Re-drafting the novel – part 1
OK, so I’ve written a few posts now about the process of writing the novel. These will continue but, with the first draft complete, they’re all going to be retrospective; I’m now in the process of re-writing it.
Redrafting
I’d originally thought when writing the first draft that it had to be right. That the words had to be beautifully crafted, and that I could spend hours getting each sentence just right; that the re-drafting would be a case of sorting out spelling mistakes and throwing in a couple of new ideas here and there. Well, it’s not like that in the slightest. For me – and perhaps this is partly due to working on a laptop – the first draft ended up being little more than a story, not yet a novel.
It’s a bit like restoring a car, I think. You start by building a chassis, and that’s the structure for the car; you put the engine in, and that’s what makes it run; you basically get it going before you even think about making it look pretty. Writing this novel has been a lot like that. I’ve built the chassis and the engine now, and it’s time to get those bits which work into a (hopefully pretty) shape. It’s time to turn it from something which goes to something people actually want to go in.
The first step was to get the manuscript printed, which was done with the incredibly kind assistance of Oliver Stanton at Russell Associates. I’ll be honest: a book manuscript looks damn cool. I feel like a real writer when I hold it.
Next up was reading it: I’d never read through the whole thing, so in three sittings I worked my way through – with the setup you can see above. A pencil, a pad, lots of music and caffiene. This read-through was to make note of patterns, major plot holes and inconsistencies and to see that it hung together; it still wasn’t about the language used or doing any kind of serious re-write work. While I did make some notes on the manuscript, most at this stage were made on my pad, which makes it easier to cross-reference pages which might be at opposite ends of the manuscript.
And now I begin stage two: the process of actually re-writing the manuscript. Several chapters need complete re-writes, thanks to plots I introduced later on in the first draft. Others need less work, but can still be a lot nicer – while I feel that the manuscript as it stands does hang together reasonably well, it’s not the style or impact I really want to get from it. This stage is basically about taking that structure and making it entertaining, making the language sparkle and giving it some originality.
I think it’s probably going to take a long time.
0