Revisions, Bloody Revisions

I had dinner with a writer friend of mine the other night. Mary Daheim is one of the few mystery writers I know who makes a living at writing. She’s had well over fifty books published, all decent sellers. When I asked her how many drafts she writes before she turns her work in to her publisher, she looked at me oddly and said, “One. My first draft is the final draft.”

I should be so lucky. By the time I finish a book, I’ve read, revised and changed it about thirty times. If I were to tell you each step in my revision process, I’d simultaneously bore and horrify you. And it probably doesn’t matter anyway. No matter what anyone tells you, there is no perfect word count an author should type each day, no perfect revision process, no perfect writing software. There’s no perfect anything when it comes to writing. Only what works for you. The process I outline below isn’t a recommendation. It’s a single example in an infinite variety of right answers.  

Most of the revisions I list below actually represent three complete reviews of a manuscript. I can’t type worth beans and I go cross-eyed if I try to proof on screen, so my process involves handwriting, speech recognition software, typing, printing, and note-taking. Suffice it to say that we go through a lot of paper in my house! Whether you write one draft or a thousand, I hope the steps below provide a tool or idea that is useful for you.

Tracy’s Fourteen Steps to Writing (Revising) a Novel:

1.    Write the First Draft.  I’m always tempted to genuflect in awe when I hear about authors who write 3000 to 4000 words per day or (God forbid) are brave enough to use software like Write or Die.  Rest assured, I’m not one of them.  When I write a first draft, I target 5000 words a week.  That may seem low, but even though I call this my first draft, it already incorporates multiple revisions.  I handwrite most of my first draft scenes, then read them into Microsoft Word using Dragon speech recognition software, which is an adventure all by itself!  I do at least three rounds of revisions on each scene before I move on to the next.  After a couple of months, I have what I call my first draft, which is really the equivalent of three or four drafts for most people. I’ve done this step in as little as three weeks and as long as four months.

Then the fun begins. 

2.   Percolate.  I never seem to leave enough time for this, but I did it with my first book and I highly recommend it.  Take a few weeks away from your baby and let it mature in your mind like a fine red wine.  Jot down ideas about scenes, characters, plot lines, and settings. You’ll be fresher and more willing to use that red pen when you come back. 

3.   Revise and Create an Outline.  I’m a devoted pantser (meaning I write by the seat of my pants).  I never know where the story’s going to take me ahead of time, so how could I outline? That said, I can’t weave clues and red herrings into the text, have consistent character descriptions, or develop a coherent and plausible timeline when the story is revealing itself to me as I type. And my characters have an annoying habit of changing as I write them.  They refuse to follow my instructions.  They change hair color, weight, and romantic relationships.  In my first book (Murder Strikes a Pose), my chosen murderer flat out refused to commit the crime.  So as I revise the first draft, I outline using a Word template I’ve created that uses the columns in the table below.

       Here, of course, I discover inconsistencies, plot holes, time line issues, etc.  I don’t fix them at this stage.  I simply indicate them in the outline document to fix later.  In this stage I also do significant rewriting of the first draft.  (And believe me, it needs it!) This step usually incorporates what most people would call an additional three to four revisions. Writing and outlining this draft usually takes two to three months.

4.   Fix Issues Identified In Outline.  Now I go back and fix all of the issues I discovered above, writing new paragraphs and scenes as I go.  Sometimes I review and re-write the entire document, sometimes I just fix the areas that need fixing. It all depends on how happy (or horrified) I am with the draft I created in Step 3.

5.   Look at the Sentences.  Once the plot is down and the outline errors are fixed, I dive in with my thesaurus, grammar books, and texts on body language to tackle the novel sentence by sentence. I read through the entire book one to three more times.  I know I’m done with this step when I’m so sick of the novel that I’ll vomit if I read it one more time.

6.   Break Out the editing software. I’m sure there are a gazillion pieces of editing software out there, but I use SmartEdit by Bad Wolf Software. It compiles dialogue tags, adverbs, overly used words and phrases, profanities, and obvious errors. (As well as a lot more!)  I do multiple passes with the software, making changes that hopefully make my writing stronger.  This is my least favorite step, but also one of the most useful in honing my craft.

7.   Read and Revise Manuscript for Voice. Sometimes the things I fix in Step 6 break my voice or introduce their own annoying quirks. In this frustrating step, I often find myself changing back some of the revisions I made in Step 6. Such is life.

8.   Get Feedback from Beta Readers.  I don’t use beta readers nearly as much as other writers I know.  I do reach a point, however, at which I can’t make the work any better without feedback.  I send the manuscript to my wonderful freelance editor Marta Tanrikulu and my agent Margaret Bail.  Marta typically gives me seven to ten pages of written feedback.  Margaret gives less, but she’s brutally honest, which is a wonderful thing.  Whoever you choose as your Beta readers, make sure they don’t love you.  That way you’ll get the hard-to-hear honesty you need to make your work stronger. I get all warm and fuzzy when my mom tells me “It was a nice story, dear,” but that kind of feedback isn’t particularly helpful.

9.   Incorporate Feedback.   I don’t take all feedback offered to me, and neither should you. Not even the best readers and editors can understand the goals, themes, and desired idiosyncrasies of your work the way you do.  I look carefully for areas of agreement between Margaret and Marta, and I always change those. As for the rest, it depends. I ask questions, push back, and follow my gut. I mark on my outline what changes I want to incorporate and where I think I can incorporate them.  Then I write the changes and insert them in yellow in the manuscript. I revise the yellow-marked items at least two or three times before moving to Step 10.

10. Read the Complete Work, Noting and Fixing Inconsistencies. At this point, I’m looking for the things I have “broken” by incorporating feedback, and there are usually several. I also take a final pass through for voice, humor, word choice and “show don’t tell.”

11. Proofread!  By this point, I have the manuscript memorized, so I send it to a friend who proofs it for me. When she sends it back, I look at her recommended changes, incorporate the ones I agree with, and proof it a final time.

12. Send to Your Editor/Agent. After Steps 1 through 11, I’m finally ready to send the work off to Terri Bischoff, my editor at Midnight Ink. Those of you who don’t have a publisher will send them to your agent or start shopping for an agent at this point. (By the way, the AgentQuest Guppy subgroup is awesome for advice on queries!) 

About five minutes after I hit “send,” I realize all of the things I’d like to change, and I e-mail Terri, begging her to let me fix them.  She refuses.  I sit and bite my fingernails, waiting for her revision requests.  She asked for a few in Murder Strikes a Pose, but A Killer Retreat and Karma’s a Killer were accepted as submitted.

After Terri accepts the work, she gives me the green light to make those changes I’ve been yammering to her about. That adds another draft or two.

13. Let the Production Cycle Begin!  Believe it or not, after this, two more editors look at the book before it hits your local bookseller.  The production editor and a proofreader at Midnight Ink both get to weigh in. I usually end up doing at least three drafts at this stage as well, but your process will vary depending on your publisher, so I won’t bore you with the details. 

14.   Celebrate!  Your Book is On the Shelves!  You’d think that by this point, my writing would be perfect.  And, in all honesty, it’s as perfect as it’s ever going to be. Still, readers find errors and report them to me—which pretty much proves that I need to do even more drafts!

That’s the writing process that works for me.  As they say in diet commercials everywhere, individual results may vary. Perhaps someday I’ll be a proficient enough writer to finish a book in a single draft like my friend Mary, but I’m not counting on it.

What’s your writing process?

Tracy Weber


Preorder my newest mystery, KARMA'S A KILLER, now at Amazon Barnes and Noble.

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Check out Tracy Weber’s author page for information about the Downward Dog Mysteries series.  A KILLER RETREAT and MURDER STRIKES A POSE are available at book sellers everywhere