The Crow Murders — Revision Blues
November 5, 2009
Sang the revision blues today while skipping through the pages of my manuscript for The Crow Murders. This is the novel I offered as my Ph.D. thesis at the University of Calgary. The manuscript serves as a defensible thesis but is not a publishable novel. A lot of work still needs to be done, more work than I think friends who have read the ms realize, although they’ve given me some excellent suggestions towards a rewrite.
I’ve been thinking about what is wrong with this book while working on other things, and today I sat down to hammer out a brief plot outline as a guideline for revisions. The book has a complicated structure which I think is burying the basic plot. Not wanting to lose this overall structure, I decided to isolate the plot itself. So I wrote a brief plot outline/synopsis. Then I went through it and started removing, adding, and shifting things around. Now I feel a lot better, with a map to consult while I start a new draft.
I always recommend to writers that they proceed with revisions in a precise manner:
1. Analyze macro-structure (overall structure of work)
2. Analyze micro-structure (internal structure of chapters and/or paragraphs)
3. Correct errors in style
4. Correct mechanical errors
(If you’ve taken one of my writing classes, you’ll say “Wait! 3 & 4 are mixed up!” That’s because I suggest that newer writers correct mechanical errors, then errors in style, then correct mechanical errors again. They need the extra practice with those mechanical errors of grammar, spelling, etc.)
I suggest this for two basic reasons:
(1) It forces you to take an objective approach to your work. By analyzing the structure first, before you get hung up on the actual words and phrases, you can remove yourself from the language you love and think deeply and more objectively about what you actually wrote in a larger sense than a writer, who trains herself or himself to think at the micro-level, is used to thinking.
(2) It saves time and eliminates redundancy. In the past, I’ve spent days and days revising sentences and paragraphs that I later decided to delete entirely. Pages and pages of writing have gone into the trash bin, which is fine, but it’s so painful to cut something you spent time editing. I’ve found that if I just divorce myself from the text and make decisions on what to cut based solely on its position in the larger structure of the story or poem, and not based on whether or not it is well-written, I save myself a lot of grief and time. I’m also more willing to recognize cuts, rather than try to work around sentences and leave them in because I spent so much time on the lines and they sparkle.
If you’ve got any editing tips, let me know — I am in the thick of this morass of a novel, and need all the help I can get.
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2 Responses to “The Crow Murders — Revision Blues”
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If I read the Crow Murders this coming week, will it be too late to be of any use in this wave of revisions? I have really been looking forward to reading it. It seems like lately the only reading I do is right before I go to sleep…not sure where the time has been going.
So far I haven’t written word one in the new revised file. Another thing I do for a major new draft is retype the entire manuscript, even pages I plan to leave unchanged. I find this leads me to make larger revisions rather than just playing with the type already there. Anytime you’re able to give me some feedback is useful, as I say there are more revisions ahead than I initially expected. So yes, I’d love to hear your suggestions, whenever you have time to make them. You should be aware that I am making a few major changes not reflected in that manuscript, such as making Natalie King the “editor” and not Alison Toews.