Revising a Story · 11:23pm Sep 13th, 2017
With the hurricane madness over, it's time to get back onto Displaced into Nothing. To get myself back into the story and remember what's been said already, I've decided to do that revision I was talking about in one quick binge. To prepare for that, I've written another blog post of advice to gather my thoughts on what I'm doing...
Raccoon's tips for Revision
Before I say anything else, I will state: you should ALWAYS read over EVERYTHING you write before you send it, even quick emails, just to know that you don't have gaping holes and haven't missed anything, even if you have a proofreader. (I personally refuse to make any actual edits to other's final documents when I proof, just because I know the author should be looking over what I'm changing, and most of what I do is give comments) These are the steps I think will be helpful with Into Nothing, but in the end, just reading through your story once before you send it off can make a HUGE difference in quality.
Step 1 - Prepare
Jumping into a revision right after writing is a quick way to get burned out or miss things. You want to look at it with fresh eyes, when what you were thinking isn't fresh in your mind, just like your reader, and you don't want to mix up whether or not a detail that you remember was clearly stated before it comes into play. Instead of going straight back to the beginning and reading it again, start your revision by taking some time to prepare. I like to think the following are good ideas...
Look for Feedback
Find some people who are fans of the kind of thing you're writing. People who know the tropes, and are good at things like spelling, grammar, logic, and structure, who can give you some real feedback on what you might be messing up. Have them read what you wrote and give detailed feedback, preferably in a Google Doc where they can comment directly on it, and preferably not just looking for spelling errors but actually telling you what they dislike and what they like about the concepts and the prose the story moves along. You don't have to take all of it to heart, but you should be aware of what other people think about your story by the time you get to the revision process.
Take note of your doubts
You're your own worst critic. When you write, you probably had sections where you thought things were weak (Prologue and Chapter 1) or you weren't feeling inspired when you wrote them (Chapter 4), or maybe you were aware of weaknesses in your writing over the whole course of it. (I ramble) Now is a good time to lay out those concerns and to watch for them, because you can improve on them, even if it's just glossing them over to make them less jarring for the reader.
Brush up on your problems
Are you having trouble with grammar or punctuation? Go look up the rules that you've been stumbling on, read up on them, see if you can get them down to a set of quick rules for you to apply to know if something's wrong, maybe take a few notes even. This way, when you're re-reading, these things will pop out to you.
Read some Advice
There's a ton of advice out there on how to revise a written work, quite a bit of which is better than this blog post I'm throwing together. Go read that, get some ideas as to how you want to go about it.
Step 2 - The Revision Process
The basic revision process is pretty simple: you read slowly and carefully from beginning to end, making changes as you go, rereading the sections with those changes to make sure they don't mess it up, and continue on until your whole work looks polished and you've caught most of the obvious problems with it. Here's some advice for that.
Set the Mood
Before you start reading, sit down, clear your mind, maybe put on some thematic music, and try to focus on the mood and overall themes of your story. Think about how you need to sound in your writing in order to bring that across. As a general rule, tone should be consistent and should be appropriate to the content. When you start, you want to have your full focus on the story, and not be distracted by other things on your mind or outside noises. This is also a good time to read through general feedback.
Change the font
I've seen a few advice blogs say this, and I realize I do it too on some level: when I proofread, I always make the font bigger. (14 to 16 pt Arial) This makes it easier to look at for long periods, and can make things look different on the page to make new problems with flow pop out. Others have suggested changing the font itself to Courier or Times, both of which are probably good ideas. (I prefer my non-serif fonts, so I'm going with Courier)
Read SLOWLY
You want to get every part and be able to consider it as it comes. Don't try to skim here. Remember, this is your chance to see what your reader will see as they will see it. You want to catch anything you can before sending it out.
Read it Aloud
If you're having trouble reading slowly, or you have a section you're unsure about, reading it aloud is a great way to make problems pop out for you. I don't usually do this for an entire document, as I prefer not to be heard when revising, but I've found it very useful for trying out the sound of small sections.
Have it read TO you
Even better, you can have your computer or a friend read it back TO you. I often do this on the second or third pass, or with something that has other people working on it which I have to look over many times before my final approval is going to be given, and I find that either it moves too fast to be thorough or I zone out when I'm doing it, but it makes a great quick test for general readability.
Step 3 - Get it out
Once again, you're going to be your own worst critic. There will always be something that you can fix, a better way to say things, a missed opportunity, or unnecessary information. You could keep revising a work ten times and probably still find ways to improve it, but eventually, you're going to have to do something else. Eventually, you have to release it.
Fanfiction for an ongoing show with lots of character progression is especially problematic: the longer you wait to drop something, the less up to date the worldbuilding you're doing is. There are great fanfictions, like Friendship is Weird and Keepers of Discord, which no longer fit into current cannon because of some major show event. While this isn't a deal breaker with most readers, it's still better to get it over with before the building Twilight lives in is blown up again, or another major villain is proven to be completely reformed, making their attack or betrayal not make sense. (I'm looking at you, Five Score)
Anyway, those are my thoughts on Proofreading at the moment. Once again, I don't think all of these are necessary, they're just techniques. What's really important is that you go back and read whatever you wrote from beginning to end before you submit it, just so you can make those corrections.
And now, I'm gonna go take a walk to set the mood...
Current Music: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Qq8QiAjUd5c
We miss you Mentar! :<
This is good advice to go by, both for me and my editor.
Although, I have to ask: How do you force yourself to write, when feeling completely uninspired by the chapters you are currently stuck with?
How to plan out the progression, when all you want to write is two or three chapters ahead?
Welp, will use Dark Souls OST to set my mood!
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Oh wow, I have the notes for the writer's block advice post in Google Docs from like, right before the hurricane. I'm also thinking of making one of the later ones advice for editors.
Major points in that post off the top of my head:
Hope that helps for now.
4667943
Thanks for the reply, and yup - I am suffering through the same bloody block that you suffered, when you wrote about it in here: https://www.fimfiction.net/blog/755524/the-writers-block-they-dont-tell-you-about
And yeah, I do happen to have some guidelines - perhaps I'll do like you say and write out of order while I recover my mind from the flashback/exposition chapters I'm currently stuck with.
Step 2 - The Revision Process, Set the Mood, Read it Slowly and Read it Aloud
I do that constantly. Put up general outlining and rough drafts in front of those, that's basically my pipeline.
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I'm going to have a post on Outlining at some point: I'm a firm believer that the quality of outlining has a direct correlation with the quality of the work, and that anyone who does a good job with outlining will at least come off as a competent storyteller, barring other major issues like terrible English. It's something I notice the less accomplished writers I've worked with have lacked, and the more accomplished ones have been at least decent at.
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I like to think that I'm competent enough
4670987
...did I imply you weren't? I've never read your work...
4671039
Nah, friend. Just thinking out loudly. And you're welcome to read my story right here. I'd say it's a fairly good story.
4671039
Also, I just noticed something while I was starting a new chapter for my story.
Some people here say they struggle through writing certain chapters thinking it's a slog. I think it's because people only have so much of an attention span, and writers themselves are troubled by this because they can only write their story so much following the same character until they find it boring. But since I'm writing this new chapter on the POV of characters that I haven't touched for over 2 chapters, it really feels fresh and exciting to start it out like this. I'm juggling a few perspectives in my story, and this makes it exciting enough for me that I can write several thousands of words for 1 perspective then switch to another for the next few thousands or so.
4671830
That's a good observation!