I used to detest revising books. Now that I’ve had more practice at it, I still dislike it. It just drags on and on and on…
So I was thinking about ways to make the process more efficient so it doesn’t take so long.
* Plan the book before writing it – I switched from pantsing to plotting a couple books ago, and it made a huge difference.
* None of that “I’ll figure that out later” during the planning process. Now that I have a better idea how to plan, I should be able to figure everything out instead of leaving myself plot holes. I’m sure I’ll still leave myself plot holes, but next time I’m not going to let myself do so knowingly.
* Ditto for the first draft.
* Big chunks of time. If I’m trying to hold big pieces of the story in my head, it helps to work on it for a longer time. Unfortunately, while I’ve gotten really good at wedging writing into small blocks of time, I’m not good at finding big blocks. One would think weekends would be useful here.
* Working at home where my notes are. Because I don’t have a portable device that runs Scrivener, most revision happens at home, where I’m also most easily distractable.
* Less on paper, but more on screen (less re-typing), but see the previous point for the downside.
* Still undecided on everything at once vs one thing at a time, though I don’t think my brain will let me do anything else until the plot’s fixed.
Anyone have some good tips for revising a book faster?
(We can take “put more hours in” as not answering the question I’m asking, and “get more practice” as too obvious to state.)
A troublesome place to be. Do you try to go over the entire thing at once, or do you break it into segmants? I’m trying to come up with a strategy for m own novel revisions… wish I was as good at those as I am with the short stories.
Best of luck – hope someone offers some good advice.
I go chapter by chapter, but for plot stuff it’d probably be better to work in bigger chunks.
Short stories are easier for me to revise because the whole thing fits in my head at once.