Rewriting at 30,000 Feet (Revision Pt 3)

When working on rewriting a book-length project, I frequently found the advice to disconnect the idea of revision from the idea of editing. In other words, when we talk rewriting and revising, we aren’t talking about line-level work. In fact, one of the best ways to guarantee your time spent in revision is productive is to begin at the macro level and work towards the micro.

Don’t start with scenes or chapters, and certainly not paragraphs or lines. Start with the book as a whole.

Many times, as writers, we bake problems into our drafts from the get-go. I think this is particularly true of people who, like me, tend not to write from outlines, who identify as pantsers rather than plotters, gardeners rather than carpenters.

The problem with less formally rigorous approaches to constructing our drafts is that we can end up with significant structural problems. Plots may become more wandery than intended; subplots can temporarily overtake centerstage when they shouldn’t.

Enter the reverse outline.

I first learned about reverse outlines when working at the Writing Center at George Mason University during my MFA. The process is exactly what it sounds like—you take a ‘finished’ piece of writing and generate an outline from it. This is a particularly useful tool for understanding the organization and progression of main points in an academic paper, but it has its place in fiction, too—something I first learned from reading Matt Bell’s Refuse to be Done: How to Write and Rewrite a Novel in Three Drafts.

Bell says, “It’s at this stage—and never before this stage—that I write a full outline of the novel, outlining what already exists (emphasis his)…In this document, the goal is to try to capture the main story of the novel, by which I mean the action of the book’s prime timeline. What you want…are the book’s events.”

I hate outlines, as we’ve already discussed, but revising was new to me, and I asked around for advice. My friend Timothy Johnson, who hadn’t read Bell, echoed his advice—outline. Figure out what you’re dealing with. This is the way.

Both Matt and Tim recommended utilizing a narrative outline—in other words, something that reads like a very long, detailed summary of the novel itself. Bell says that this makes the work feel more like writing, and I found this to be true. I also found the task to be significantly more challenging than I imagined it might be. Perhaps for a book told straight through in linear fashion with a single POV character, it might have been simpler; I, instead, had to navigate rotating narrators and a sometimes-disjointed timeline. To make this easier, I focused on the idea that we should write our summary with an eye only for plot. Details and events that move the story forward—the action of the unfolding story. Not characterization, sometimes given through scene or backstory; not interiority. Simply progressing action.

One of the things that very quickly becomes apparent while working on this part of the project in this way is whether or not you have a tight chain of causality in the story. In other words, events should unfold like dominoes, with one action or choice leading to the next, leading to the next. Anywhere that chain breaks down—where chance moves us forward rather than our characters and their actions—can be a place where there’s a plot problem and a disruption of the novel’s tension. Studying this chain of events can also help us understand the pace of the novel, or the speed with which these significant, plot-moving events take place. You get to set the pace, as an author, and there are no right or wrong answers—but you should know and choose intentionally how this functions.

Bell points out that even if you wrote your draft from an outline, you’ve likely diverged from it over the course of writing, so this is still a useful exercise. Why?

Here is the magic of creating a master document that summarizes your book. Macro-level problems are much easier to see at this level, certainly, and that clarity is beneficial. But what is perhaps more beneficial is that you can begin your revision at the macro scale itself.

When it comes to reorganizing, replotting, tightening tension, fixing the chain of causality in our novel, working inside a hundreds-of-pages-long document is more than daunting. It’s technologically clunky, emotionally overwhelming, and quickly becomes unwieldy.

Instead, you can simply edit the summary. Pretend, for a moment, that this new piece of writing—this narrative outline—is all that exists. Look at it as its own story. How can you fix it and make it better? Without worrying about the destruction such work might wreak on your draft, you can rewrite entire sections of plot, reorder scenes, combine or eliminate or create new characters, introduce new subplots. At 30,000 feet, this work is easy. A few key words, a new sentence here, a different transition there, and your story begins to take shape anew.

In my next post, I’ll cover some specific areas of work to accomplish at this point, at the macro-level, but before I get to that, I want to tell you something that I learned from writing a narrative outline after my draft. I learned, first, that I’d written a good book. It was not ready, and it was not its best self, but it was good—it had good bones, so to speak. I liked it, still. I felt its excitement building. Second, I learned that I should maybe consider outlining, at least in very broad narrative strokes, my next book.

Why?

Many of my problems with length came from a lack of narrative focus. As a gardener—a pantser—I’d done a lot of writing around my story to find the main beats of my story. I knew almost as soon as I got into writing the summary that there were things that didn’t make sense, anymore. They’d need to shift or be eliminated. And for the first time, rather than feeling scared about losing so much material, I was excited about doing the cutting, because I could see the leaner, meaner, stronger story underneath the fluff.

This was a revelation to me, one that no one really predicted in encouraging me to take this route. I didn’t realize I’d see so much work left to do and become totally re-energized for it.

This is the power of seeing your story at 30,000 feet, I think. From that high up, your story and all other stories look so similar. You don’t see typos or errors or clunky phrasing; you don’t even see shoddy scene work. You see a story. A story that moves characters and readers through a series of events towards a conclusion. It is easier to see and to isolate and to strengthen the spine of what you are writing, and to fall in love with it again. It's kind of like the difference between playing Sim City and playing the Sims. You don't need to work on the perfect home design; you need to think about streets and cities, about the larger world of the story. Don't pick out new wallpaper or fish tanks, but think about planning the city of your book in such a way that the traffic runs smoothly. From so high up, everything is beautiful!

When you eventually begin rewriting, this gorgeous, perfected, slowly and thoughtfully produced narrative summary, perfected to the best of your ability, contains all the best of what you’ve already written and all the best you hope for your book. And you use it, line by line, as a blueprint. You reconstruct your book from a plan that is already a picture of your book. It’s a magical, exhilarating experience, even for someone who resolutely hates plans! Because this one, this book you’re holding in summarized form, it is your book and it is totally within your power to make it as good as you’ve envisioned it can be.

Next up, we’ll talk macro revising. We’ll discuss structure (especially finding beginnings and endings, tightening saggy middles), plot and that chain of causality, combining and eliminating and introducing new characters, and unique structural challenges that you may encounter along the way.

-          Inter-relatedness, chain of causality

-          Tightening up sagging middles

-          Finding the beginning and end

-          Combining characters

-          Unique structural challenges

And, when you’re ready, we’ll talk about how this both primes you for and proves the merits of a total, ground-up rewrite, starting with a terrifying, new blank page.

You Can See That Again! (AKA, An Intro to a Series on Revision)

One time, when I was a kid—middle school aged, maybe—I took a writing standardized test, and failed.

The teacher got in touch with my Mom to talk about it, because they were both initially perplexed by this. Writing has been my “thing” ever since I could do it (and even kind of before I could do it, as the stories my Dad carefully transcribed and typed out for me when I was three or four indicate…), and I’ve always been a strong test taker.

“She didn’t prewrite,” the teacher said.

“I didn’t need to,” I replied, with all the ego of a preteen wordsmith. And I was, in that instance, not wrong. Unfortunately.

The truth is, I’ve never been much for outlining, planning, or preparing. Sometimes I’ll jot down some bullet points so that I don’t lose track of them, but mostly, I’m a gardener. I cultivate ideas and tensions and relationships and watch them grow. I’m a pantser in the worst way—oh, hey, look at that turn of phrase I just made, I’ll say to myself. That’s not at all what I thought this character was about, but cool, let’s say that’s real. How does that play out?

And all along, this has worked out pretty well for me. I never really got called out for my lack of planning, not even during three years of an MFA. And because an MFA is focused on workshopping “clean” drafts, and only occasionally even “revising” them, I never got called out for the other work I didn’t do, either—the back-end part of writing. The postwriting.

Yes, if you haven’t guessed yet (and how could you?), this is a blog post that will kick off a series of indeterminate length about revision.

As I taught my creative writing students, to revise means, literally, to see again.

It isn’t about fixing comma splices and repeated words and spelling errors. Revising is about taking the manuscript you’ve written and seeing it with fresh eyes and new perspective and turning it into art.

Just like I was a pretty terrible outliner (and am learning, still, the price of this negligence), I was a pitiful reviser. I’d read and reread my work, shifting a few things around. Occasionally I’d do some cutting or moving around, but that was about as violent as my editorial work ever got.

And then I wrote this book, and I knew it had problems I didn't want to acknowledge, and I knew I could try to fix them, but I didn’t know how. It's a thing that seems to have been omitted, practically speaking, from ever being taught. Somehow we're supposed to just figure it out on our own.

And here’s the thing, friends. It was really, really tempting to say that this version of things was the best I could do. That it was as clean and solid and well-constructed as I could make it. After all, hadn’t I already done my best work, all along? For weeks, months, years? Hadn’t I already put down the best words I could find to tell this story?

I had! How could it possibly get any better when I'd already given it everything I had?

And that inner monologue became a striking craft lesson for me.

Writers don’t fail to revise because they think they’re all that and a bag of chips. Writers fail to revise because they’re worried they can’t get any better.

It’s not a conscious fear. It’s not like we sit around staring at the words we’ve written going, “Well, that’s total garbage.” At least, not 100% of the time. We like to say we believe in the potential for growth and improvement, but I think deep down, we each harbor a concern that this is as good as it gets.

Take, for instance, the common advice that you should literally, totally, from a blank page rewrite your book (This is advice we’ll talk about in this series, I promise). I think the real reason people don’t do this isn’t because they think it’s too much work. I think the reason they don’t do it is because they honestly believe that the version they’ve put down is the best they’ll ever do.

Why do I think that?

Because I thought that, myself. And sometimes, I’m still tempted to think that. And statistics would generally say it's unlikely I'm the only one.

I am ashamed to say that I was in my thirties and had already been teaching University Creative Writing, begging my students to revise their work, when I finally figured out that my work, too, needed revision.

I am not, after all, an exception to this rule I was teaching.

The realization wasn’t the slow seeping kind that I’ve had about other bad habits (like, oh, my failure to prewrite!). The realization hit like lightning. I wrestled with my plot and my book and my characters and suddenly, one day, saw new paths through the work I’d done that were fresh and exciting and tight and practically shimmering on the page with their potential.

And you know what? I didn’t feel bad that I hadn’t seen those things before.

I felt completely ecstatic that there was some way to make this behemoth better. To make the book everything I'd hoped it could be. I hadn't admitted to myself that I was worried I just couldn’t do it.

The simple reality is that I needed to revise it. To see it again. To put fresh eyes on it and bring all that I’d learned over the course of writing it to bear on its pages. I was a different writer looking at the manuscript from the finish line than I was in the midst of the journey, and that writer? Shockingly, she knew how to do things that the other version of myself didn't.

It is thrilling when you start to rewrite and revise and the story works like magic. It’s like someone erasing friction. Like being able to run without your knees aching. Like how easy it is to breathe when you finally get some decent decongestants.

You feel like a superhuman version of the writer you are, because you’re operating on an entirely different continuum than you were before.

This is my exhortation to you at the gates of my probably-needs-revision blog series on revision:

Give yourself the benefit of superpowers. Believe that your next version of your book Is going to be better than the current version of your book. Amaze yourself with how good you actually are!

Revise.

Re-see.

If you’re willing to try it, to be aggressive with your work in a way you haven’t been before, I can literally guarantee you—I’d put money on it if I had any!—that your work will get better in ways you couldn’t predict.

And no, I’m not leaving it there. We’re gonna walk through some of the revision tactics I’ve found most useful over the past year.Post script: I got to retake the test, by the way, because I was lucky enough to have parents and a teacher who really believed in me and who made things happen I couldn’t have on my own. And you know what I did? I wrote that essay without prewriting—then I wrote an outline of what my essay turned out to be. So…relevant details: A) I didn’t know reverse outlining was a thing.

B) Seriously, the ego. LOL. Who even was I.

C) I missed that early chance to stretch myself and see if outlining might actually make me a better writer. (Spoiler: quite probably. Note to self: DON’T MAKE THE SAME MISTAKE TWICE.)

D) Standardized tests are completely ridiculous.

Don't Be Precious

In undergrad, I studied acting. I’m pretty sure my study of and work in theatre has had a profound impact on my writing, and we can unpack that later. I mention it now because my acting teacher/college advisor/mentor/friend Richard Warner would say, all the time,

“Don’t be precious.”

It means, in essence, not to treat your art (or yourself, as the artist) with too much reverence. Don’t lose perspective on your art. Don’t forget the joy and play of it—don’t take yourself so stinkin’ seriously.

It is, of course, contradictory; we can’t be casual and ungentle with our work, or the work won’t ever be our best work. On the other hand, if we aren’t a little careless with it, a little reckless, a little wild and unpredictable, the work will never come to life.

An artist who can’t be a little reckless with their work never sees it finished. They never query that novel, or submit that short story, or enjoy a reader’s response to their words, because they never feel like the work is quite ready to leave the nest.

An artist who is too precious with their words takes themselves too seriously. They lose the fun of telling stories, of this particular story, of connecting with readers. They lose the spark of originality that could make their work sing.

There’s another part of being precious that means we’re too close to our work to gain any objectivity. This must be why writers are cautioned to put their drafts “in a drawer” and “get some space.” You have to be able to see your work without seeing your investment in the work.

All my words are getting in the way of my meaning. So let’s try this.

When I think of a non-literary artist who knows how not to be precious, I think immediately of Andy Goldsworthy. Goldsworthy is a master of ephemeral art. He creates sculptures and paintings in nature, made from nature, that are meant to decay with time. He finds beauty, captures it, and then lets it go.

His work is stunning. Do a google image search. You’ve probably seen it before.

What’s really amazing is that all of the limits on his art (time, materials, place, etc.) force him to have a loose, light touch on the things he creates—and that loose, light touch, those limits, they in turn are what make his art truly remarkable. He doesn’t force them, doesn’t keep too tight a grip on them.

We could do a whole study on art by reading Andy Goldsworthy quotes, but here are a few I leave you to consider in reference to this idea of being too precious: “My sculpture can last for days or a few seconds—what is important to me is the experience of making.”

“When I was at art school, a lot of art education is about art being a means of self-expression…I wanted to shift the emphasis or the intention of my art from something I disgorged myself upon and something that actually fed me or made me see the world or understand the world.”

“One of the most important aspects of my work is the element of discovery—both for myself and for viewers.”

“Mistakes are proof that you’re trying.”

“Sometimes you need to stop doing something to really see it afresh.”

“Art is not a career—it’s a life.”

“All work, good and bad, is documented. Each work grows, strays, decays—integral parts of a cycle…”

To spend much more time here, I think, would be a bit precious, actually. You can reflect on these ideas the same way I will, and let them inform your work. Or not! The choice is ultimately yours.

I’m going to work on holding on a little more loosely, on being a bit lighter in how I approach my work, in giving myself space to be imperfect, to let the imperfections and raw beauty of my own materials (my mind, my vocabulary, my experiences, my way of seeing the world) shine through the cracks in what I write.

This work of mine—it’s not precious. But the chance to create it, to give life to something in my head and share it with the world—that certainly is.