The Secret to Revisions? It’s….

  By Hank Phillippi Ryan

 

You type THE END. You stand and applaud yourself. And you should! You’ve crafted the crucial first line, and the all-important end of page three, and the big hook at the end of chapter one. Your book is still compelling after twenty pages, the middle is not bad, and the ending is kickass.

Yay, you!

But you are not finished. Now comes the good part. The difficult part! But the good part. 

Revisions. 

The good news and the bad news: it takes longer, much longer than you might think, to make your book wonderful.

I love revisions. After those months of panic and agony as I try to unearth the plot from the recesses of my brain, it’s a joy to have that big manuscript, all those nice words, in front of me, ready for me to carve it into the book I really meant to write. 

Revisions. 

How do you go through the whole darn thing and make it better? (If you’re me, how do you wrangle 120,000 words into 95,000?)

I have kind of a system. Works for me. 

First, I put the book away for a week. (It should be two weeks, but who has two weeks?)

Then I start reading it—but here’s the key. I read it as if I didn’t write it. I do that by pretending I’m someone else. You know how when you hit “send” to deliver a manuscript to your editor or reader? And as soon as you do, you think—darn. I need to change this. That’s because in that moment, you are reading it through someone else’s eyes.

Try it. Okay? Poof. You’re someone else. A tough reader, a smart reader, one who is seeing this thing for the very first time. Look at it as fun. As a challenge. Your goal is to help this poor writer be fabulous. 

Ah HA. Now you’ll see the plot holes. The repetition. The stilted dialogue. The scenes (you have scenes, right?) without any action. The pages without conflict. The parts you skip.  The weak verbs. “Was.” “Just.” “Suddenly.” The excessive description. The characters with no motivation. The coincidences. The wordiness. The repetition. (Oh, I said that.)

Choose a character and follow that person through your story. Are the motivations clear and understandable? The behavior consistent? Their language unique and identifiable?

Find your default words: how often did you write ‘of course’? Or ‘really’? Or ‘very’? We all have our favorites. And they all have to go. In one manuscript, I discovered I used “flickered” 23 times. Flickered! And twisted about as many times.

(And I start too many sentences with “and.”)

Are there scenes where nothing happens? Make sure every scene advances the story. A good thriller is all about action, right? So no BOGSAT. (Bunch of guys, sitting around talking.)

Are there scenes without cinematic setting?  If your book were a movie, would it be interesting? How can you amp up the mind pictures to make your book as visual as possible?

Fun, huh? No, really, it is. You’re not finding mistakes or proof you’re a terrible writer. The opposite! Every time you discover an error or tighten a sentence or pick a stronger verb—you win. It’s a treasure hunt with you as the winner. 

And revisions are when the magic happens. You’ll see---wow, I have a theme! How did that happen? You’ll see clues you dropped—without even knowing it. You’ll see your clever parallel construction, and foreshadowing and character development and humor—stuff you didn’t even know you were writing.  You’ll see how your brain has created a bigger story than you realized—and it’ll be a joy. 

Jump into those revisions. There’s a surprise around every corner. And when you finally finally type “The End” for real—it will be the beginning of something wonderful.

BIO:
HANK PHILLIPPI RYAN is the on-air investigative reporter for Boston’s NBC affiliate. She’s won 30 EMMYs, 12 Edward R. Murrow awards and dozens of other honors for her ground-breaking journalism. A bestselling author of six mystery novels, Ryan has won multiple prestigious awards for her crime fiction: two Agathas, the  Anthony, Macavity, and most recently, the coveted Mary Higgins Clark Award. National reviews have called her a "master at crafting suspenseful mysteries" and "a superb and gifted storyteller."Her newest thriller, THE WRONG GIRL, is a Boston Globe bestseller and was dubbed "Another winner" in a Booklist starred review. She’s on the national board of Mystery Writers of America and 2013 president of national Sisters in Crime. Visit her online at HankPhillippiRyan.com, on Twitter @hank_phillippi and Facebook/HankPhillippiRyanAuthorPage.

THE WRONG GIRL—Hank’s newest chilling and heart-wrenching novel of suspense—is a thrilling tale of dark secrets and frightening betrayal that strikes at the heart of every family. After her debut in THE OTHER WOMAN (nominated for the Agatha, Anthony, Shamus, Daphne and Macavity; winner of the Mary Higgins Clark Award), investigative reporter Jane Ryland now returns in THE WRONG GIRL--and this time she's on the trail of a frightening story that could rip families apart. Does a respected adoption agency have a frightening secret? Tipped off by a determined ex-colleague on a desperate quest to find her birth mother, Boston newspaper reporter Ryland begins to suspect that the agency is engaging in the ultimate betrayal--are they reuniting birth parents with the wrong children? 

For detective Jake Brogan and his partner, a young woman’s brutal murder seems a sadly predictable case of domestic violence, one that results in two toddlers being shuttled into the foster care system. Then Jake finds an empty cradle at the murder scene. Where is the baby who should have been sleeping there?

Jane and Jake are soon on a trail full of twists and turns that takes them deep into the heart of a foster care system in crisis and threatens to blow the lid off an adoption agency scandal. When the threatening phone calls start, Jane knows she is on the right track...but with both a killer at large and an infant missing, time is running out....

THE WRONG GIRL is a riveting novel of family connections—both known and unknown—vile greed, senseless murder, and the ultimate in deception. What if you didn’t know the truth about your own family?

(Watch for the new TRUTH BE TOLD in September 2014.)

Hang In There, Baby, & You'll Find Your Story

By D.P. Lyle

“There’s a story in there somewhere, I just can’t find it.”

My agent Kimberley Cameron said that to me many years ago. She wasn’t my agent back then, but she is now and advice like this is one of the reasons. I had written what was without doubt the greatest piece of literature ever penned by mankind. Really, it was. It was destined to be a number one bestseller. I had no doubts.

After all, I’d done the work. I’d read hundreds of novels. I’d devoured scores of books on writing. I’d attended dozens of writing conferences. I did my homework. I’d written late into the night on countless occasions, struggling to get the story on the page. And two and half years later my “great American novel” was completed.

I had met Kimberley some years earlier at a conference and we instantly hit it off. At that time I told her I was working on my first book and she requested to see it once it was finished. So, I packaged it up and sent it off. A week later, I got a call from her and she delivered her pronouncement: “There’s a story in there somewhere, I just can’t find it.”

Along with her pronouncement on the quality of my masterpiece, she added an apology for being so blunt. She’s nice that way. She was also right on in her assessment.

The problem? The novel was 138,000 words of garbage. I didn’t know that at the time, but now through a retrospective lens it’s crystal clear. It was overwritten, poorly plotted, and slow. Painfully slow. Too much detail, not enough suspense. Too much description and inane activities. Too much boring dialog. In short, too much of everything.

Back to the drawing board.

Making a very long story short, over the next decade I wrote and published many other books, with Kimberley’s steady guiding hand, but that story wouldn’t let go. It kept creeping into my peripheral vision, nudging me in the dead of night when all writers awaken with a story in their head. It’s part of the process.

That nagging led me to 27 re-writes, 4 changes in title, 4 changes in location, and an entirely new protagonist. The only things that remained the same were the bad guy and the basic premise of the story. And after all that ripping and tearing and writing, writing, writing, ten years later it became STRESS FRACTURE, my first Dub Walker thriller.

What’s the take home message in all this?

Writing is hard. Writing well takes time and repetition. Writing well requires copious reading, learning the craft, giving attention to detail, and practice, practice, practice. Or as Bryce Courtney (The Power of One) often says: “Writing requires one thing. Bum glue. Glue you bum to the chair and write.”

So true.

Becoming a successful novelist also requires that you absorb criticism you’d rather not hear. But hear you must.

“There’s a story in there somewhere, I just can’t find it.”

Don’t fear such criticism. Embrace it. Use it to improve your skills and to motivate you to write a better story. Authors who get it right the first time around the block are rare indeed. You know the stories. Stephen King, Dean Koontz, and even the great James Lee Burke struggled to get their words in print. Rejections were common. But give up? Not an option.

About RUN TO GROUND, a Dub Walker thriller:

What if a forensic evidence and criminal behavior expert must track down a seemingly average, very religious couple who murdered the killer of their only child, dumped their entire lives, and disappeared.

What would you do if someone brutally murdered your only child, got off on a technicality, serving only months for a minor infraction, and continually taunted and threatened you from behind bars? Could you hide your growing rage from family and friends? Could you gun the killer down? Could you change your ID and leave behind your entire life---family, friends, jobs, home---and disappear?

For Tim and Martha Foster the answer to each of these questions is yes.

This is the scenario that faces Dub Walker in RUN TO GROUND.

Connect with DP Lyle, MD:

Website: http://www.dplylemd.com

Blog: http://writersforensicsblog.wordpress.com

FB Page: https://www.facebook.com/DPLyle

Bio: D. P. Lyle is the Macavity Award winning and Edgar, Agatha, Scribe, and USA Best Book Award nominated author of the non-fiction books FORENSICS FOR DUMMIES; FORENSICS & FICTION; MORE FORENSICS & FICTION; and HOWDUNNIT: FORENSICS; the Samantha Cody and Dub Walker Thriller series; and the ROYAL PAINS media tie-in novels. His short story “Even Steven” appears in ITW’s anthology THRILLER 3: LOVE IS MURDER.

He has worked with many novelists and with the writers of popular television shows such as Law & Order, CSI: Miami, Diagnosis Murder, Monk, Judging Amy, Peacemakers, Cold Case, House, Medium, Women’s Murder Club, 1-800-Missing, The Glades, and Pretty Little Liars.