Tips on Revising Your Manuscript

Thursday, January 28th, 2010 at 4:15 pm

Revisions (or Rewriting)

After you have escaped from your draft and have distanced yourself as the writer, you will explore ways to troubleshoot your own and others’ writings for unfocused, incoherent drafts. You will also revise sentences for incorrect structure, faulty punctuation, and inappropriate voice. (For instance, in one manuscript the writing class critiqued, someone noticed what is called “language dissonance.”) A lawyer should not speak in the voice of a con-man or a street person.
When rewriting, finish the first draft. Put aside for one week up to a month. Then do or ask yourself the following.

1. Read your entire book out loud.
2. Look for basic grammar and punctuation skills and paragraph development.
3. Vary the length of your sentences and your paragraphs. Cut unnecessary adjectives and adverbs.
4. Listen for the rhythm, variance and music of the language.
5. Have I started my scenes near the action? Are you interested in what happens next?
6. Does the information surprise you?
7. Does each scene move the story forward? Is it essential to what the story is
about?
8. Have I made use of sensory detail, including sensory memory?
9. Does my dialogue sound stilted?
10. Have I made use of oblique dialogue, which is how many people speak?
11. Does my opening line draw the reader in?
12. Do I end my chapters on a cliffhanger so that the reader will want to know what happens next?
13. Do I use show vs. tell? Have I properly dramatized my scenes?
14. Have I created reversals in each scene or major group of scenes?
15. Do I predict the action before it happens and give away the story?
16. Have I cut my manuscript to a marketable length of 100,000 words?
17. Have I made use of rhythm and poetry in my prose or have I used clichés?
18. Have I made use of body language and gestures, which further characterize
the people in the scene?
19. In sex scenes, do I prolong the actual consummation of the act, thereby
intensifying the sexual tension?
20. Look for language dissonance, which doesn’t match the characters.
21. Look for chronological dissonance, which doesn’t fit the time sequence of the story.
22. Look for the secret ingredient—candor. Be authentic and keep it real.
23. Look for your passion, your truths in your writing. Do not use purple prose.
Final steps. Make use of peer review through a writing class or writer’s group.
Have your work story edited, then copy edited to tighten up the language and the grammar.