Turning "It's Horrible" Into "It's Fantastic!"

Good morning, everyone! Audra here. We're looking at racking up lots of words during Speedbo - no thinking, just writing! I couldn't resist inviting Cathy Yardley back to Seekerville this month to give us some tips on what to do with our massive amount of words after Speedbo.  



Generally, writers I work with either love revising, hate revising, or have a love-hate relationship with it -- meaning they feel both!

However you feel about revisions, they're a necessary part of being a professional writer. No one writes a perfect draft on the first go.

But how do you approach revisions?

In the industry, there's a three pass system, and it's survived all these years for a reason: it's very effective.

First pass.

The first pass is story level. It's a prototype: seeing if all the moving parts of your draft actually work. Are your characters consistent? Does your plot work as you envisioned? Does the plot actually work with the characters you've created -- that is, are they behaving logically, or are you forcing them to take actions for the sake of where you want the story to go? Does each scene hook the reader, drawing her naturally into the next one?

In the first pass, you do not look at word craft, or even the niceties of scene craft. Why? Because if the scene doesn't work, then you're going to need to either entirely revamp it, or remove it. There's no point in polishing the prose if you're going to cut it. It's a waste of time and effort, and if you're like most writers I know, you don't have a surplus of either.

Second pass.

In the second pass, you know that the story works. Now, you tighten your focus, working at scene level. You should have already confirmed that each scene is there for good reason, forwarding your character’s developmental arc and furthering the plot. From there, you’re going to sharpen, strengthen and layer each individual scene, so it not only serves its purpose, it excels at it.  Is each scene anchored? Does the setting contribute to the mood and emotion? Are the descriptions, well, descriptive? Are character voices – both internal exposition and dialogue – unique and consistent? Does the scene use the best point of view choice? How can you add layers of depth and dimension, heightening the emotion and the conflict, increasing the tension?

Third pass.

In the third pass, you'll be doing your fine polish. This pass is sentence level: you're looking at word choice, grammar, etc.  This is where you catch your grammar tics and typos. Personally, I have an unhealthy attachment to both ellipses and em dashes. In my third pass, I always weed out as many as I can!  You may also notice a repetition of words on a page: for example, “I looked at the sky. It looked like it was going to be a beautiful day. The sky looked like a robin’s egg, a pale, perfect blue.”  Again, nothing technically wrong, but the repetition dulls the writing.  

Do you have to work in this order?

I like to use the analogy of building a house. Your first pass is structural: you're constructing the framework and making sure basics like plumbing and wiring are effective, installing windows and doors. Your second pass is putting up things like drywall, fixtures, flooring. Your third pass is decorative: painting, decorating, cleaning up so it's ready to move in.

Most people who are overwhelmed by revisions tend to try doing everything at once. They're trying to decorate a room, only to then tear open a wall to fix the plumbing they hadn't realized was disconnected! It leads to a lot of frustration and duplication of effort.

Following the pass system as it stands is really the most effective way to go about it.  The trick is to be able to stay in the right frame of mind. It’s very common to wince your way through the first pass, thinking, “This writing is terrible! The dialogue’s flat, and it has no setting! I must fix this immediately!”

Try to resist the urge. If you spend an hour polishing a scene, only to discover that the whole scene needs to be cut, you’ll never get that hour back. While it could be worthwhile, simply to practice your craft, think about how much time you have, and remember you’re also developing your writing process for a long term writing career. The more efficiently and effectively you write, the more books you’ll be able to produce!

If you're doing Speedbo:

Many of you are participating in Speedbo this month. Personally, I'm a big fan of writing a "lightning draft" as a first pass. The speed allows you to silence your inner editor (or at least quiet her down a bit!) and move forward.

Sometimes, my coaching clients moan "but it's horrible!" That's fine. In fact, it's supposed to be horrible! Your rough draft is raw material. Revision is the mining process that separates the dross from the gold, and gives you something to polish.

The temptation to go back and "fix" each scene a bit as you go can be overpowering. Also, you'll probably have the sinking feeling that it's all terrible at some point. (For me, this usually hits around chapter seven. Keep in mind, I've published eighteen novels, and I still feel this way!)  Try to resist the urge. It’s just a common loss of perspective. Writing is an act of faith. You need to be able to move ahead despite your anxieties to the contrary. If you have difficulty with this, getting a cheerleader to help remind you to keep moving will help. Use every trick in the book if you need to. But keep moving!

Finally, always keep track of what works for you… and what doesn’t.

It’s important to recognize your own writing process.  If you’re the type of writer who feels she can’t move forward until the previous scene is polished, that’s fine. However, any sort of rush-draft scenario – Speedbo, Nano, Book in a Month, etc. – is probably not going to work well with your particular writing style.  If you’re not sure what your writing style is, I recommend trying something like Speedbo at least once, to try it out.

That said, don’t feel like a failure if you wind up abandoning it because you can’t keep up due to constant revising.  It’s more important for you to figure out what works for you than to force yourself to fit someone else’s method, even if it does seem more efficient.

What’s your writing process?  Do you like fast drafting, or are you polish-as-you-go?  How do you approach revisions?

Rock Your Revisions

Audra again. March will end before you know it and when that happens, we'll all be looking at massaging our work and making sense of the whole bunch of words we've compiled. To help remind us, Cathy is giving away a copy of her ebook, Rock Your Revisions. Seekerville is also giving away two more copies of Rock Your Revisions. Good things come in threes, don't they?

Also, check out the incredible specials she's running in March. Cathy is discounting her one hour plot calls and her editing services. You can reserve the editing rate to use by the end of 2015. Make sure you check out all of Cathy's writing, revising, promoting tools on her website.  

Cathy Yardley is the author of seventeen novels, published with Harlequin, St. Martin’s, Entangled, and Avon. She is also a teacher, editor, and writing coach at her website, RockYourWriting.com. Sign up for her free e-course Jump-start Your Writing Career, and check out her e-books on plotting, revising, and writing every day!

Troubleshooting Tips for Problem Plots

Good morning, Everyone! Audra here. Plot is the most difficult aspect of writing I've encountered. How much of this? How much of that? And what was I supposed to throw in a pinch of? OMG, starting a book always has me trembling in my boots. And then one day, the good Lord took pity on me. I discovered Rock Your Plot and haven't looked at plotting the same since. I've invited Cathy Yardley to join us in Seekerville and give us some plotting tips. 

Are you having trouble getting the plot for your novel worked out? I’ve worked with people in various stages of their novels, and the thing I hear most of all is – well, “Help!” 

Sometimes, you have a great picture of a hero or heroine.  Maybe you’ve got a sense of the opening.  Perhaps you can clearly picture several scenes, some action, a fantastic setting.

Then, that whole pesky plot thing gets in the way.  You might know how it ends, but you’re not quite sure what happens in that vast wasteland of the middle.  Or you sense that your pacing is slow, repetitive… but you’re not sure how to speed things up and fix the problem.  Scenes may not seem to flow well.  You may have too many characters – or maybe you suspect you don’t have enough.  Should you add a sub-plot?  Condense a few secondaries? How do you decide?

Here are a few troubleshooting tips to help you hone in on what might need fixing, and how to repair it.

1.       Check your protagonist(s). 

Who is this story about, and why will the reader care?  If you’re writing romance, that generally means you have a hero and a heroine.  You’re going to want to write plot points for both of them, to weave together into the story.  You’ll also want to make sure that the reader cares enough about them to follow them along on the novel’s journey.  It doesn’t mean that they have to be likeable, necessarily.  It does mean that they need to be interesting, or empathetic, or larger than life.  Think of some of your favorite protagonists by your favorite authors if you’re looking for inspiration.

2.      What does your protagonist want?

This is the “goal” portion of the “GMC” equation, and it’s crucial.  Look at any back cover blurb or book description, and the goal of the book is clearly stated. 

-  “Jack Ryan needs to stop the terrorist.” 
-  “Lucy Smith just wanted to make her cupcake store successful.” 
-  “Darla Kaine returns to her old home town to bury her past.”

Whatever the goal, it needs to be something tangible, something where you know when the character has achieved it.  “Bury her past” is, admittedly, a bit murky.  But if you then clarify in the story itself that Darla’s goal is to prevent a specific secret from coming out, and that means convincing a reporter who has followed her to bury a story, then her goal is clear:  convince the reporter.  Can you think of what your protagonist clearly wants?

3.      Why is your protagonist’s goal important? 

If you’re having trouble figuring out what to do with your plot, it may be because you haven’t set a large enough goal to begin with.  Let’s say your protagonist’s goal is to win a pie baking contest. That could be cute, or interesting, but it’s not necessarily enough to turn pages.  An easy way to test this is to ask:  if my protagonist does not get her goal, what is the consequence?  If there isn’t a consequence – or if your protagonist simply won’t be very happy – you might not have enough at stake.  With the pie baking, if your heroine made a deathbed promise to her mother, that would be much higher stakes and a much stronger reason for winning the contest than “because she likes pies.” 

4.      What’s standing in the way?

Conflict is one of the biggest challenges for writers, new or experienced.  We love our characters, which can mean we don’t want to see them go through a lot of pain!  But conflict is crucial.  It’s the tempering process, the catalyst that helps your protagonists grow and develop their way through their character arcs.  No pain, no growth!  A handy tip:  write a list of twenty things that can make your character’s goal even harder.  The first ten things tend to be cliché.  That next ten? That’s where you’ll strike gold.  Finally, don’t just threaten bad things – actually have bad things happen to the character.  The threat is often not enough.

5.      Is your ending satisfying?

If you’ve been ramping up the conflict and the pacing, delivering a satisfying ending is crucial.  But maybe you’re not sure how the story is supposed to end.  Or you might find yourself forcing situations or relying on coincidence or luck to get your protagonist out of his/her problems.  For a satisfying ending, you want the character to use what she’s learned on the journey of the novel to get to the ending.  Ask yourself:  how do I want my protagonist to be different at the end of the novel, as a result of the conflicts she’s been through?  Make sure that the protagonist has a hand in the resolution.

Where do you have the most trouble when creating your story’s plot?  Leave a comment, and get the chance to win a one hour “plot session” phone call with me, complete with recording and notes! 

Audra here. I can't help but raise my hand and say, "Pick me! Pick me!" LOL. Cathy's method of plotting turned my writing world around!! As an extra bonus today, I'm adding 3 additional ebook copies of Rock Your Plot! Check the WE to see who gets to work out their plot with Cathy and who gets her ebook : )

I also want to let you know that Cathy and a number of other writers are raising funds to help mothers with young children attend a writing conference. The full bundle of what they're offering can be found here:  http://www.writermamas.com.  Having an 8 year old son herself, she understands how difficult finding the money and juggling the responsibility can be. Don't we all! Check out the website, the bundled offer is phenomenal!

Cathy Yardley is the author of seventeen novels, published with Harlequin, St. Martin’s, Entangled, and Avon. She is also a teacher, editor, and writing coach at her website, RockYourWriting.com. Sign up for her free e-course Jump-start Your Writing Career, and check out her e-books on plotting, revising, and writing every day!