good. It is, but it can be better. 'Better' is not a global trait but a group of specific qualities you can work toward one by one. Every novel is a system.
For me, this means: figure out what the text is trying to tell you, then change it so that it tells you this in a clearer and more distilled form, and trim all of the bits that don't contribute to this central telling.
• Decide what kind of novel you have written. Is it a romance? a travel book? a biography? a history? a comic novel? a diary or letter? a confession? polemical? an epic? a tale? analytical?
Normally, every novel is an amalgam of more than a single type, with two predominating. Decide what types your rough draft makes most use of and what you need to deliver to repay the reader's expectations (i.e. fulfill them or counter them; if countering, offer recompense)
This is quite counter-intuitive for me, this slotting into genre categories but I have already seen how helpful it is for my own thinking. It helps to focus the mind into figuring out: what is, in fact, the main point of my story? I tend to frazzle into a myriad directions and this aids focus.
• The 4 simple parts of a plot:
1) exposition
- the first 10 percent of the novel
2) rising action
- the 80 percent in the middle of the novel, with a 'freshener' at about 62 percent
3) climax
- occurs 85-90 percent into the novel
4) denouement
- the last 10 percent of the novel
I found this very weird when I first read it, and immediately ran to my shelf to find out whether all novels truly fall into this 10/80/10 pattern. But it is a yardstick, I guess, to guide revision. I don't think I want it to be a rule. But then, y'all know how I feel about how-to rules... *g* I will see how I go with this for rewriting K/D.
&bull: First diagnostic:
The first thing to do: Turn to whatever page comes at 85-90 percent into your rough draft and decide if that's what you want your climax to be.
•The climax works not to lift the reader to the highest pitch of excitement but to lift her to the highest pitch of understanding.
I find this very helpful. Not frenzied drama or spectacle but a gear shift, an 'aha'.
Chances are that when you turn to this page, it isn't exactly right. Note down what you observe about your climax; not what is good or bad, but what its qualities are. A climax says to the reader: 'I am important; pay attention to me.' A real climax has to seem to solve the problem the exposition poses.
I love this. Fix up the end by fixing the beginning. It helps not to have some meandering musing. I am a strong believer in the causal connectivity of everything in a narrative. It is precisely this that I love in narratives: they are not real life. Everything does connect.
• Second diagnostic:
Now, with your climax in mind, read the first 10 percent of your rough draft: this is your exposition.
• In the exposition, you have 10 percent of your novel to show the reader 'who', 'what', 'where' and 'when'. (The 'how' is for the rising action.)
Decide whether your exposition, as it is, is connected to your climax. Is the story you promised to tell the same as the story you tell; if it is not, why not?
You have several tasks: Protagonist's name? Names of his allies and friends? Names of his antagonist and the antagonist's allies and friends? Where is everyone? When does the action take place? How is time going to be organised? What is the protagonist's biggest problem? What does the protagonist want? What stands in his way? (What really stands in his way may be different from what he thinks stands in his way.) What is the protagonist's characteristic way of doing things? What makes him worth writing about? Are you going to stay aside and let him reveal himself through action, or are you going to intrude and comment?
I find this useful. I am impressed by those good Hollywood movies, and even the bad ones, that manage to convey all this information efficiently and economically within the first 20 minutes of film-time. Movies, of course, are divided into four large-scale parts, not three (although there is much talk about the so-called three-act model of screenwriting but that is grist for another post).
• You have only a certain number of pages to get the reader used to you as a writer. The more you pack into these pages, the more likely the reader will trust you.
I like Smiley's emphasis here on the reader: the beginning is not only about the content of the fic but also about my relationship with the reader. I am showing them here: 'hey, this is the kind of fic this is; read on if you will'.
• Take out every novel on your shelves and look at their expositions.
Or take out your favourite fics. :-) I like her saying that you learn writing by reading.
• Third diagnostic:
Read your draft from the end of the exposition to the beginning of the climax: this is your rising action. Read it without stopping. At the end of your reading, make many notes as quickly as possible about what you think of your novel. Don't record negative feelings. Let the draft speak to you as a reader (rather than as a writer) about what it needs.
Almost every novel gathers itself at the 62 percent mark, changes strategy, and freshens.
Again, I really like this point about the switch in our heads from 'writer' to 'reader'. I love reading my own fics. I've come round to the view that this is my ultimate aim in writing fics, so that I have something pleasurable to read for the rest of my life.
• Organise your work. Make cards, a chart, whatever.
The rising action is the meat of the novel. What goes on here is that something that seems implausible at the time of the exposition (the climax) is being prepared for.
You have plenty of pages to get your protagonist to the point where he is going to do something that he would never have planned in a million years. This is the point of your novel. Readers are willing to suspend disbelief and follow the protagonist to any implausible climax if the situation is interesting enough but don't tax it too much. Use compelling and vivid details as splinters inserted into your reader's inner life. But the details must add up logically.
Here is what slash does supremely well: getting protagonists from A (these two men are so not interested in each other) to Z (they need to fuck because they love each other so much). *g* There is no thrill, for me, quite like this thrill of unlikely combination. Which is maybe why I like rare pairings: they are unlikely even within fanon.
• Fourth diagnostic:
Start through it on your first rewrite. Do this as continuously as possible and without consulting anyone. For antidotes to deterrents, see Part One.
For inspiration: read novels.
This is a real tough one for me. I tend to guard my once-penned words as gold and can't bear really to 'rewrite'. The words are gold, and also the story is set in stone. This is not good for finishing a long fic, as I am finding out. Some of my set-in-stone plot points are simply not convincing or enthralling. Here the computer is maybe a trap. Because you don't have to type up the entire manuscript out again, as you had to do with typewriters, it becomes that much harder to change things round. For me, anyway. Perhaps that has been my Achilles heel in finishing longfic? I never *get* to the second or third draft, just to endless rejiggings and fiddlings.
• Fifth diagnostic:
Deal with the denouement. The key to a good denouement is not thought but intuition.
You have to seem to the reader to know what you have been doing but not to be imposing any final thoughts or last-minute ideas. Get characters and voice gracefully off the stage. Stay within the tone you have set up. Don't betray impatience.
This is like the come-down after the orgasm. Always a test of deliciousness in slash: is the story still delectable *after* they've come? In fact, plot is intrinsically slashy: playing hard to get, foreplay, orgasm, aftermath. *cackles* Or, as I've said often before: sex is the ur-narrative.
• Sixth diagnostic:
Show it to someone -- not a relative, friend or other novelist. Ideally, get this someone to analyse, not to judge. The person will inevitably come up with some summary judgement; let this go by and pay attention to the subsequent analysis. Keep asking 'Yes, but...' (Yes, but what about the exposition? Did you undertand who was who?) Pick out helpful nuggets from what your reader says and ignore the rest.
I find this terribly difficult. I am often totally dispirited by betas. This is a helpful thing to remember when asking betas to beta, to know *what* to ask. Although I have determined that I don't want to be using betas anymore in the future. But, like so many resolutions, this one too may be open to rethinking... *g*
You have the last word. But the less defensive you are, the more likely you are to come up with solutions to the novel's problems. Retain your ability to play with your material and invent freely.
• Novels are long projects. They are more difficult to write if you go about it unsystematically. The reader wants both the finished surface (if you're the sort to overdo everything) and the energy (if you're the sort who loses interest after the first rush).
• Two types of confusion:
1) You haven't yet figured out what's going on.
2) All the things you've written have become disordered in your mind.
• Three good drafts, done thoughtfully and thoroughly, are better than ten drafts without a plan.
• No novel is perfect.
Extracts from Jane Smiley's 13 Ways of Looking at the Novel
This is the long-promised follow-on from How to finish the rough draft of a novel which I posted in July. Because once you've finished your rough draft of a novel: then what?
As I said in July: I always try to take so-called novel-writing advice with a huge pinch of salt. This does not stop me from being addicted to how-to books, brimming with novel-writing advice. Jane Smiley is more conducive than most. Here are some of her nuggets of wisdom in condensed and schematised form. Posted here for my own referencing convenience and, as a fringe benefit, for the interests of anybody else as well. :-) Plus some navel-gazingnesses of my own.
Headings in bold. Smiley in Roman. Me and my own mustard (as they say in German) in italics.
Note also that my italic thoughts at the moment are in part geared towards my long-unfinished Karl/Dom fic, begun in 2002 and re-read by me over the week-end. I'm trying to figure out whether Smiley's system can help me to finish this fic.
How to revise your rough draft of a novel
• Your rough draft is neither good nor bad. Your job is not to judge it; you job is to understand it.
For me, this is perhaps the single most useful thing Smiley says in her entire book. I angst terribly over my long fic which is why none of them is finished nor posted. The exhortation to understand and to analyse rather than to judge is worth gold. I keep reminding myself of this, when I write my non-fiction book, too. As Smiley says, you will be tempted to judge, but this temptation must be resisted. I like the idea that the text speaks to me. It wants to tell me something. It wants to be understood! This is also much more helpful than the 'is it good? is it bad?' question. It means you really look at your draft properly.
I think this is also good advice for betaing. I try to follow it when I beta myself: not to tell authors 'this is great! this is bad, fix this!' but to figure out what the text is trying to tell me, and then ask the author: Did you want the text to be telling me this? It's difficult not to judge, including as a beta.
Smiley goes on to say: You will try to decide whether it is good. It is, but it can be better. 'Better' is not a global trait but a group of specific qualities you can work toward one by one. Every novel is a system.
For me, this means: figure out what the text is trying to tell you, then change it so that it tells you this in a clearer and more distilled form, and trim all of the bits that don't contribute to this central telling.
• Decide what kind of novel you have written. Is it a romance? a travel book? a biography? a history? a comic novel? a diary or letter? a confession? polemical? an epic? a tale? analytical?
Normally, every novel is an amalgam of more than a single type, with two predominating. Decide what types your rough draft makes most use of and what you need to deliver to repay the reader's expectations (i.e. fulfill them or counter them; if countering, offer recompense)
This is quite counter-intuitive for me, this slotting into genre categories but I have already seen how helpful it is for my own thinking. It helps to focus the mind into figuring out: what is, in fact, the main point of my story? I tend to frazzle into a myriad directions and this aids focus.
• The 4 simple parts of a plot:
1) exposition
- the first 10 percent of the novel
2) rising action
- the 80 percent in the middle of the novel, with a 'freshener' at about 62 percent
3) climax
- occurs 85-90 percent into the novel
4) denouement
- the last 10 percent of the novel
I found this very weird when I first read it, and immediately ran to my shelf to find out whether all novels truly fall into this 10/80/10 pattern. But it is a yardstick, I guess, to guide revision. I don't think I want it to be a rule. But then, y'all know how I feel about how-to rules... *g* I will see how I go with this for rewriting K/D.
&bull: First diagnostic:
The first thing to do: Turn to whatever page comes at 85-90 percent into your rough draft and decide if that's what you want your climax to be.
•The climax works not to lift the reader to the highest pitch of excitement but to lift her to the highest pitch of understanding.
I find this very helpful. Not frenzied drama or spectacle but a gear shift, an 'aha'.
Chances are that when you turn to this page, it isn't exactly right. Note down what you observe about your climax; not what is good or bad, but what its qualities are. A climax says to the reader: 'I am important; pay attention to me.' A real climax has to seem to solve the problem the exposition poses.
I love this. Fix up the end by fixing the beginning. It helps not to have some meandering musing. I am a strong believer in the causal connectivity of everything in a narrative. It is precisely this that I love in narratives: they are not real life. Everything does connect.
• Second diagnostic:
Now, with your climax in mind, read the first 10 percent of your rough draft: this is your exposition.
• In the exposition, you have 10 percent of your novel to show the reader 'who', 'what', 'where' and 'when'. (The 'how' is for the rising action.)
Decide whether your exposition, as it is, is connected to your climax. Is the story you promised to tell the same as the story you tell; if it is not, why not?
You have several tasks: Protagonist's name? Names of his allies and friends? Names of his antagonist and the antagonist's allies and friends? Where is everyone? When does the action take place? How is time going to be organised? What is the protagonist's biggest problem? What does the protagonist want? What stands in his way? (What really stands in his way may be different from what he thinks stands in his way.) What is the protagonist's characteristic way of doing things? What makes him worth writing about? Are you going to stay aside and let him reveal himself through action, or are you going to intrude and comment?
I find this useful. I am impressed by those good Hollywood movies, and even the bad ones, that manage to convey all this information efficiently and economically within the first 20 minutes of film-time. Movies, of course, are divided into four large-scale parts, not three (although there is much talk about the so-called three-act model of screenwriting but that is grist for another post).
• You have only a certain number of pages to get the reader used to you as a writer. The more you pack into these pages, the more likely the reader will trust you.
I like Smiley's emphasis here on the reader: the beginning is not only about the content of the fic but also about my relationship with the reader. I am showing them here: 'hey, this is the kind of fic this is; read on if you will'.
• Take out every novel on your shelves and look at their expositions.
Or take out your favourite fics. :-) I like her saying that you learn writing by reading.
• Third diagnostic:
Read your draft from the end of the exposition to the beginning of the climax: this is your rising action. Read it without stopping. At the end of your reading, make many notes as quickly as possible about what you think of your novel. Don't record negative feelings. Let the draft speak to you as a reader (rather than as a writer) about what it needs.
Almost every novel gathers itself at the 62 percent mark, changes strategy, and freshens.
Again, I really like this point about the switch in our heads from 'writer' to 'reader'. I love reading my own fics. I've come round to the view that this is my ultimate aim in writing fics, so that I have something pleasurable to read for the rest of my life.
• Organise your work. Make cards, a chart, whatever.
The rising action is the meat of the novel. What goes on here is that something that seems implausible at the time of the exposition (the climax) is being prepared for.
You have plenty of pages to get your protagonist to the point where he is going to do something that he would never have planned in a million years. This is the point of your novel. Readers are willing to suspend disbelief and follow the protagonist to any implausible climax if the situation is interesting enough but don't tax it too much. Use compelling and vivid details as splinters inserted into your reader's inner life. But the details must add up logically.
Here is what slash does supremely well: getting protagonists from A (these two men are so not interested in each other) to Z (they need to fuck because they love each other so much). *g* There is no thrill, for me, quite like this thrill of unlikely combination. Which is maybe why I like rare pairings: they are unlikely even within fanon.
• Fourth diagnostic:
Start through it on your first rewrite. Do this as continuously as possible and without consulting anyone. For antidotes to deterrents, see Part One.
For inspiration: read novels.
This is a real tough one for me. I tend to guard my once-penned words as gold and can't bear really to 'rewrite'. The words are gold, and also the story is set in stone. This is not good for finishing a long fic, as I am finding out. Some of my set-in-stone plot points are simply not convincing or enthralling. Here the computer is maybe a trap. Because you don't have to type up the entire manuscript out again, as you had to do with typewriters, it becomes that much harder to change things round. For me, anyway. Perhaps that has been my Achilles heel in finishing longfic? I never *get* to the second or third draft, just to endless rejiggings and fiddlings.
• Fifth diagnostic:
Deal with the denouement. The key to a good denouement is not thought but intuition.
You have to seem to the reader to know what you have been doing but not to be imposing any final thoughts or last-minute ideas. Get characters and voice gracefully off the stage. Stay within the tone you have set up. Don't betray impatience.
This is like the come-down after the orgasm. Always a test of deliciousness in slash: is the story still delectable *after* they've come? In fact, plot is intrinsically slashy: playing hard to get, foreplay, orgasm, aftermath. *cackles* Or, as I've said often before: sex is the ur-narrative.
• Sixth diagnostic:
Show it to someone -- not a relative, friend or other novelist. Ideally, get this someone to analyse, not to judge. The person will inevitably come up with some summary judgement; let this go by and pay attention to the subsequent analysis. Keep asking 'Yes, but...' (Yes, but what about the exposition? Did you undertand who was who?) Pick out helpful nuggets from what your reader says and ignore the rest.
I find this terribly difficult. I am often totally dispirited by betas. This is a helpful thing to remember when asking betas to beta, to know *what* to ask. Although I have determined that I don't want to be using betas anymore in the future. But, like so many resolutions, this one too may be open to rethinking... *g*
You have the last word. But the less defensive you are, the more likely you are to come up with solutions to the novel's problems. Retain your ability to play with your material and invent freely.
• Novels are long projects. They are more difficult to write if you go about it unsystematically. The reader wants both the finished surface (if you're the sort to overdo everything) and the energy (if you're the sort who loses interest after the first rush).
• Two types of confusion:
1) You haven't yet figured out what's going on.
2) All the things you've written have become disordered in your mind.
• Three good drafts, done thoughtfully and thoroughly, are better than ten drafts without a plan.
• No novel is perfect.