Editing my first novel
Dec. 13th, 2005 12:20 am![[personal profile]](https://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
naomikritzerI got an e-mail message today from a reader who wanted advice on editing. She'd written her first novel, and was revising it, and wanted to know how I'd done it. She didn't think her novel was long enough, but wasn't sure how to make it longer.
I thought it was an interesting question, and thought I'd post my answer as an LJ entry as well as e-mailing her. Warning, rampant spoilers for Fires of the Faithful (and to a lesser extent Turning the Storm) follow.
My first novel was Fires of the Faithful and Turning the Storm (it was originally one book). When I sat down to write it, I had a couple of big turning-point scenes in my head, and I wrote towards those big scenes. (For example, the first Big Scene is the one where the man from the Circle shows up to force Mira to return.) After each Big Scene, I listed out things that I thought would happen in the next section, then went back and revised the section I'd just completed.
When I finished the whole novel, I set it aside for a couple of weeks, then read it again, to try to figure out whether it all fit together. The earliest version of the story was a short story, and there were scenes in the novel that were in there basically because they were an expanded version of something from the short story. For example, in the original short story, at one point there's an out-of-season thunderstorm, and when they see the lightning in the sky, they initially think it's magefire. Everyone gets really freaked out, and even after they realize it's just a storm, Mira stays outside in the rain and ends up getting sick. I kept that scene (extended a bit) in the early versions of the novel. In one of my early revisions, though, I realized that it didn't make a lot of sense the way I'd written it: according to the novel, the conservatory is a long way from the areas where there was fighting. Mira's sickness at that point also didn't really make a lot of sense -- Mira isn't an idiot, she's smart enough to come in out of the rain. It served as an important bonding moment for Mira and Eliana, though; that was the big purpose the scene served. So, I thought about it a bit, and decided that it made more sense to include a "withdrawal" scene when Mira first comes to the conservatory, instead, so I cut the storm and the sickness, and instead had Eliana stumble in as Mira was withdrawing from her addiction to magic.
Other things I remember changing in early rewrites:
* I fixed some things that I had realized were cliches, and/or relied on anachronisms. For instance, in an early version, I had Eliana see herself in a mirror as she was practicing her violin, and have a vision of herself as a soldier. The thing is, (1) the protagonist describing themself in the mirror is a cliche, and I wanted to get rid of that, and (2) (more importantly), in the time period where the story is loosely set, mirrors were actually really valuable and precious items, not something people had just sitting around in places like student practice rooms. She still has the vision of herself as a soldier, but she sees her face in a fresco on a wall, instead.
* I made Mira a stronger, more capable person. In the earliest version, she spends a lot of time standing around being angstful and mysterious. There's still plenty of angst and mystery, but I wanted her to be more than that as a character. For one thing, Eliana, who is a strong, capable person, falls in love with her. So I gave her opportunities to have a sense of humor, etc.
* I fixed some of the pacing issues. I was used to writing short stories, where scenes have to be very economical. So anytime I ran out of things for the characters to say, I just ended the scene. It made for some really short scenes. In revision, I put in transitions, like people realizing they're late for class and rushing off, and I saw some opportunities to combine scenes to extend them.
So, okay. Once I'd finished that revision, that was my "beta draft." I'm in a writing critique group, so I'd been getting ongoing feedback on it as I handed it out a chapter or two at a time. Once I had a coherent draft, I rounded up another set of friends and asked them to read the beta draft for me and comment on it. Then I did some more revision based on their feedback.
Then -- I had another friend who was a professional editor (not of fiction), and who also had a fair amount of historical expertise, so I got him to read it and comment. He made a number of useful suggestions, but the one that was the biggest deal was this: he suggested that I find a way to have the Fedeli actually show up at the conservatory in the first section. Because in that version, they did not; they were this shadowy, scary menace that people talked about, but the audience never actually saw them until after Eliana had left the conservatory. John said that all the major conflicts of the book should be present in the early section of the novel. The conflict with the Circle was present in the person of Mira, but the Fedeli weren't, really.
I thought this was a really good idea, and decided to have the Fedeli simply show up. And, since they were coming, they really HAD to kill somebody in a horrible, dramatic way. In the original version, Bella ran away with Giorgi; she turned up near the end but didn't really do much after this point. And she made a lot of sense as the person likely to be killed by the Fedeli -- she was defiantly heretical. This also gave me an opportunity for a second withdrawal scene, since they force Mira to do magic, and I moved some of what happened in the first one to the second. I wound up rewriting the first section -- up to where Eliana leaves the conservatory -- almost from scratch, because it was by far the roughest and most awkwardly paced. The new version was much more dramatic and interesting.
Then I got accepted by an agent; his assistant, Tracy, had me do another round of rewrites. I can't remember all her changes (they were good changes), but one was that I think originally Eliana found her ruined village and pretty much just fled in horror. She mourns for her family later. Tracy suggested that Eliana should make an effort to bury them, and to mourn them immediately, then move on.
Then it sold to Bantam, and they had me split the book in two and expand it. This made me very happy, as every time I rewrote it got longer, and I knew there were important things I wasn't developing because if it got any longer I would never sell it to anyone. My editor had a list of things she wanted me to add: among other things, she wanted more development of Eliana and Mira's relationship; she wanted to see more school-type stuff; she wanted to know where Eliana learned the etiquette and skills she later relies on at the Imperial court; and she wanted to know how children with strong potential to become mages were identified. I ended up writing an entirely new chapter, with a story that more or less provided all of what she was looking for. That's Chapter Three -- I added it pretty much wholesale as part of the final revision process. Also, in the original version that Bantam bought, when Eliana is at court, she and Mira don't talk to each other (though Eliana sees Mira once at prayer) until Mira shows up to save Eliana after she's been arrested. My editor wanted to see them interact at court, and so pretty much all of that was added in the final revisions.
Anyway, the process with my later books hasn't been quite as elaborate.
Some general suggestions:
* Think in terms of scenes.
* Think about the purpose of each scene. Identify what's missing from your novel, and write scenes to serve those purposes. For example, if you realize that you need to establish early on that your protagonist had a really bad relationship with her evil twin sister, and you also would like to show that she's good with animals, have her help deliver twin calves in the barn of the inn where she works and have her get slightly bitter about the whole "twin" thing so then someone gets curious and asks and she talks about it while bringing in water and hay for the mother cow. Or whatever. When you make a novel longer, you don't want to make it bloated, you want to make it better developed.
I thought it was an interesting question, and thought I'd post my answer as an LJ entry as well as e-mailing her. Warning, rampant spoilers for Fires of the Faithful (and to a lesser extent Turning the Storm) follow.
My first novel was Fires of the Faithful and Turning the Storm (it was originally one book). When I sat down to write it, I had a couple of big turning-point scenes in my head, and I wrote towards those big scenes. (For example, the first Big Scene is the one where the man from the Circle shows up to force Mira to return.) After each Big Scene, I listed out things that I thought would happen in the next section, then went back and revised the section I'd just completed.
When I finished the whole novel, I set it aside for a couple of weeks, then read it again, to try to figure out whether it all fit together. The earliest version of the story was a short story, and there were scenes in the novel that were in there basically because they were an expanded version of something from the short story. For example, in the original short story, at one point there's an out-of-season thunderstorm, and when they see the lightning in the sky, they initially think it's magefire. Everyone gets really freaked out, and even after they realize it's just a storm, Mira stays outside in the rain and ends up getting sick. I kept that scene (extended a bit) in the early versions of the novel. In one of my early revisions, though, I realized that it didn't make a lot of sense the way I'd written it: according to the novel, the conservatory is a long way from the areas where there was fighting. Mira's sickness at that point also didn't really make a lot of sense -- Mira isn't an idiot, she's smart enough to come in out of the rain. It served as an important bonding moment for Mira and Eliana, though; that was the big purpose the scene served. So, I thought about it a bit, and decided that it made more sense to include a "withdrawal" scene when Mira first comes to the conservatory, instead, so I cut the storm and the sickness, and instead had Eliana stumble in as Mira was withdrawing from her addiction to magic.
Other things I remember changing in early rewrites:
* I fixed some things that I had realized were cliches, and/or relied on anachronisms. For instance, in an early version, I had Eliana see herself in a mirror as she was practicing her violin, and have a vision of herself as a soldier. The thing is, (1) the protagonist describing themself in the mirror is a cliche, and I wanted to get rid of that, and (2) (more importantly), in the time period where the story is loosely set, mirrors were actually really valuable and precious items, not something people had just sitting around in places like student practice rooms. She still has the vision of herself as a soldier, but she sees her face in a fresco on a wall, instead.
* I made Mira a stronger, more capable person. In the earliest version, she spends a lot of time standing around being angstful and mysterious. There's still plenty of angst and mystery, but I wanted her to be more than that as a character. For one thing, Eliana, who is a strong, capable person, falls in love with her. So I gave her opportunities to have a sense of humor, etc.
* I fixed some of the pacing issues. I was used to writing short stories, where scenes have to be very economical. So anytime I ran out of things for the characters to say, I just ended the scene. It made for some really short scenes. In revision, I put in transitions, like people realizing they're late for class and rushing off, and I saw some opportunities to combine scenes to extend them.
So, okay. Once I'd finished that revision, that was my "beta draft." I'm in a writing critique group, so I'd been getting ongoing feedback on it as I handed it out a chapter or two at a time. Once I had a coherent draft, I rounded up another set of friends and asked them to read the beta draft for me and comment on it. Then I did some more revision based on their feedback.
Then -- I had another friend who was a professional editor (not of fiction), and who also had a fair amount of historical expertise, so I got him to read it and comment. He made a number of useful suggestions, but the one that was the biggest deal was this: he suggested that I find a way to have the Fedeli actually show up at the conservatory in the first section. Because in that version, they did not; they were this shadowy, scary menace that people talked about, but the audience never actually saw them until after Eliana had left the conservatory. John said that all the major conflicts of the book should be present in the early section of the novel. The conflict with the Circle was present in the person of Mira, but the Fedeli weren't, really.
I thought this was a really good idea, and decided to have the Fedeli simply show up. And, since they were coming, they really HAD to kill somebody in a horrible, dramatic way. In the original version, Bella ran away with Giorgi; she turned up near the end but didn't really do much after this point. And she made a lot of sense as the person likely to be killed by the Fedeli -- she was defiantly heretical. This also gave me an opportunity for a second withdrawal scene, since they force Mira to do magic, and I moved some of what happened in the first one to the second. I wound up rewriting the first section -- up to where Eliana leaves the conservatory -- almost from scratch, because it was by far the roughest and most awkwardly paced. The new version was much more dramatic and interesting.
Then I got accepted by an agent; his assistant, Tracy, had me do another round of rewrites. I can't remember all her changes (they were good changes), but one was that I think originally Eliana found her ruined village and pretty much just fled in horror. She mourns for her family later. Tracy suggested that Eliana should make an effort to bury them, and to mourn them immediately, then move on.
Then it sold to Bantam, and they had me split the book in two and expand it. This made me very happy, as every time I rewrote it got longer, and I knew there were important things I wasn't developing because if it got any longer I would never sell it to anyone. My editor had a list of things she wanted me to add: among other things, she wanted more development of Eliana and Mira's relationship; she wanted to see more school-type stuff; she wanted to know where Eliana learned the etiquette and skills she later relies on at the Imperial court; and she wanted to know how children with strong potential to become mages were identified. I ended up writing an entirely new chapter, with a story that more or less provided all of what she was looking for. That's Chapter Three -- I added it pretty much wholesale as part of the final revision process. Also, in the original version that Bantam bought, when Eliana is at court, she and Mira don't talk to each other (though Eliana sees Mira once at prayer) until Mira shows up to save Eliana after she's been arrested. My editor wanted to see them interact at court, and so pretty much all of that was added in the final revisions.
Anyway, the process with my later books hasn't been quite as elaborate.
Some general suggestions:
* Think in terms of scenes.
* Think about the purpose of each scene. Identify what's missing from your novel, and write scenes to serve those purposes. For example, if you realize that you need to establish early on that your protagonist had a really bad relationship with her evil twin sister, and you also would like to show that she's good with animals, have her help deliver twin calves in the barn of the inn where she works and have her get slightly bitter about the whole "twin" thing so then someone gets curious and asks and she talks about it while bringing in water and hay for the mother cow. Or whatever. When you make a novel longer, you don't want to make it bloated, you want to make it better developed.
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Date: 2005-12-13 05:09 pm (UTC)