Writing the Book You’ve Already Written

For me, and I believe many authors, the most difficult and important lesson about writing is how to revise. When I first started, I thought the entire process involved putting a story on paper and then making it sound the way you want. I didn’t understand why I kept reading about how difficult revisions can be and how it’s the “real work” of writing a book. Maybe I was just so good, I made it feel easy.

I almost figured it out when I wrote the new and improved 2nd edition of The Road Cain Walks (see my previous post) but redirecting the plot to link with the other novel muddied the water. Because it was my first novel, I considered it a rookie mistake that couldn’t happen again. The common theme of my entire sputtering writing career has always been stubbornness. This time, it made me blind to the bright neon sign blinking in my face: THE SECOND DRAFT SHOULD BE A FULL REWRITE.

Trust me, I know. It took a lot of time and energy to write your first draft. You have another idea burning a hole in your mind. You aspire to be one of those prolific writers who churns out a book a year. Whatever the reason, you have no interest in writing another version of the story you just finished.

But you should.

Even if you’re satisfied and everyone who’s read it says, “It’s really good!” They might be giving their honest opinion, but those people a) love you, b) don’t want to upset you, and c) are not affiliated with the publishing industry. But even if they are, “really good” stories end up in really full trash cans.

How to Get It Right

At the zoomed-out macrolevel of your story, “get it right” means getting the specifics of your plot right. It involves filling in holes, smoothing out inconsistencies, and showing more than telling. Where the first draft is plot-level writing, rewriting happens at the scene level. You need to experience the world you’ve created alongside your characters, existing with them and as them. This is where you truly engage your creative spirit, the one you had as a kid in the backyard role-playing your favorite cartoon. This is where the real magic of writing happens.

Reigniting the Old Flame

The first thing you’ll need to do is wipe away the gathered dust on your first draft. Pull it out of the drawer. Open the neglected desktop folder. The time you spent away from the story should make reading it feel somewhat foreign. You’re sure to notice typos and awkward phrasing. Go ahead and fix them if you want, but don’t get distracted from your true goal: finding the weak spots.

This can be hard, even with all that time spent away. You know the intention behind the sentences and where the story is heading. Also, your brain is a sucker for shortcuts, creating as many as possible so it can phone in the job.

With a highlighter in hand, read and mark any place where you did one of the following: summarized an event instead of creating a scene with action and dialogue, explained important plot points outside of a scene with action and dialogue, or used an everyday coincidence to avoid building a scene with action and dialogue.

One more time for the people in the back: novels are built on scenes with action and dialogue.

That’s not to say there’s no room for writing that doesn’t take place in a physical scene. Readers have long valued books over their movie adaptations because they provide a richer experience, most often through a deeper layer of story that’s impossible to show on a screen. Abstract details such as internal dialogue and backstory are important, but nothing sticks in a reader’s head as firmly as the concrete details of a scene.  

A Candle in the Dark

Now that you’ve identified all the weak spots in your first draft, it’s time to go back into that once-dark room of your story. This time, you’ll bring a flashlight. You’ll see the coffee table where you bumped your knee, the wall your blind hands fumbled over in search of a doorknob. Where the first draft gave you a general layout, now you see the ornate carvings on the table legs and a framed photograph of a wooded swamp.

Before you get lost in the details, write down every scene of your first draft. Be as descriptive or as vague as you want as long as you make a record of every moment where your characters are actually doing something.

My storyboard wall

How you go about this is up to you. Personally, I’ve installed a permanent storyboard on the wall of my office. Each of the four lines of cork represent the major narrative arcs described in Jessica Brody’s Save the Cat! Writes a Novel. They also coincide with a three-act structure, the first line corresponding to the introduction, the middle two the rising action, and the last the resolution. I’ve never used any software marketed toward writers, such as Scrivener, but I believe most of them have tools to do this digitally. If you’re on a budget and want something less permanent, an outline in your word processing software of choice gets the job done fine.

Once you have a full blueprint of your current scenes, fill in the gaps. Which scenes are linked by time jumps and internal segues? Where are you telling more than showing? Go back to step one. Wash the dishes. Cut the grass. Turn on your novel’s music playlist and lay on the floor. However you brainstormed your first draft, repeat the process, but this time with a clearer focus and targets for your mental darts. What connective tissue is missing to get your characters from point A to B and eventually C? Which details would make those characters and settings more real?

Whether you use index cards pinned to cork or bullets in an outline, every new idea will grow your story. You’ll feel that renewed itch of eagerness to get back to work, maybe a little anxiety at how much more there is to do. Most importantly, you’ll build a deeper understanding of the story you discovered through your first draft. Characters you willed into existence become flesh and blood with back stories and motivations. As scenes gain a greater significance, they’ll add meaning to the plot they propel forward.

Before you know it, your storyboard will be relatively complete, though ideas will continue to trickle in. Leave the faucet open for as long as it drips. When something pops into your head, jot it down and add it to the outline. At the same time, shift your focus to the next task in the rewriting process—the actual work of writing a second draft.