Transcript: Welcome to Write Better Right Now. I’ve been talking about editing. Before you go into detail with line editing, you want to make sure that your overall plot arc is working, your character arc is working. Start big before you focus in.
The challenge is to step back from your work and see it as a whole. That can be very difficult. You've been writing this for months or years. You've put a lot of effort into it. It's really hard to step back from the manuscript and see it as it is at the big picture level. I'm sharing ways you can do that better.
Exercise: Write a synopsis of the story (or list of key events) without looking at the manuscript.
For this exercise, you start by writing a synopsis of the story. Don't let that word synopsis put you off. It doesn't have to have Roman numerals or subheads. You can write a paragraph just going through what happens in the story. You can make a list of key events, bullet points, however it works for you. The goal here is to think about the big things that happen in the story—but don't look at the manuscript while you're doing it.
You're not trying to remember every detail. You don't even necessarily have to remember the correct order of events. Just think about what is important to the story, the major events that happen, the things that you think are exciting and interesting, and get some kind of list of that.
Exercise: Go through the manuscript and write a list of key events based on the manuscript.
For step two, you make a similar list but go through the manuscript while you make it. Skim the manuscript chapter by chapter, so you can write a list of key events that are actually in the manuscript. This can be as basic and simple as you want.
For A Stone Cold Murder, I might say, Chapter 1, Petra meets Kit, finds rock used as weapon in her office. Chapter 2, Petra meets Liberty and Haven, asks about dead guy, tests rock again.
This might not make much sense if you haven't read the book. That doesn't matter, because I'm just doing this for my own use. I don't have to explain here that Petra has a psychic power, that she gets a vision when she picks up a rock. I don't have to explain who these other characters are. It's just for my own use, and I already know all that stuff.
So make your two outlines, bullet-pointed lists of events, however you want to do it. Then you can compare those two lists.
Exercise: Compare the two lists.
- What did you remember best and think was most important?
- What got left off the first list?
What did you remember best and think was most important when you were making your list by memory? Compare that to the second list and see what got left off. That might give you an indication of what's working really well, and what might not be working. Maybe you set up something that you never paid off. Maybe you started a subplot and you kind of lost track of it, so it made the second list, but you had totally forgotten about it on your first list. Maybe the things that were big and important to you only happen in the middle of the story or only toward the end. You might need to go back and revise to make sure that the story is exciting all the way through.
There's a variety of ways you can use this list; it kind of depends on what is in your story. But this can help you see what is really there versus what you had intended to put there or what you think is there. Because sometimes we don't realize that what we were trying to put into the story never quite made it onto the page.
You can also do this exercise with critique partners.
Exercise:
- Ask critique partners for a synopsis, list of events, or just what they remember and liked?
- What made their lists?
- What got left off?
The challenge can be that if you have a group that, say, critiques a chapter at a time, they may have started reading your story a year or more ago. If you ask what they remember, they may remember the things that they read most recently. That doesn't necessarily mean that the beginning of the novel was not working.
But if you have beta readers or if you do full manuscript exchanges, you can ask critique partners to do the same kind of synopsis or list of events. Or if you want to keep it simple for them, just ask what they remember most or what they liked most. That might give you a list of things that are working well in the story. You can expand on that to do more of those things. You can find the things that didn't make their list and decide whether that means there's areas that need to be trimmed or cut entirely or whether you need to make those parts stronger.
This kind of review can also let you know if your overall goal is working. So if you're writing a rom-com, but your critique partners really praised a couple of big action scenes you have, then maybe your intended genre is not quite what you're writing. Maybe you need to rebalance it, or maybe you need to rethink the kind of novel you're trying to write.
Normally for these videos, I try to keep the video plus the homework to 15 minutes or so because I know how busy and overwhelmed a lot of us are. But this week’s exercises will be a lot of work. Still, I think they will help if you're at that editing stage. Before you dive into the editing, find a way to step back and see the big picture.
And if you're not ready to edit right now, well, you can bookmark this video and save it for the future.
That's it for today! I hope you find it useful.
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