WritersServices Factsheet 14 by Michael Legat
Revision
Professionals revise, amateurs all too often don’t.
If you are writing a book, you should not begin
revision until you have a completed draft. If you are tempted to revise the
first chapter, it is all too easy to find yourself revising it over and over
again and never getting around to writing the rest of the book.
A completed first draft should be put away for as long
as you can bear, so that when you next look at it you will do so with slightly
new eyes.
Most professional authors revise their work several
times, and you should certainly revise as many times as is essential. However,
you should not be tempted to revise over and over again, which will mean that
you have developed Permanent Revision Syndrome. You must decide for yourself
for how long you will go on revising. Four revisions might be reasonable.
In the first revision you should look at the overall
structure of the book, checking, if it is a novel, that the story flows
steadily towards its ending, but not without twists and turns and surprises,
that the characters develop and are sympathetic, that the subplots are
carefully knitted into the main plot, and so on. Have you used techniques such
as the cliffhanger to keep the reader on tenterhooks? You will probably also
need, since most writers have a tendency to over-write, to prune the book
savagely wherever it needs it.
The second revision should look at the detail, and ask
many questions. Have the words you have chosen conveyed your meaning? Are
there awkward phrases? Have you been consistent throughout (for instance, make
sure that your heroine’s eyes
stay the same colour)? Have you repeated words in consecutive sentences so
that they have become obtrusive?
The third revision is when you read the whole work
aloud- or preferably persuade
someone else to read it to you. The ear is a much better editor than the eye,
and you will notice much that your eye has slid over.
For the fourth revision read the whole book through in
one session. This is when you notice that you have a given two very minor
characters the same name, or when you realise that you have forgotten to
follow up a strand of the story which you had started.
If you feel that the book is slow-moving, allow
yourself one further revision, in which you will try to cut 5% of the material
– a few words here, a paragraph there, perhaps a whole page or more. You
will be surprised at the sparkle it imparts.
You should not fiddle with the text any more. Send it
off to a publisher and do any additional revision only if it is turned down
several times or if an interested publisher suggests changes.
This factsheet links to Michael Legat's book Revision but also to Plotting the
Novel.
© Michael Legat 2001
