Revising a Novel

You now have a completed first draft sitting on your desk. The process of revising a novel, or editing 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:

• Editing the manuscript for content - that is, improving what you have said
• Editing the manuscript for style - or working on how you have said it.

Let's look at them one at a time...

Revising a Novel for Content

Just as there is no point in planting flowers in a garden before you have finished the landscaping, so there is no point in revising a novel for its language until you have perfected the plot, the characterization, and so on.

More specifically, you need to look at six areas when editing a novel for content:

1. Viewpoint

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 drafting process.

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 when revising your novel if you have made it crystal clear at the start of the second chapter that a shift has taken place. (Readers don't want to get a paragraph or two into the new chapter before they realize that a shift of viewpoint has occurred.)

If you have opted for something really complicated, like using the Omniscient Point of View, you will need to check your manuscript much more thoroughly for any viewpoint inconsistencies when editing. (If you don't understand all of that, don't worry - the section on Understanding Point of View in Literature has all the details.)

2. Plots

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 plots. 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.