Writing a first draft of your book is a challenge, but some people find rewriting even more daunting. They find it hard to get the distance necessary to be objective about their work. But if you do the following steps, you’ll find that it’s not as scary or difficult as it may seem.
The first step is to get into the kind of objective frame of mind that makes it as easy to evaluate your own work as it is to judge material written by other people.
Change your state
When you write, you are in a creative state. That’s different from the state you need to be in to critique your own work. In order to get into the critiquing state:
- Print out the manuscript in a different typeface or on different color paper.
- Reread your writing in a different location. If you write at your desk, move to the living room or the kitchen or to a café to reread and evaluate your work.
- Use a different posture. Sitting back in a chair feels more connected to critiquing than sitting at a table.
- Pretend that what you are critiquing is not yours, but a friend’s work that he or she has asked you to critique
Read and evaluate
Start by reading the entire manuscript. Don’t make any marks on the paper even if you spot typos or other things you want to change. Instead, try to get a feel for the whole thing and at the end jot down your thoughts. Here are some of the big points you might address (some are more relevant to fiction, some to both fiction and non-fiction):
- Do you start your book with an incident that immediately makes the reader curious about what’s going on?
- Does the story flow or did you notice points at which it was too slow, too fast, or confusing? If so, indicate where those were.
- Are there strands you started but never finished? List or describe them.
- Are there characters who seem one-dimensional? Specify which ones.
- Are the relationships interesting enough? If not, write down which ones are lacking.
- Does the ending flow logically from what has gone before—without being totally predictable? If not, jot down the problem.
It’s tempting to jump right in and indicate small changes at this stage, but if it turns out, for example, that you’re going to replace the entire opening, it’s a waste of time to correct the one that’s there now. Also, focusing on the small stuff may distract you from the big things that need to change.
Equally important, at this stage don’t change anything! Otherwise you will get back into the creative state and lose your objectivity. At this point, you’re still just writing down what needs to change, not yet how to change it.
Make the changes–in the right order
When you’ve followed those steps, you should have a list of any major changes you want to make.
First, return to your creative state and make those changes. Write the new opening, flesh out the weak points, plant the information that will make the ending make sense, etc.
Those are all the big components of the story. When those are in good shape, you can start to fix the smaller elements that make up your.
For fiction writers: improve your characters and dialogue
One important step is fine-tuning your characters by taking a closer look at their dialogue. Each character should sound unique. Some of the things that make each character sound different from the others are:
- Jargon related to their careers;
- Their vocabulary—often this is related to their level of education;
- How articulate they are;
- How they speak to people above and below them in terms of social status;
- Whether their dialogue reflects a sense of humor. And, if so, what kind? Bawdy? Witty? Sly?;
- Whether they have accents or dialects. (Warning: if a character has a strong accent or dialect don’t write all of their dialogue phonetically to reflect this, because it’s very hard to read. Only give a slight indication of it and, if necessary, refer to it in the character description the first time we meet the person.)
Show, don’t tell
To some extent this overlaps with improving dialogue, because sometimes you can create an action that eliminates the need for some dialogue.
Here are some elements to look for:
- A character’s emotional state. Rather than having Bill say he is angry, describe his body language or let his dialogue reflect (but not spell out) his mood. In non-fiction, too, such as an autobiography, let us in on what you did that reflected how you felt.
- A character’s actions. In your narration, instead of using adverbs like “cheerfully,” “forcefully,” or “eagerly,” describe actions that are inherently forceful or eager or cheerful.
- The mood of a place. If the setting is scary or depressing or old-fashioned, describe what makes it so.
The goal of showing instead of telling is that when you do it well the reader feels much more involved in your story.
Take your time
When you have done all this, put this draft aside. Leave it alone for a while and then repeat this process again. Most successful writers do at least three and sometimes many more drafts before their manuscript is ready to go out into the world.
Finally, do make it better, but don’t try to make it perfect. Rewriting is good, endless rewriting isn’t. When it’s ready, send your book out into the world for everybody to enjoy.
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