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Editing Your Novel: High Level Story Read Through

August 1, 2010 by Joanna Penn 23 Comments

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OLD POST ALERT! This is an older post and although you might find some useful tips, any technical or publishing information is likely to be out of date. Please click on Start Here on the menu bar above to find links to my most useful articles, videos and podcast. Thanks and happy writing! – Joanna Penn

Finishing the first draft of my novel just made me realize how much more work I have to do in order to make it into something I can give to an editor and first readers.

In the video below, I explain how I have started the editing process with a high level review of the whole novel from a plot/character and world perspective.

Notes from the video in case you don't want to listen:

I am using the process suggested by Holly Lisle's “How to revise a novel” course which is excellent.

Holly warns you not to line edit at this point but to identify what you wanted to write in the first place, and what were the ideas that made you passionate enough to make it through first draft. Basically, consider the novel you wanted to write. I wanted to write a fast-paced thriller based on a biblical story set in the present day, with a global search, high stakes and high body count. I don't want to give too much away about the plot but I am pretty happy that the book overall does hit the mark I set for it. But I did find over 110 big areas of rewrite in order to make the plot, the characters and the world evoked more effective and more like I wanted the story to be.

Notes from first story edit

Here are some of the main areas to improve on:

  • Weaving back story in to make the characters more believable and make the reader care. I had created back story but not incorporated it well enough so in reading it, I realised that I hadn't actually told the reader about why this was important.
  • Consistency of language e.g. I use the word pendant and stone interchangeably but it needs to be clearer. Also consistency of timeline.
  • Points of view. I am using multiple points of view but sometimes I have merged them in the same paragraph which is a little confusing.
  • Scenes and fast-paced plot. I have gone back through the manuscript and redone all the chapters into scenes which sometimes have several to a chapter. Fast pace also means short chapters so I have gone for scenes in order to rewrite coherently and then I will put back into chapters later.
  • Locations. The book is set across multiple locations including Oxford, England; Santiago de Compostela, Spain; Jerusalem, Israel; Tucson, Arizona, USA; Tabriz, Iran and some other very cool places. I have done some good descriptions interspersed with action and some very bad ones! The contrast makes this very clear so I definitely have rewrites for those areas.

That's just the high level areas! I am basically going to do the rewrites at this level first and then tackle the more detailed rewriting once the coherent story hangs together in the way I want.

I can see how outlining is critical for professional authors who write a number of books per year. In re-outlining my scenes, I know I could have written faster with the outline I have now.

Do you have any lessons learned or tips from editing?

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Filed Under: Writing Tagged With: editing

Comments

  1. Chris Kelly says

    August 1, 2010 at 10:30 am

    Reading it aloud always works well for me.

    Reply
    • Joanna Penn says

      August 4, 2010 at 4:29 pm

      Yes, I’ll definitely be reading it aloud after the next full edit. Thanks.

      Reply
  2. Dee White says

    August 1, 2010 at 7:14 pm

    Great post,

    Lots of useful information.

    Dee

    Reply
    • Joanna Penn says

      August 4, 2010 at 4:30 pm

      Thanks Dee, and great to meet you at Problogger event!

      Reply
  3. Libi Astaire says

    August 3, 2010 at 3:09 am

    Great post! One technique I use at the high-level edit stage is to write the blurb that will go on the back of the book, and then reread the novel to see if the book I’ve written actually matches the blurb. Since back-of-the-book copy has to be concise, struggling to write it – and it can take several drafts – helps me to pinpoint what the book is about, who are the main characters, and what I would like the readers to take away from the story. Of course, the publishing house’s marketing staff will eventually write their own copy, but in the meantime I’ve fixed most of the book’s problems before I’ve sent it to the editor.

    Reply
    • Joanna Penn says

      August 4, 2010 at 4:30 pm

      ooh, that’s a great idea Libi! I have started several times to write it but it always sounds corny! I suppose all the blurbs sound like marketing though 🙂 Has to be catchy. But great suggestion – thanks!

      Reply
  4. Dee White says

    August 4, 2010 at 6:09 pm

    Great to meet you too, Joanna.

    That’s a great idea, Libi. I know other people who do something a bit similar but instead of writing a blurb, they write an elevator pitch – a summary of the book that they could pitch to a publisher in an elevator – not that I’d want to do that:-)

    Dee

    Reply
  5. M. Louisa Locke says

    August 5, 2010 at 7:07 pm

    I really found dividing each chapter into scenes helped as well as I did my major rewrite. I needed to cut my draft substantially and pick of the pace, so I also divided the whole book into 4 main acts, then listed each chapter-with total number of pages, and then a sentence description of each scene with number of pages. This made it really obvious which chapters were too long-and made it easier to see where I needed to cut (or sometimes just carve out a couple of scenes to make a new chapter.)

    I then carefully looked at the end of each chapter to make sure I ended with a hook that would keep the reader going. I don’t know how many times I found the perfect climax-but it was about two paragraphs before the end of the chapter. All I had to do was jettison those last, anti-climatic paragraphs, and there was my suspenseful ending.

    Reply
  6. ChrisS says

    January 18, 2012 at 3:37 pm

    I am just about done with the first draft of my first major novel (100,000+ words). I have two smaller novels I have done (20-40,000) and editing at this level is a WHOLE new beast. Your ideas above really helped Joanna – thank you. It’s easy to get caught into catching every comma and dot, but really at this point it’s about making sure the story is flowing and the characters are progressing like they should be.

    One thing I would add, for this novel I started with an outline…the first time I have ever done that. It took me roughly a year to get it all together – boy what a difference. For the first 2-3 months of writing I separated it by “chapters”. But as I was writing, I realized that “chapters” really is an end product of the story, not something to come up with at the beginning. What I really needed to be doing was moving my story along by “scenes”. So I changed my way of thinking and my outline was based on “scenes”, not “chapters”, from the start and it made a huge difference. I didn’t feel as constrained and the story flowed more freely. I’m a true believer…write scenes, not chapters!

    Reply
    • Joanna Penn says

      January 19, 2012 at 1:55 am

      Thanks Chris – I totally agree with you – writing in scenes completely changed my writing life. It was like a penny dropped and I understood how to structure everything. I also like ebooks because chapters aren’t so important so I write in parts and scenes which makes more sense to my time-based thrillers.

      Reply
  7. Jordan Boesel says

    July 8, 2012 at 12:24 am

    This actually helped me so much, along with Holly Lisle’s stuff. I’m not a professional, actually just starting out as a student in Creative Writing, but this really helped me with be less… intimidated (for lack of a real world concerning my fear of this) and frustrated with my writing while I edit it. Thank you so much for this blog and the video. It really helped me look at my work as less of a bad thing and more of piece in progress!

    Reply
    • Joanna Penn says

      July 8, 2012 at 4:08 am

      Hi Jordan, I’m so glad it helped. Editing while you write is a definite no-no 🙂 I like WriteOrDie for forcing the creative process with no censor – very useful. http://writeordie.com/

      Reply
  8. Rinelle Grey says

    October 2, 2012 at 10:16 pm

    I’m doing a major edit at the moment as well. Although I think I’ll end up doing a few more passes than Holly Lisle’s methods! I’m doing a bit of a step by step series on my blog as I work through the edit at the moment, starting at the top, and working my way down.

    Reply
  9. Bob Reding says

    May 20, 2014 at 6:22 pm

    I am concluding a fiction novel , to me it will read best around 40, 000 words. I have read many books that contained 70,000 that should have been abridged to half of that. In my opinion stretching my novel to 50,000 can be be done, bu will detract from the quality of the read proportionately. Appreciate comments and advice from anyone on this subject.

    Bob R.

    Reply
  10. Dr. Everett R. Buckler says

    October 24, 2015 at 4:52 pm

    I also need vetting for inadvertant plagerism.

    Reply
  11. Carole says

    June 15, 2016 at 1:24 am

    I’m using folders in Scrivener for each chapter and when there’s a new scene, I just put *** then carry on till the next scene. I started using a file for each chapter then someone told me I should use a folder – confusing! Not sure how this is going to look when it’s published. Also, how do you transfer the book into word from Scrivener for the first edit ?

    Thanks
    Carole

    Reply
    • Carole says

      June 18, 2016 at 3:25 am

      It’s ok 🙂 it’s easy to transfer to word and the other is a matter of choice!

      Reply

Trackbacks

  1. Blog writing heroes « Transcending says:
    January 27, 2011 at 4:18 am

    […] On her blog, she shares the experience of writing this novel with her readers in posts such as ‘Editing your Novel: High level Story Read Through’ and ’7 reasons why you should read your book out loud’. I look forward to reading […]

    Reply
  2. 11 Resources to Make Editing Your Novel Easier « The Road to Writing says:
    May 28, 2011 at 8:20 am

    […] Editing Your Novel: High Level Story Read Through by Joanna Penn – In this video, with transcript, Joanna explains some of the process she went through editing her first draft of Pentecost from weaving in back story to checking for consistency. […]

    Reply
  3. To Rewrite, or not to Rewrite, That is the Question « Frankie's Soapbox says:
    June 16, 2011 at 4:03 pm

    […] done, however, let your editor out of the box. (Here’s a good resource for self-editing.) As Joanna Pen did with her draft of Pentecost, you have to ask yourself if what’s on the page matches what you set out to create. Her […]

    Reply
  4. Writing is Re-Writing | emgarber says:
    October 28, 2012 at 3:14 pm

    […] you want some more specific advice about editing, I’ve found a nice, succinct post by Joanna Penn, whose blog often reminds me that I’m part of a great big community of people who sit, alone, in […]

    Reply
  5. Novel Editing – Writers’ Resources | Nice Cuppa Tae says:
    May 13, 2013 at 9:37 am

    […] Editing Your Novel – High Level Story Read-Through […]

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  6. Weeding the Word Garden - Robin Lythgoe says:
    September 25, 2015 at 7:34 pm

    […] Editing Your Novel: High Level Story Read Through by Joanna Penn at The Creative Penn.com […]

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