Editing your first novel draft
Editing your first novel is hard. It‘s a difficult process that‘s entirely self-directed, and if you don‘t have a map of how to approach the process, it‘s utterly daunting.
I was in this process, madly hurrying around and shuffling scenes here and there before I hit a wall and thought enough, there has to be a better way to approach this.
I recently did an editing course with the National Centre for Writing online which provided me with an invaluable guide of how to approach the editing process.
The process of editing your first novel
Through the course, I discovered about 3 overarching types of editing that help bring your first draft ideas into a finished manuscript.
Structural editing—Looking at the entire manuscript and how it‘s laid out. Here you can use a template such as the Hero‘s Journey or Freytag‘s Triangle.
Line and style editing—Editing of the language, overall style, pacing, and flow.
Proofreading—Final edits including punctuation and fixing typos.
Fixing the structure
In the course, we considered different structures and ways of presenting the story to the reader. I found this really useful and it helped to consider my narrative in different ways to make the story more appealing.
Some of the different structures we explored:
Linear—traditional storytelling, told from beginning to end.
Interleaved—The same narrative returns in a set order.
Vignettes—A collection of stories arranged together in order of theme or mood.
I‘m mostly using a linear structure so that the Hero‘s Journey structure shine through. I didn‘t want to burden the reader with too much going on or make it difficult to understand. For another short story I recently finished however, I used the vignette story structure because I had a word count cap and this was the best way to tell the story. Story structure really depends on your story, and there‘s no right and wrong way to do it. It‘s all about leading the reader through your story so they stay engaged.
editing a novel in sticky notes
One of the best tips I got during the course was to lay out your story with sticky notes! It seems chaotic and messy but in reality, it gave me the best overview of my entire novel.
Once you have the structure outlined, take out the sticky notes and tape up the various sections onto the wall. Then, add the scenes that you have in the order they should appear in your novel. This is your basic plot.
I used color coding to add in other pivotal moments like red for obstacles, and blue for the relationship key points between my two main characters.
This process is great because you can step back and think about each part of the book. Does it accomplish the goal that it needs to? Are your obstacles too close together or could they be spaced further apart? It‘s all about having a clear vision of what you need to do when you go in for the rewrites.
approaching the first rewrites
Once you have your map of where to start, you can get right into the weeds and start rewriting. For me, this is the most daunting part. In the past, I was struggling to see how to connect certain scenes without anything feeling too jarring.
One last tip that I found really useful is knowing the difference between a scene and a summary.
Writing a scene is about fleshing everything out and immersing your reader in what is happening. This comes naturally to most writers and it‘s the bulk of the story.
Knowing how to write a summary though, is equally as important. You don‘t need to flesh out absolutely everything that‘s happening all of the time, and sometimes you need to transition between scene A and scene B. A summary can help to bridge the gaps and help you focus only on writing scenes that are valuable to the plot and story as a whole.
How are you approaching editing your novel? Drop your tips or comments below!
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Editing your first novel is hard. It‘s a difficult process that‘s entirely self-directed, and if you don‘t have a map of how to approach the process, it‘s utterly daunting.