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The Joy of Revision
You must be excruciatingly honest with yourself about your writing. Do not fool yourself into thinking not a single word should be altered. At the same time, try not to agonize over your choice of words as you write, or you'll never experience the sheer glee that comes when you are sitting forward and your fingers are flying, barely able to get the words down as fast as they are forming in your brain.
It is far better if you can write the first draft of a novel all the way through without stopping to edit, but if you turn out to be a "stop, reverse, go forward, jump back" writer like me, you should try to get at least a chapter written before switching to revision mode.
To me, the final revision is a joy. Once I've got something, anything, on paper, I can immediately see what's wrong with it.
First, I scan rather than read, checking what's happening on each page. I want to make sure that the beginning is not too slow, too choked with information, so I try to see where the novel actually starts and where it segues into the middle, and whether the beginning section seems to take up too many pages in proportion to the length of the book. I check to be sure the story gets underway with the first sentence.
Is the setting clear? Are the characters presented in a visible and interesting way? Is it obvious which character is doing what?
I look at the middle and ask myself, "Is anything happening?" I don't mean there has to be some kind of fast and furious action going on, unless it belongs in the story at that point. The action can simply be some important piece of dialogue or two characters meeting for a purpose important to the story. I make sure no one is sitting and musing for long periods of time.
While I'm in the middle, I check to make sure I have followed the law of cause and effect and that all characters' actions are motivated.
Is there any conflict, any suspense? Is the pace O.K.? Will the reader turn the page? Did the chapter end at an interesting point that will make the reader go on to the next chapter?
Next, I consider the ending. Does it seem satisfying, believable, unpredictable, interesting? Does every story thread reach some kind of conclusion somewhere? Not every conclusion has to be positive, but is it satisfying? Is it motivated? Is it believable?
Watch for pace in the ending: Do explanations drag on endlessly, or does the story end too quickly? It's okay, even necessary in most stories, to tie up the ends, but not too neatly, too easily, or too rapidly. Otherwise, the reader will not have time to savor the end of the story, or will wonder why it took so long to get to the end if it was going to be so easy to solve all the problems.
I tend to be haphazard about time. It's amazing how often I'll find that my heroine has fitted twenty-seven hours of action into a twenty-four-hour day and still had time left over to sleep. When I'm revising, I make sure this doesn't happen. When I come across such transitions as "It was a busy week," I make sure the calendar I've devised for the novel agrees that a week has passed. "The roses had faded." How long does it take roses to fade? Is that how much time has passed in the story?
It's important to check the characters' clothing. Sometimes I'll find a character isn't dressed appropriately, or I've said, "She smoothed the skirt of her dress," and on the previous page she was wearing pants.
A couple of days ago, I read a published book in which a character is leaning on the mantel, then crosses the room to sit opposite his wife. On the next page, he's fiddling with objects on the mantel again without having moved in the intervening time. This sort of thing can be jarring to the reader.
Years ago I worked at a movie studio. It was the job of one woman, to make sure that when filming was interrupted, then continued on the same set, everything was in the same place as before. The damask napkin that the heroine had flung to the floor in a dramatic moment could not be back on the table neatly folded when shooting resumed. If the hero was wearing a tie in the last frame, he should be wearing a tie in the next one. Such details are important to watch for in your writing.
When I get through with all this troubleshooting, and I've dealt with the necessary rewriting, I mentally pick up a magnifying glass and look at my novel word by word, re-reading from beginning to end with a very jaundiced eye, tinkering as I go.
What is the purpose of this particular reading? Still all of the above, but now I'm also making sure I've checked my facts. Am I sure the Jamaica Inn is on Bodmin Moor? Were the ruins of the castle at Tintagel made of slate? Was it definitely Rudyard Kipling who wrote about the smugglers? Did I spell all of the names right?
How does the writing sound to me? Are the rhythms right? Are too many sentences cast in the same form? Jenna answered the doorbell. She opened the door. A woman stood on the doorstep. Jenna looked at her. Ick.
How about the characters. Are they "alive?" Can I visualize them as I read? Not just at the beginning but all the way through? Will the reader care about them or are they just a bunch of character traits without real personality?
What about my dialogue? I read some of it aloud if I'm not sure it's right. Mostly, I rely on my inner ear. Do all the characters sound alike? Do they talk to each other, or do they make speeches? Does anyone go on talking too long, too didactically, too boringly? I edit the dialogue wherever possible, taking out unnecessary comments on the weather, and unnecessary greetings--such as how-d'you-dos.
Viewpoint. Is it clear whose viewpoint I'm in? Or have I bounced in and out of some minds that would be better left unexplored? Am I seeing the outside of the character when I'm supposed to be on the inside of the character. Some writers don't seem to care about this. And their editors let them get away with it. But I find it jarring to suddenly be looking at a viewpoint character from the outside.
It goes without saying, I hope, that I'm watching for grammatical or spelling errors during this reading. I'm also careful about punctuation, though editors may have different styles. I always bow to their wisdom on this.
Somewhere along the way, I check for word repetitions, to see how many times "well," "just," and "very" jumped in without my noticing. There are usually quite a few of these that need to be deleted.
Lastly, after all necessary revisions are completed, I read the whole novel again, without stopping, if that's possible. By now, I am beginning to get tired of the whole thing, so if it holds my interest, it should hold an editor's and a reader's.
Before a writer sends a book to an editor, it should be the best book he or she can produce. This is the writer's responsibility, the writer's task, the writer's joy.