Let the revisions begin…
And yet again, I have a lot to learn.
Going solely on past experience, I assumed one made revisions chronologically. Even though I wrote the scenes and chapters out of order, I figured that since I need to now stitch them together, I should edit them in order.
Jennie, it turns out (and I shouldn’t be surprised), has a better way.
Start with green-light revisions, she told me. They’re all the really easy fixes–grammar or spelling errors, or a change of words or adding a phrase. Edits that are quick to make. She assured me I’d fly through it and feel so accomplished–and she was right.
While I was doing my green-light edits, she said, make a list of all the yellow-light problems–edits whose fixes don’t easily come to mind. They may need 10-20 minutes of thought before you can change it. That could be altering the dialogue–making the scientist sound, well, more scientific–or addressing a problem of logic (how to completely destroy a vial of blood).
And while I’m doing my yellow-light revisions, make a list of the red-light revisions. These are the big ones. The conceptual ones. The ones that span the whole novel, threads that connect one scene to another. For example, I wrote most of the book thinking that David knew nothing about one of Lyra’s secrets. At the end, I decided he did, in fact, know about it. But that means I have to go back and change his reactions earlier–because how someone acts toward another person will change depending on what he knows.
I’m on yellow-light edits now–turns out I stumbled onto another red-light revision that I don’t yet know how to resolve. But you know what’s great about Jennie’s plan? I don’t have to solve it right now. I can put it on my to-do list and leave it for another day. Whew.
This traffic-light strategy works wonders to keep a writer from feeling overwhelmed. I like it. It’s working for me.
(Except, of course, when I finish the yellow-light edits and will then be faced with only the red light revisions… 🙂 )