Amalie Berlin on Revisions and a Giveaway!

 We have writer Amalie Berlin with an amazing post of revisions and she's got a giveaway for one commenter. Yes, a signed and print copy of her CRAVING HER ROUGH DIAMOND DOC.

Amalie on Facebook and Twitter.

Revising & Confusing Terms

 

When I first started writing with an eye toward publication, I submersed myself in blogs and forums, places where writers congregate, always looking for keys and advice which would make the whole business of writing easier.

I read craft books. I asked questions. I learned the lingo. Grasped the difference between internal and external conflict, between plotters and pantsers, and even the nebulous concept of voice. But what to do after you finished your first draft? I didn’t understand that.

Writers threw around words like revising and rewriting, editing and polishing, and it all seemed like the same thing. Some process by which you make your story better, and fix grammar and spelling issues, clarify thoughts… improve imagery?  

But the terms are not interchangeable.

To be honest, I still don’t fully understand what others mean when they use these words, because I don’t know if they’re as confused by the whole thing as I was once, or if they know some real, actual, official, Webster-approved definition of the words(which I still don’t have).

The best I can do is separate what I’ve groked about the publication process into working definitions.

 

Polishing: The easiest sort of editing to do. If you get done with your first draft and all you do is go back through to make sure you’re not abusing passive voice, or that your nouns and verbs are in agreement? Then you’re polishing, not revising.

 

Revision: This has nothing to do with words.  It’s all about story. The problem with revising(which we all know) is that it’s hard to see the flaws in your own stories. You had a reason for the way you wrote the story to begin with. So revision is revisiting your reasons for the choices you made in your story.

Does your perspective change on anything now that you’ve reached the end of the story once through? Is there a better way to handle X, Y or Z? Do your scenes pull their weight? Do you need to cut some and work information into another scene? And if you change those parts to something that makes the story stronger, do those changes ripple through the storyline? If so, you have to fix those bits too.

These are the questions you have to ask when you’re revising.

 

Rewrite: This definition is still kind of elusive to me. I don’t have it nailed down to any sort of process. I view it as extreme revision. If my revision notes look like I’m pulling a Lizzie Borden on my manuscript, if I am chopping it to bits and tinier bits of gooey bits so I have to rewrite half(or more) from scratch? That’s a rewrite for me. Your definition might be different, and probably is. Whatever your exact definition, it’s epic. Rewrites are epic. It means the mass murder of thousands and thousands of words. And not just on the altar of art, poetry and beautification. Rewrites are Carnage.

 

My best revision advice is this: To keep your story from being dull and predictable, look for ways to make a mess, upset your story people. Are your characters acting too rationally? Do they make great decisions from start to finish? Well, when people are upset they make bad decisions. And bad decisions made under duress are a great way to keep your story rife with conflict and give those characters situations in which to grow into the people they are meant to be.

 

And get critique partners. Good ones who will do more than point out grammar and spelling issues. You want people who will lovingly rip bloody shards out of your story, point out why that newly made hole needs something else in it than what they excised, and help you fill the hole in with nougat. Mmmm nougat.

What about you?

Amalie has her debut novel out now. Check this link out!

Craving Her Rough Diamond Doc

Her first sighting of Dr. Wyatt Beauchamp is of him with his shirt off—all deliciously bronzed corded muscle and mouthwatering abs—and nurse Imogen Donally hopes the next six months working in his remote mountain practice will be…more interesting than she'd originally thought! Only, her Dr. Tall, Dark and Handsome quickly proves to be more Tall, Dark and Seriously Brooding…. Tough cookie Imogen has no desire ever to settle down, but even she is reluctantly intrigued by a man just as haunted by the past as she is. Could a red-hot fling with the sexy, stubborn doc be Imogen's undoing?


Please click on this link to enter the Goodreads Giveaway for Amalie's book. And Amalie would be giving a signed print copy to one commenter as well.