You’ve finished that manuscript and put it away. Now it’s time to revise it, but where to begin? Revising or editing a manuscript is the real work of writing, because that is where you employ your craft to create a unified work of fiction. Revising a manuscript can take two, three, or more drafts before you’re satisfied with the final product. It takes time and diligence.
Instructions
1. Reread the manuscript. Make proofreading marks along the way if you have to, but focus on the work as a whole. This is your first read after putting it away, so you should be approaching your manuscript with fresh eyes. As a whole, does it work?
2. Mark what you like or don’t like in the manuscript. These can include everything from a great sentence (or not so great sentence) to a descriptive passage to dialogue, etc. What do you think is particularly strong in the piece? What do you think is weak? If you don’t trust your own judgment here, have a friend or family member read the manuscript and get his opinion. Another way to get an objective opinion is to workshop the piece. Look up local workshops you can join if you don’t belong to one already.
3. Take a look at the bigger problems in the manuscript. These are the weakest points in the story. What doesn’t work here and why? This can be the beginning of the story, the pacing or plotting, dialogue, character development, scenes, narrative descriptions, etc. Rework whatever doesn’t click for you. Find ways to make it work. If the problem is dialogue, sharpen the dialogue and make it ring true. If it’s something larger, such as plotting or character development, you might have to revise the entire manuscript. That’s okay. If the story itself is strong, then it will survive this type of revision. But sometimes, even the story itself might not be working. In that case, you have to decide whether to chunk the entire thing or look at the story from a different angle. For instance, you might want to tell the story from an entirely different point of view. Whatever you decide, make the choices that are right for your story.
4. Once you’ve made the necessary decisions to revise your story, edit that second draft. Be cruel. There might be passages in your story that you absolutely love, but doesn’t fit in the narrative (perhaps it slows down the pacing). Slash that passage. Again, do only what is best for the story as a whole. Sometimes that means being cruel to the manuscript, but in the end what you will have is a piece of work that has a unifying effect.
5. Once you’ve done all the necessary editing choices, rewrite.
6. After you’ve finished with the second draft, reread it again. There might be other things in the manuscript that still doesn’t work or that you didn’t catch during the first rereading. That’s okay. As I stated before, you’ll rewrite this draft as many times as needed to get it right. Continue the process of rereading, editing, revising, and rewriting until your story is exactly as you need it to be.
7. Now, proofread for errors. This includes sentence structures, grammatical errors, typos, etc. Eliminate unnecessary adjectives, adverbs, or alliterations. While revising your manuscript, you might fix these problems early on in the process. But since this is the easiest part of revision, you might want to hold off on this section until last, while you focus on the more serious issues of the manuscript.
8. Reread again. Make whatever changes that still need to be made with the manuscript. Of course, nothing is ever perfect, and there will come to a point when you’ll have to put away the editing pen and let the manuscript stand. That takes a lot of restraint, but an overworked manuscript will show. Again, do what is best for the story as a whole.
