I am about to start revising the current draft of CIRCUS, based on the excellent feedback from beta readers and my in-person writing group. So of course rather than actually revising, I am here talking about revising. You can call it “pre-revision preparation”, or you can just call it procrastination.
What’s already happened: I wrote the first draft, which involved several restarts (this meant tossing out about 30K total) as I searched around for the character’s voice, the right POV and tense, and the general tone I wanted. Then I did a slash-and-burn revision where I cut out several chunks (and two characters) and added in several new scenes. After that was a quick pass to polish and then it went off to readers.
Here’s what I am working with:
That’s a printed out copy of the manuscript, letters from beta readers, my own assorted notes, marked up chapters from my in-person group, and my red revision pen.
I’ve gotten back oodles of very useful feedback. Good critiquers are a treasure and if I could I would heap karma and gold and chocolate upon them. Because they gave me exactly the type of feedback that I really need right now: the large-scale stuff like weak character arcs and pacing issues and theme sharpening and logic/motivation failures. There is a time for line-editing, but right now I am still working on the bigger picture.
The key question: The number one thing I look for in reader reaction at this point is whether or not the main character(s) feel real and engaging, and have strong and distinctive voices. Because if they don’t, that’s a problem no amount of simple revision can fix (at least, not in my experience). I’ve had this happen in the past and it is really, really painful, because the only way I’ve found to fix it is to completely re-write the book from scratch. Thankfully with CIRCUS folks have been positive about the main character. Whew! I know I still have work to do, but it makes everything a million times better knowing that the characters are working.
What I am doing now: I went through all the notes from readers, and came up with a list of about six issues that several people noted in their responses. Generally, if there’s something really wrong, more than one person will identify it. Sometimes it may not be clear what exactly needs to change, only that there is a problem. Frex, almost all my readers this time had some sort of comment about the beginning of the book (the “pre-circus” section) being a weak point. So that’s first on my list to address. Here are the others, in vague terms to avoid spoilery-ness.
- Fix the pacing in the ending (apparently folks noticed how I steamrolled through the last few chapters in a mad rush to get it all out, heh).
- Reveal more of the facets of one secondary but pivotal character both for greater impact and to set up certain relationships more effectively.
- Rework some of the main character’s actions to avoid the dreaded “stupid plot” (i.e. when characters do things that are stupid to advance the plot) in the external plot
- Tweak the main character’s internal plot arc for greater impact.
- Strengthen the villain (relates somewhat to the above) and clarify his motivations (to myself, as well as the reader).
I also have a list of more “logistical” stuff: generally this is stuff where I know why something is happening but it’s not coming across on the page. These are the kind of things that are more like puzzles where I just need to put the pieces together a little differently to make them work. Generally those kind of changes are “easier” (for me at least) so I will address them after the above.
Okay. Enough talk about revising. Time to do it!
Tags: circus galacticus, revision
