writercises | TECH: Short Story Blueprint: Step 6: Revising Your Story (Moldy Oldie) (Reply)

Original posting 1 Oct 2011

Wait a minute! Last time we were writing, and now you want us to revise it? Well, yes. As with so many things, a little bit of aging, some trimming here and there, adding in some details... And you can make something really great. So, let's take a look...

You do have all these other steps done, right?

Step One: A list of traits (with action tags!) that you like and dislike?
Step Two: Answer the questions! What kind of story, setting, time? What are the name, age, traits, problems or faults, and motivation for the main character, their opposition, and the major secondary characters? Where does your story begin and end? What research do you need to do? If it was onstage (or a movie or TV -- straight to DVD?) what would be the dramatic scenes? Who might publish this?
Step Three: Expand those main characters. What is their dominant trait (and tags)? What is their goal and motivation? When do they enter the story and leave it? What is their physical description and role in the story? Oh, and what is their self-concept?
Step Four: What is the story question and answer? What is the scene/sequel chain linking them? For each scene, what is the goal or scene question, problem, conflict, and disaster or scene answer? For each sequel, what are the emotions, thoughts and planning, and decision?
Step Five: write that first draft. Get it started, keep going, and finish it. Find the change, keep yourself on track with the story question and the answer at the story ending, and keep going.

Writer's Digest, June 1992, pages 26 to 29, have the article by Jack Bickham. Jack starts by reminding us why revision is hard -- you can't see your story as a "cold reader." You don't have that curiosity, and you don't have that lack of knowledge. Readers want to find out what's going to happen, you already know. So how can you do your own revision?

Jack suggests three parts. First, let it cool off. Second, analyze it in several objective steps. Third, know when to let go, make up the final draft, and go on.

Cooling-off? That's right, putting it away for a while helps. But before you do that, write down any revision notes that you already have, and put them with a copy of the manuscript. Put all of that out of sight. Then, the hardest thing, go do something else. Write another story, plan something else, or just take a break. Writing down your notes let you forget about it. Putting it out of sight avoids reminding yourself about it. Starting another story... Well, that's one way to get your brain off of this story and into something else.

Next, tackle one thing at a time. Start out by trying to get a general impression of the story. Try to read it quickly and casually, just like an editor or a reader might. Relax, read through it the way that you would read a story by someone else. When you finish, take a few minutes to think about what you read. What was good about it? Were there any mistakes that you caught? Now, write out some notes -- what do you want to change, what you really like about it, and so on. You might want to make notes about the style, pace, handling of the character -- the kinds of things that editors often note. If you see something that really needs to change, change it. Don't bother trying to make it perfect, just paste something in or make notes.

Next, you might want to try syntax analysis. Check your words and sentences and paragraphs against the kind of publication you want to sell to. Start by checking spelling, punctuation and grammar. Just marking things that need changes is enough, you don't have to fix it now. Now take a published story from the magazine you're trying to sell to and pick out three random segments. Compare these with your story. Are the paragraphs about the same length? Is there about the same amount of dialogue? All you need for this is a rough visual comparison, not detailed. If the magazine likes long, long paragraphs and you have plenty of dialogue, with short snippets of paragraphs... Well, you may want to reconsider.

Now look at three segments of your own story. Check the number of words in every sentence. Is there a comfortable range of variation, or are you writing almost all the same kind of sentences? Now check out how many three syllable or longer words you got? How many words are longer than 15 characters?

When you're done with that, try tactical analysis. Jack provides a checklist of points. Ready? Here is a summary:

Background
-- Do you need more study, or research, for any part?
-- Does every major story character have enough motivation from their past lives?
-- Do you know enough about the market that you're aiming at?
Characters
-- Are your character names sufficiently varied?
-- Are your major characters bigger than life? Are they vivid? Where do you show them?
-- Does every major character have a self-concept and tell or show it in the story? Do their actions, occupations, goals match their self-concept?
-- What is the essential trait of each major character, and what tags show this? Does each character show their trait three or four times?
-- Do your characters speak realistically, with interruptions and all that?
-- Are there brief physical descriptions of every major character?
-- Do the major characters have different appearances, attitudes, and ways of talking?
-- Does the reader know what the major characters want and what's bothering them?
Viewpoint
-- Look for places where the viewpoint fails. In particular, watch for sudden momentary shifts into the point of view of someone else. Make sure the reader knows who the viewpoint character is.
-- If you changed viewpoint, was the change mandatory? Was it clearly signaled to the reader?
-- Are there some direct statements about the thoughts and feelings of the viewpoint character and nobody else?
-- Is the viewpoint character active, doing things, changing?
-- Is the viewpoint character someone you personally could understand and even like?
Plot
-- What is the story question?
-- Is the story question apparent early in your story?
-- Does your story focus on the story question?
-- Does your ending answer the story question?
-- How many scenes are in your story?
-- How many sequels?
-- Do the scenes lead logically to the sequels, and vice versa?
-- Does each scene open with a clearly stated or understood goal for the viewpoint character?
-- Does each scene have conflict or opposition to hook the reader and create sympathy and suspense for the viewpoint character?
-- Does each scene end with a disaster -- a twist that makes life worse for the viewpoint character?
-- Does each sequel provide feelings and thoughts for the character? Does it show why the character decides to go off to do something else next?
-- Comparing your story with your plan, have you left out any scenes or sequels? Do you remember why?
-- Have you introduced secondary story questions that might confuse the reader, instead of enriching the story? Are their struggles or discussions that don't relate to the story question?
-- Does something happen in your ending, even if it's not very big?
Miscellaneous
-- Are there any real people in your story who might sue you?
-- If you started with a real life situation, have you changed enough details to avoid hurting someone?
-- Is your story opening as arresting and interesting as you can possibly make it?
-- Is there any "fine writing" in your story? Poetic flights of fancy, long colorful descriptions? Consider killing them.
-- Is your final manuscript correctly formatted and ready for submission?

That's it. Background, characters, viewpoint, plot, and the miscellaneous (although I might argue with Jack that the question about story opening really belongs in the plot section). Go over your story, consider these various points, and make notes about what you want to change.

And then it's time to let go. Take the notes, changes, and all that that you've accumulated, go through your story one more time to clean it up, and make your final copy. Be careful about major changes, because it can be difficult to keep the story consistent. Compare your final version with the publication that you planned to submit to, and decide if you need to change the market. But next, get the manuscript ready and submit.

By the way, Jack doesn't mention it, but I kind of think if you have a writing group such as WRITERS, one thing you might want to do as part of the revision process is submit it to the writing group and collect their comments. You don't have to agree with all of them, but at least it gives you another set of eyes.

And forget it and start to work on the next story.

Write!