OK, I’ll admit it.  When I was in school (and college and grad school) I was seriously guilty of turning in work before revising it.  Sure, I would do a quick spell-check and maybe give it a once-over for grammar, but rarely did I ever roll up my sleeves and do serious revision.

Now that I have a draft of my book done, I find myself in the middle of the revision process and I totally realize why I was resistant to revision before: it’s flippin’ scary.  This is why I was so thrilled to hear James Scott Bell speak about the revision process at the Writer’s Digest Conference.  I was particularly excited to attend his talk because I am a huge fan of his book The Art of War for Writers.  Here are some of the sparkly nuggets I took away from this session.

Principles of Revision

1)  Write hot, revise cool.  Revision allows you to add rational choices and strategy to the frantic bursts of creativity that came out in the first draft.  Take at least two weeks (maybe longer) after writing your draft to let it cool down before you revise.

2)  You need to finish first.  Nothing you write is etched in stone… you can always come back and make it better later on.  The only thing you can’t do is revise a blank page.  Finish first.

3)  Do a first read-through.  Try to recreate a reading experience so that you’re not focused on the fact that you’re reading your own book.  Make minimal notes.  Tip from Gabi:  I put my book on my Kindle and have been reading it there so that it feels more like a “real book” and not just a draft on printed computer pages.  I use the footnote function on the Kindle to make my notes, and since I’m lazy about taking notes on Kindle, it forces me to make my notes short.

4)  Summarize your changes.  Write a 2000 word summary of your draft with the new adjustments you just noted.  Tip from Gabi: You can also try extracting an outline from the first draft, as a way of getting a handle on what you have written.  Then adjust the outline according to the notes you made in your read-through and implement those changes in the draft.

Things to Think About in Revision

Character:  The characters need to jump off the page.  Here are a few exercises to help you with this:

• Try creating some “off-screen” scenes where you see what the character would do in crazy situations.  
• Do the “opposite exercise” where you have the character do the opposite of what you’d expect, then figure out why they did that.

Remember, even at the very beginning, try to give the reader an inkling that the character has the potential for change.

Opening:  As Bell put it: “Cut out the parts that people skip.”  Start the story where things get interesting.  Also, make trouble for your characters from the start.  Readers become engaged with the characters at the first sign of conflict.

Dialogue:  Compress the dialogue and extend the action.  Get rid of exposition and ramp up the conflict.  Even if characters are on the “same side” they should still have some kind of conflict between them.

Take-Home Message

Ultimately, revision is where you add the strategic element to your story.  Now that you know who the characters are and what’s going to happen, you can plant foreshadowing moments and hint at themes that will be important later on.  You can’t do all this in your first draft because during that stage of the process you don’t know your characters or the story completely.  It’s only once you know the ending and who your characters are at their core that you can manipulate the story in a strategic way.

Much as my brain understands all the amazing benefits of revision, I still find myself having trouble because I keep psyching myself out. 

Help!  Do you have any revision tips I can borrow?

1) Everyman: Instead of focusing on how “normal” or ordinary this character is, try to figure out what makes this character inspiring.
2) Hero/Heroine: Sure, this character is extraordinary… maybe even superhuman, but what makes him or her human? 
3) Dark Protagonist: This character is wounded/lost/condemned to suffer but how can he or she find hope?

We’ve all heard writing teachers tell us that our protagonist needs to change, but rarely do they ever tell us how.  Maass’ lecture taught me that character development comes down to one simple principle: whatever category your protagonist falls into, the challenge is to make the reader realize that the character could be something that’s the flip-side of who the character actually is.  In other words, the ordinary character needs to have the potential to do something extraordinary, the superhuman character must become at least a little bit human and the condemned character must discover a glimmer of hope.

But wait, it gets better.  Instead of making us think only about our characters, Maass showed us how to get to know our characters by drawing from our own experiences.  He had a whole series of questions he asked us to answer about ourselves and our experiences depending on what category our protagonist fell into.  Essentially, the question lists came down to this:

• For the Everyman think of someone who inspires you.  Try to tease apart what it is that makes that person inspiring and they give that trait to your protagonist (even if it’s just a small slice of that trait).
• For the Hero/Heroine make note of ways in which you are fallible and human.  Try to give some of that to your protagonist.
• For the Dark Protagonist consider ways you can feel compassion for that character.  How can he or she find redemption?

Sometimes it’s scary when our characters turn around and do the opposite of what we want them to do.  I know when that happens to me, it seriously makes me question my sanity.  But the truth is, when our characters misbehave or surprise us, that’s when we know that they’re becoming real.

Update: for more on Donald Maass’ session Putting Fire in Your Fiction, check out this post at All About Them Words.  In her post, Ghenet shares some tips from Maass on how you can draw on your experiences to make flat scenes come to life.

Step 1: Wake up at 3:42AM with an idea.  Decide not to write it down because your notebook is in the other room and if you go get it, you’ll be too awake to fall asleep again and then you’ll have insomnia.  Convince yourself that it’s OK to go back to sleep without writing the idea down because you’ll remember it in the morning.

Step 2: Don’t remember it in the morning.  Remember just enough to know that you lost a superbly awesome idea.  Beat your head against the wall.

Step 3: Never fear.  Said idea will come back to you at another, even more inopportune moment, like in the shower.  This time you’ll be ready with a notebook.  Write it down.

Step 4: Spend precisely 12.667 days obsessing over how awesome said idea is and how you can’t wait to write it.  (Number of days may vary depending on the awesomeness quotient of the idea.)

Step 5: Sit down in a frenzy and write exactly 613 words (give or take), exploring said idea.  Read it over.  Decide that you’re the worst writer ever and you’ll never be able to capture such an awesome idea on paper.  Beat your head against the wall.  Again.

Step 6: Read a novel or two, or twelve.  Obsess about how amazing those books are and how unbelievably sucky your writing is and how you might as well do something else with your life, like collecting rare edible fungi.

Step 7: Have a good cry.

Step 8: Read what you wrote again and find one moment, one turn of phrase that’s not completely awful.  Decide you’re not utterly hopeless (just 99% hopeless).  Try again.

Step 9: Fall in love with a character.  Start seeing the world through her eyes and realize you kind of like living in her head.  Decide you’ll stay a while.

Step 10: Stop obsessing about the idea and start obsessing about your character.  Make long character bios for her and all her family and friends (even if her family and friends have nothing to do with the story in the first place).  Write outlines, mind maps, charts, whatever it takes to keep your ideas straight.  Sleep with your notebook under your pillow.

Step 11: Practice some stealth writing.  Hide in a dark corner of a coffee shop and write.  Jot down ideas while riding the subway.  Talk to yourself.  Listen to the voices in your head.  Write down everything and don’t look back.

Step 12: Repeat Step 11 and keep moving forward until you get to the end of the story.  When you hit a wall, remind yourself why you fell in love with this character and this story in the first place.  When all else fails, ask your muse to send you strength to carry on.

Step 13: Carry on.

This post is part of the “What’s Your Process?” Blogfest, hosted by Shallee McArthur.

Today I will to admit to one of my guilty pleasures, so please don’t point and laugh at me (you can laugh next to me but not at me).  And please keep it just between you and me, ‘k?  Don’t go blabbing about it all over the internet because then I might cry and sic my pet gremlins on you.  All right, you ready?  I’m about to tell you something super personal and embarrassing.  Here it is in 3… 2… 1…

IwatchtheshowLeverageandthinkit’skindacool.

I know, *gasp* right?  I mean, it’s not high-quality television and yes, I feel like I’ve lost one or two brain cells after I watch each episode.  But it’s so deliciously entertaining, kind of like Ocean’s Eleven, only with a whole Robin Hood theme going on.

It occurred to me that Leverage is actually a really good metaphor for the writing process.  Each episode follows the leverage team as they plan and execute a “job” to steal stuff from rich people and give it back to poor people.  Each character has a special skill that allows him or her to contribute to the task at hand.  What does this have to do with writing, you ask?

Writers need leverage.  They need skills that work together in order to pull off the “job,” which in this case means writing the book.  Every member of the team needs to do his or her job so that they can achieve their desired goal.  The only difference between writing a book and pulling off an elaborate heist is that instead of wearing one hat, the writer must wear all five.  Here are the roles the writer must play in order to get the job done.

Grifter:  Sophie (far left) is the con-artist, the actress of the group.  She is able to step in and out of different roles as easily as you or I might change our shoes.  Writers must be able to do the same thing.  One minute we have to be in our protagonist’s head and understand her motivations, the next we have to empathize with our villain.  Writing convincing characters means being able to get inside their heads, feel what they would feel, think what they would think.  Then make them do what we want.

Hitter:  Eliot (second from left) is the workhorse member of the team.  Basically, if some bad guy needs to be punched out, Eliot’s the man for the job.  Again, this is an important skill for a writer to have.  Sometimes there isn’t an elegant solution to a writing problem; sometimes you just have to use brute force and beat your way through writer’s block.  Of course, we would love to be able to solve all our writerly dilemmas with a flourish of the pen, but sometimes there’s no other way around it: we just need to beat the story with a stick.

Thief:  Parker (second from right) is the acrobat, the daredevil.  She’s the character who plunges off of rooftops or crawls through air vents.  She also has an affinity for all things bright and sparkly, like diamonds.  As writers, we need to remember to take risks and have fun with what we do.  Sometimes we need to jump first and think about finding a parachute after.  And hey, if we end up with something bright and sparkly in our hands, isn’t it worth the risk?

Hacker:  Hardison (far right) is the guy who knows how to work the system.  Whether that means hacking into a complex network or breaking some crazy code or getting the team inside a locked-down building, he’s the guy who gets it done.  Similarly, writers need to know how to work the system as well.  Whether it means learning how to format your manuscript the right way, or figuring out where to send your work, it’s important to understand the network you want to break into and that means doing research and learning about the business as well as the craft.

Mastermind:  Nathan (front and center) is the coordinator, the hub, the nucleus of the team.  He makes sure everyone knows what they need to do and that they actually get the job done.  Again, it’s a mighty important skill for writers to have.  After all, you can play all the other parts beautifully, but it won’t matter if you can’t assess whether your “team” is working together well and doing it’s job.  This means stepping back from time to time and looking at the “big picture” of your writing life.  What aspects are working well?  What areas could you improve upon?

So, how’s your Leverage team looking?  Which areas do you have covered and which skills do you still need to polish?  More importantly, what are you going to do about it?