Want to know how to take your novel from first draft to fabulous?

Read on for my step-by-step guide to revising a novel. 

This month, I’m dwelling in the revisions cave, revising the murder mystery novel I wrote for Nanowrimo, last November.

Taking a book from first draft to polished manuscript ready for submission to agents or editors is a very different skill to writing it in the first place, something I’ve been reminded of time and again during this process! 

The more complex the story, the more likely it is that it needs some serious revision. No book ever comes out of our heads exactly the way we pictured it. Thoroughly revising a novel is our chance to get it there. 

As with all things writing related, there are as many different ways of revising a novel as there are authors. But I’ve always found it helpful to learn how others do things, before adapting the ideas that appeal to me into a system that works for my writing.

This blog series is written in that spirit: I hope you find some of it useful, and that you’ll try out the parts that resonate with you. But feel free to disregard anything that doesn’t!

Disclaimer given, this is how I approach revising a novel. 

Where to start with revisions

Getting started with a big revision is the hardest part for me. The job always feels so impossibly big until I’m deep in the middle of it, and the ending comes in sight. 

For me, it helps to take some time away from the book before I start revisions – deadlines permitting. I need some space between the first draft and the second to remember what I wanted it to be.

It also allows my memory of the book to become a little fuzzy – which is surprisingly helpful when it comes to revisions. It means I’m not so mentally tied down to anything I’ve written before. Which is good, because sometimes revisions mean BIG changes…

The Big Picture

However detailed your outline, however complete your character sheets, a first draft is always an experiment – a place to try out ideas and phrases and themes without having to commit to any of them.

Revisions, on the other hand, are where you plant your flag in the ground and say This is the story I’m telling.

So before you can revise your book, you have to know what you want it to be. You can’t hit a target you can’t see. 

Writing Exercise

I find journalling, or stream of consciousness writing, helpful here. Try answering the following questions – some of your responses might surprise you!

• Why did I choose to write this story?
• What was the initial idea that kicked off this book?
• What made me excited about this story?
• What still excites me about it?
• What do I want my readers to feel on reading it?
• What’s the message at the heart of the story?
• What did I learn about myself, or the world, while writing this book?
• Why does this book matter to me?
• What are the most important scenes or turning points in the story I’m telling, the ones where everything changes
• How do I want the story to end?

Next, turn to the characters that make up the heart of your book. So, as a minimum, your protagonist, antagonist, love interest or sidekick. For each one, consider:

• Where they start the story, or who they start the story as
• Who they become, because of the story
• What you love most about them
• What you don’t like about them
• How you want your reader to feel about them

For now, all we’re doing is making notes on these things. Nothing needs to be decided or made final, yet. You’re five miles up in the air, looking down at the pieces of land and water that make up the world you’ve created, getting a feel for that big picture. 

It’s all about figuring out how you want your book to FEEL, which I know is an irritatingly unspecific factor. But once you’ve got it, it makes everything that comes after a lot easier, I promise.

Inspiration Exercise: Get Crafty

Another trick I use to get the big picture straight in my head is collage. 

I rarely make collages for books when I’m writing them, but for revisions I find they really help me nail down the details that I care about. 

This one is very much a right brain activity. Here’s how I do it:

• Scour the internet for pictures that feel like your book to you. Think about including:
• Actors or models that feel like your characters (these don’t have to be a perfect match for them physically – it might just be an expression, or a feeling that makes you think of them)
• Settings that appear in the story
• Motifs or props
• Words or quotes
• Either print them out and go old fashioned with the glue stick, or put together a digital collage in Canva or similar
• Look for connections between the pictures you’ve chosen, and lay them out to highlight those. 
• Look for structure or arcs in the pictures, too – like how a character changes

For my current revision, the action takes place over three days, so I have three collage panels with some images repeating and others changing as the story progresses. 

Collage isn’t for everyone, but I find it really helpful to have a visual reference every time I sit down to work on my revisions.

Your Big Picture

By the end of all this reflection and thinking time, you should have a pretty good high level feel for the story you want to tell. But what if you also have a sneaky suspicion that it’s not the story you actually wrote? 

That’s where the next stage comes in – studying the book you got, and figuring out where you hit (and missed) your big picture target. 

Look out for that post next week!

P.S. Planning on taking part in Camp Nanowrimo this April? Check out my post on how to write 50,000 words in a month.