I love this! I often recommend my students create a new document and copy and paste from the rough draft when they need to completely re-organize their content, but I hadn't thought about doing it quite the way you've outlined here.
I was wondering, do you always recommend going through the story in "page order," i.e. in the order it will be in the MS? Or do you sometimes recommend approaching it a different way?
Related, how would you approach revision if you realized that a certain aspect of the novel needs to be enhanced or changed -- an aspect that runs throughout the story? For example, I realized that a piece of wisdom my main character hears at the beginning of the novel never gets developed/brought back in, at least in a significant way. I guess what I'm asking is, assuming you recommend always going through the entire manuscript from start to finish for a revision, how do you keep track of smaller things that you know you need to look for and improve? I know from teaching nonfiction that you're going to be more efficient and thorough if you look for one type of problem at a time, rather than trying to think about every possible aspect of good writing at once. Obviously you wouldn't be worrying about punctuation much at the developmental stage you're discussing in this post, but there might still be a lot of different aspects you're trying to work on. How would you recommend approaching that?
I love this! I'm well past a third draft (I've lost track, hahahaha), but I just got feedback from alpha readers and need a process to tackle revisions. I love both your idea for how to approach your "Draft 2" (which I'll call my "Shiny Draft" or something) and also having the scrap document to freely experiment in.
Oh, I LOVE this, especially 'shift your allegiance to the story', which is soooo to the point (and accidentally how I call my side project :)). It also makes me feel less extreme about always starting my second draft from scratch.
Will definitely use the scrap document idea when I rewrite Toni. Thanks for the tips!
Thanks for sharing this with me when I was in the throes of revising, it does indeed help to put the story first. It’s also a clean, helpful way for my brain to organize where text is coming from and where it’s going. Definitely recommend this process!
I love this! I often recommend my students create a new document and copy and paste from the rough draft when they need to completely re-organize their content, but I hadn't thought about doing it quite the way you've outlined here.
I was wondering, do you always recommend going through the story in "page order," i.e. in the order it will be in the MS? Or do you sometimes recommend approaching it a different way?
Related, how would you approach revision if you realized that a certain aspect of the novel needs to be enhanced or changed -- an aspect that runs throughout the story? For example, I realized that a piece of wisdom my main character hears at the beginning of the novel never gets developed/brought back in, at least in a significant way. I guess what I'm asking is, assuming you recommend always going through the entire manuscript from start to finish for a revision, how do you keep track of smaller things that you know you need to look for and improve? I know from teaching nonfiction that you're going to be more efficient and thorough if you look for one type of problem at a time, rather than trying to think about every possible aspect of good writing at once. Obviously you wouldn't be worrying about punctuation much at the developmental stage you're discussing in this post, but there might still be a lot of different aspects you're trying to work on. How would you recommend approaching that?
Thank you!
Will be in revisions this summer and always enjoy hearing about processes that work for other writers. Thanks for sharing!
Thank you for this Lidija! I need to carve out time dig into these suggestions. I got your email. Will send soon. Behind on everything! Talk soon💛
I love this! I'm well past a third draft (I've lost track, hahahaha), but I just got feedback from alpha readers and need a process to tackle revisions. I love both your idea for how to approach your "Draft 2" (which I'll call my "Shiny Draft" or something) and also having the scrap document to freely experiment in.
"shift your allegiance to the story" LOVE this as a reminder - thanks L🙌🏻❤️
Oh, I LOVE this, especially 'shift your allegiance to the story', which is soooo to the point (and accidentally how I call my side project :)). It also makes me feel less extreme about always starting my second draft from scratch.
Will definitely use the scrap document idea when I rewrite Toni. Thanks for the tips!
Thanks for sharing this with me when I was in the throes of revising, it does indeed help to put the story first. It’s also a clean, helpful way for my brain to organize where text is coming from and where it’s going. Definitely recommend this process!