So you now have a completed first draft sitting on your desk. The process of revising a novel is all about taking the manuscript and turning it from something you are embarrassed to read to something publishers will love.
Revising a novel can be divided into two separate tasks...
If you did a lot of planning before you wrote the first draft, editing your novel for its content will be something of a formality. Aside from making a few tweaks here and there, there should be little to do.
If you plunged right into the first draft with the minimum of planning, or no planning at all, there will be a huge amount to do here.
The temptation is to immediately start tinkering with the language - with the words themselves. You mustn't do this.
Just as there is no point in planting flowers in a garden before you have finished the hard landscaping, so there is no point in editing a novel for its language until you have perfected the plot, the characterization, and so on.
More specifically, you need to look at five areas when revising a novel for content.
In most cases, this shouldn't be a problem. If you have chosen a simple viewpoint, like first person point of view, or third person point of view told from just one character's viewpoint, there is little that could have gone wrong during the process of writing the first draft.
If you opted for something more complicated, like writing a multiple viewpoint novel (with different chapters, or even different scenes within chapters, being seen through the eyes of different characters), you need to check the transitions.
So if Chapter One was told from John's point of view and Chapter Two from Mary's, ask yourself if you have made it crystal clear at the start of the second chapter that a shift has taken place.
Isak Dinsen, when asked if she re-wrote much: "Oh, I do, I do. It's hellish. Over and over again. Then when I think I'm finished, and Clara copies them out to send to the publishers, I look over them, and have a fit, and re-write again."
"I'm not a very good writer, but I'm an excellent re-writer."
- James Michener
The simplest way of revising a novel for content is to check one small area at a time - and this is particularly so when it comes to the novel's plot. I don't mean simply separating plots from everything else, but separating your main plot from each of the subplots and looking at them one at a time, almost like mini-novels.
The thing about plots is that they have a habit of going off in their own direction during the drafting stage.
You might have planned for X, Y and Z to happen, but during the writing of Event X you might have altered the outcome in a small or large way, and this will obviously have a knock-on effect for Events Y and Z.
So when revising the plot, you need to keep an eye open for any inconsistencies in the chain of events that will now need fixing.
For example, if you planned for Character A to shoot Character B but in the writing he actually stabbed Character B instead, you need to look out for any subsequent references to the murder and make sure that a knife is mentioned and not a gun.
It is easier than you might imagine to overlook these things during the heat of creativity - the process of revising a novel is the time to put them right.
Just as events have a habit of going off in different directions during the writing of a novel, so too do characters (it is what writers mean when they say their characters take on a life of their own).
A fictional character you planned as being meek and mild, for example, might have turned out to be far stronger than you first thought.
So when editing your manuscript for content, you need to check that character's appearances and ensure that they are strong throughout, not meek and mild in the first couple of chapters then suddenly becoming strong for no apparent reason.
Yes, I know that characters change throughout the course of a novel, but the changes I am talking about here are to do with inconsistent characterization, not natural changes brought about by the effects of the novel's events on the characters.
Dealing with setting in novel writing is very similar to how you deal with characters. You need to flesh out your setting on paper before you write a word of your novel - just as you do with characters.
And just as you need to check each character's every appearance during revision, to see how they come across to the readers, so you must check how your setting comes across to the readers, too.
Pay particular attention to the first time that the setting is mentioned (not just the overall setting, but the individual locales within it)...
Easy, this one. I have mentioned elsewhere on this site that the best way to handle theme and symbolism is to pretty much forget about them and let the magic happen all by itself.
What you should find, after you have written a first draft, is that your novel's "meaning" will have worked its way into the story and be present without being particularly visible.
Occasionally, though, this undercurrent of meaning will work its way to the novel's surface. Where this happens, you will want to check these lines closely, ensuring that they aren't too heavy-handed and "preachy", and that they achieve the precise shade of meaning you were after.
But in general, the best advice is to leave theme and symbolism well alone once the novel is drafted and let it "say" whatever it says.
For a far more comprehensive look at revising a novel for content - including advice on how to edit your novel as a whole for what you have said - you can download my Ultimate Novel Writing Guide. (Click Here For Details.)
This simply means working on the words until they are as perfect as you can make them. It is one of the most enjoyable and rewarding aspects of the entire novel writing process.
Revising a novel for its language is one of the easiest parts, too.
After all the hard work you have done - the endless planning, the writing of the first draft, editing that draft for content - it is actually a great relief to be able to sit down with a great stack of printed pages and simply play around with the language until it is silky smooth.
But just because "getting the words right" (as Hemingway called it) is easy and enjoyable, that doesn't mean it isn't important. It is vital. The best tip I can give you is this...
Don't submit your novel for publication until the words are as perfect as you can make them.
Within reason, that is.
The fiction writer clearly cannot devote the same level of care and attention to a 90,000 word novel that a poet would devote to a sonnet. Life's just too short for that.
But you certainly shouldn't send your novel out into the world until, red pen in hand, you can read it through at your normal reading pace and find nothing to correct.
It is the final revision of the manuscript - the one where you do nothing more than strike out a word here and add a comma there - that can make the difference between rejection and acceptance.
How many times should you revise your novel? This, of course, is one of those "piece of string" kind of questions. You need to revise the story as many times as it takes...
If you have the ability to write a paragraph of prose and for that paragraph to be perfect in every way - not a word you would change, not a comma out of place - you are either a genius or a fool. If you are anything like 99.9% of writers, your first draft won't look terribly pretty.
Revising a novel for style is about working on the language until it flows as effortlessly as good conversation - and that's not as easy as it sounds.
Are there any rules for "getting the words right"?
Sure there are. You will find them all in these sections...
But perhaps the most important "rule" of all is this: trust your ear...