Anatomy of a Second Draft

I’m in the middle of a massive round of edits on SHUTDOWN, Bk 3 of the Glitch trilogy. This is always the biggest round of edits for me – the second draft. My first drafts usually clock in a little over 60 thousand words and are very rough. So the second draft means a lot of re-envisioning and lots of rewriting and lots of fitting together the puzzle pieces of both the plot and the emotional arc of the story . I’ve been working on this revision for a month now, it’s up to 90k words, and think I’ve got about two weeks to go.

 

So want to know my process on the all important second draft? Here we go!

The Edit Letter
I start out reading and rereading the edit letter from my editor. I print it out, then underline, highlight, write possible fixes in the margin, and generally scribble and mangle the seven pages until they are very well worn. Then for a couple of days I do a lot of sitting and staring off into space. I’ll bust out my pen and notebook and scratch out what I think are the biggest problems, then slowly problem-solve possible solutions. Then I sketch out the emotional map, and how each chapter is slowly building toward the climax at the end.

Because second drafts are so daunting and entail so much work for me, I always want to tackle the biggest and scariest problems first so I can get them out of the way. I break up the book into chunks (this latest book broke neatly into three organic pieces), and then I finally get to the actual writing.

Chunk #1. The Middle
For this draft, I worked on the middle first because it was where a lot of the heavy emotional story was, and I think that’s the heart of any novel. I’d been so focused on fitting together the larger story elements, that the emotional and romantic story had not come off AT ALL in my first draft. So I cut and rewrote my way all through the middle section. All the while, I kept checking each chapter against the map of the emotional arc, tweaking and making sure it had the perfect growing momentum. As daunting as this section was to rewrite, it was also the one I had the most fun with. The emotional and romantic center of any book is always my favorite, both as a reader and a writer. I’d put on moody emotional violin music and absolutely lose myself in the scenes and conversations. I love, that even in such a stressful time as doing intense revisions on a deadline, those magical writing moments can still happen.

Chunk #2. The Ending

Next I tackled the ending, which I was VERY afraid of. Because here’s the thing about this trilogy—I won’t say I bit off more than I could chew, but it has been very difficult dealing with the huge scope I set out for myself when I outlined the series. I thought, oh, by the end of the trilogy I’ll have the fate of the world standing in my MC’s hands. Uh. Yeah. That makes for a lot of moving parts, and throughout the trilogy I’ve learned my strengths and weaknesses. Writing action scenes can be a weakness for me. I have to work twice as hard on those scenes. And the last third of book 3 is action, action, action. But when I actually got to it, it went much quicker than I thought it would. After brainstorming all the fixes to the problems, it wasn’t that daunting at all.

Chunk #3. The Beginning
Then I jumped back to the beginning, and worked till I met up with the middle section. This meant lots more action scenes I had to fix, and lots of work making sure I was both setting up this book as it's own entity, and tying it to the two previous books.

Cohesion Read-through

At this point, I breathe a giant sigh of relief. I’ve done most of the heavy lifting and fixed all the scariest things. Next comes the read-throughs of hundred page chunks, working chronologically this time and smoothing out transitions, language issues, and making sure it’s a cohesive read. I also send out portions to my beta partners at this point to get outside eyes on it.

The Things To-Fix List

But also I end up finding tons of problems as I read that are added to my Things To Fix list, a separate document I always keep open in addition to my manuscript document. The Things to Fix document is vital. These will be weird things ranging from: oh, check the spelling of that name, to, make sure this emotional arc is clear from chapters 10-13, or, in that conversation with all the officials, have them bring up this particular point that is a plant for something that happens at the end.

After I finish the cohesion readthrough, then I start tackling the list. At this point I also sit down again with the edit letter and see if there are problems my editor brought up that I still haven’t sufficiently fixed. That’s where I’m at right now. I try to be brutal with myself and ask myself if I’ve really fixed the problem. My temptation, after straining at this for a month already, is to just burn through the list and slap on some quick fixes that I know will need to be fixed in the next draft.

I’ve done that in the past, but this time around I’m trying to shoulder most of the work in these early drafts. When you’re on a super quick production schedule like I am (books releasing every 5-6 months), I’ve realized there might not always be as much time later as I want to fix things. Now is when I should be taking the time to dig into the guts of this thing, set its broken bones, and make it as solid as I can before turning in the next draft.

On Writing OVERRIDE (#2 in Glitch Trilogy)

I finished the final, final readthrough of Override yesterday. All the tweaks are finished and the manuscript is back on its way to my publisher. There's this amazing feeling that comes with being TOTALLY finished with a book. At the stage where there are no more changes, no tweaks, no second-guessing. It's done. Finito. What I turned in is what will be printed.

Some authors get freaked out by this stage, but I'm mainly just excited. I'm excited because after all the ups and downs that were involved in writing and then rewriting and then, oh yeah, rewriting AGAIN, I finally have a book that I think is really good and that I'm proud of. I was getting giddy on my last read-through of it. If you thought book 1 was twisty and turny, I think I can confidently say you ain't seen nothing like what goes down in book 2 ;)

Part of the problem, among others, was the fact that it is so twisty. Note to self: never again have a character who can see the future. It will tie your plot up in knots that take a really long time to untangle and figure out!!!

And I cannot thank my amazing editor enough. She was encouraging and patient in spite of the really bad first draft (okay who are we kidding, and really bad second draft) I turned in. She didn't freak out over the fact that in the middle I wanted to trash it all and rewrite it from three alternating POVs (which, oh my gosh in hindsight I can see was a terrible idea, but when I was in the middle of it and trying to fix a broken book, seemed like a great one). She calmly and patiently read my furiously written chapters and then gently pointed out that this was not the best way for the book to go. She gave me ideas, questioned and prodded my plot throughout the next draft I turned in. She pushed me to smooth out the awkward or slow bits and to remember not to lose my characters. And all on a pretty insane timeline considering I only turned in the actually viable draft at the end of April!

Want to know the crazy timeline on this book?

• June 2011: Turn in almost-finished 1st draft
• August-December 2011: Rewrite major portions and turn in 2nd draft
• February 2012: Realize that 2nd draft is total soulless crap, write 100 pgs from differing POV's to try to fix
• March 2012: Fabulous editor helps me realize this is a really bad direction to take the book. Rethink plot and character problems.
• April 2012: Start over from scratch. At first I thought I just needed to write a new first half of the book. And then I got to the second half, and realized it needed a total redo as well. Insane writing month commences, and the 3rd and finally solid draft is turned in by the end of the month.
• ---Okay, this wasn't for Override, but it was still part of my crazy writing year. May 2012: Write most of book 3.
• June-July 2012: Get edit letter and first line edits for Override. Do lots of rewrites and turn in again 6 weeks later.
• August 2012: Book 1 releases! Yay! Get 2nd round of line edits for Override. Work feverishly on them and turn in 4 weeks later.
• September 2012: Copyedits for Override.
• October 2012: First Pass Pages for Override. And DONE! Soon arcs will release and my baby will be out in the world!

Phew! Just writing about it makes me feel tired. Standing on this end of it, I can't believe the insanity of this year. Reading through Override one last time over the past few days, I can't believe that it came together so well. But in the end, it really did. I think it's on par with Glitch and maybe is actually better.

And in the meantime, the fun never stops! On to edits for book 3!

Finished Line Edits & Spastic Heather

Phew, the past couple weeks have been about extreme-editing (aka, editing which consumes ALL) and reading (for when the edit brain simply must shut down for a few hours). The edits went very well, I sent my editor the magical email with the new draft, and now I'm so exhausted I can barely type!

But because I'm spastic, all I can think about, 30 minutes after turning it in, is: what next, what next?!! Well, yes, there are all those emails I've been ignoring for the past two weeks, the manuscript I need to read for a friend, and the packages that are WAY overdue to get in the mail.

But really, I'm thinking about the fresh writing project I want to work on next. In a way, it's simultaneously the worst and best feeling in the world--going from putting on the finishing shiny touches on one manuscript back to starting from scratch with ugly first drafting on the next. Editing is hard, but you have such a pretty book-like manuscript at the end. First drafts are... messy. And I go in with the knowledge that I might as well call my first drafts 'extensive pre-writing,' because I usually end up rewriting it completely from scratch during edits. It can be a difficult pill to swallow. Then again, I try to remind myself how deadly satisfying it is to grow that word count everyday during drafting, building up the slow mountain of words that will eventually become a book. It's so tangible. At the start of the day I had ten pages, at the end, I have seventeen. Which soon becomes fifty and then a hundred. And by a hundred, I feel dang swell about the half a book I've written. That's a definite high.

But tonight, alas, I'll put all those delusions of grandeur aside and catch up on the episodes of The Colbert Report that I missed ;)

Am I a Grown Up Writer Yet?

So, as I edit this dry bones draft, I started another document called "Emotional Big Ideas" in which I write scenes, throughout the day (or the middle of the night) about the emotional zingers--scenes that help me see clearly who my characters are and what they want. I don't know exactly where the scenes will go, or if they'll even make the cut when I start pasting things into the new draft, but it's so helpful to start to get a real feel for who my characters are. This side document is now 40 pages long.

I never used to understand when writers would talk about all the pre-writing and extra character development writing that wasn't actually part of the draft. I'd think: all that wasted time! those wasted pages!

Yeah, I'm finally getting the idea.  Does this mean I'm getting to be a Grown Up Writer? Lol, we'll see, my lovelies, we'll see. Meanwhile, I listen to Florence + The Machine's sophmore album, and am inspired.

When in Doubt, Double

This is my newest writing trick. I'm working to bring a dry, bland manuscript to life, so as I go in to rewrite scenes, I'm trying to make every scene a double of something else (usually a big emotional theme in the book). So if there's an action scene, something in it has to double another scene or parallel an emotional theme. A conversation between friends? It too needs to have that doubleness to it - always external action that's relating to the internal drama. Because really, it's the slowly building internal, emotional action that makes us care about characters.

It's another way of saying that there is no unmotivated scene as a writer. No scene that's just there as a place holder or a way to fill space. No. Everything has to keep building up toward the climax. No plateaus. Not if you want a tension-filled, compelling book.

I think I did this more naturally with the first book. This one, I don't know. I think I was trying to keep it from being too dark and depressing or something. Or I was just kind of at a rough point emotionally in my own life. But all it really resulted in was me not digging into the characters. Emotional conflict is eternally compelling, ya can't get around it. Conflict is what makes stories.

Some writers are able to write funny books, light books that still have a driving conflict. Yeah. Not me. I gotta go for digging salt in the wounds. And then doubling it ;)

We Now Interrupt This Regularly Scheduled Program...

So I might be interrupting work on my NaNo project of book 3 to pause and try to figure out what the hell is going on with Book 2. I got a beta read that was a perfect zinger, cutting through my crap and pointing out some of the core problems with the book - namely, that we don't feel connected to the main character, that there doesn't seem a lot of reason to care about her, that it's emotionally dry.

Underneath, I knew it. Everything I built up in book 1 just kind of fizzled here. It's like a skeleton, dried out dead bones. There's a sort of life-like structure, but not much flesh and no heart. I meant to keep working on book 3, but now that I see so clearly what needs fixing on book 2, I don't think I can go forward without pausing to dig into it. Also, if I don't figure out what's going on emotionally in this book, how can I blunder forward with the next book, making the same mistakes?

So I've spent a lot of my writing time today staring into space. Trying to feel out what draws me to a good story. How to develop an emotional core.

I think one secret to doing this is NOT to just have events occurring and your mc just being batted around by circumstance. Good TV shows have a way of doing this--creating a doubleness to the action so that it's always mirroring something going on internally with the characters. I'm thinking specifically of last season of Fringe. For example, there's one episode where they are investigating a doppelganger and Peter explicitly asks how the person's partner hadn't known the person they were sleeping with had been switched. Of course, in a perfect case of dramatic irony, the audience knows what Peter doesn't. The person Peter himself is getting close to isn't who he thinks she is either. And just like the spouse of the person in the case, he doesn't notice the difference, even when its so blatantly in front of him.

When shows do this well, it's like a kick in gut as you watch. It's so enthralling having the reinforced emotional texture rebounding at a number of different levels. The first season of Lost did this really masterfully too. Everything occurring in the present action would then be mirrored in the flashbacks of one character's life before--both stories weaving together into one cohesive emotional whole that packs far more punch.

Now if I can just figure out how to work this out in my novel. Every scene should be building on this emotional tension and speeding up to the climax. What does my mc want? What is her obsession? What is she dying in want of?

Writing vs. Revising: Grass is Always Greener on the OTHER Side!

I'm amused by the amount of contortion the goat in the picture is going through to get to the greener grass. Um yeah. That's pretty much what being a writer feels like sometimes! Last month after I'd been editing for so long, I declared with complete assurance that drafting was far easier and more fun than editing.

Yeah. Until I start drafting again.

I've been NaNoWriMo-ing the rough draft of Book 3 in my trilogy, and today I was thinking the whole time: I can't wait until this gets done so I can start editing again. Editing is so much better than drafting!!

Then I remembered I'd thought the exact opposite a month ago. The thing is, to be honest, both writing and revising have their perks and downsides. It's easier to feel productive when writing a first draft. Literally productive even - I mean, that little word count number just keeps going up! It's so satisfying. I set a word count to reach for the day, I reach it, then I feel satisfied that it's been a good day's work accomplished.

Revising on the other hand, is pretty amorphous. A lot of the time you are cutting out entire sections, then re-writing, so if you're looking at word count, some days it goes down!

But here's the down-side of drafting. They're called rough drafts for a reason. Because sometimes it can be really rough. And just plain sucky. It makes me antsy to get to editing so I can fix it all up, and see the bigger picture. So I can make it STOP SUCKING! Plus I half think I'm a better editor than writer. I'm better at shaping the mass of words and plot after there's already a sizeable chunk there to start with. So I try to remind myself of that as I keep writing. I'm giving myself a big chunk of clay to work with later.

But I have the patience of a gnat, and just want it to be pretty now! I hit 20,000 words today, so then I just try to think: well, even if can't quite get hold on the process, or how best to both write and revise, even if I feel like I'm just bumbling around blindly with everything I do--at least it's still moving forward. Gotta take what you can get sometimes.

Revision Vs. Rewrites

It's funny how much of the plotting process is about sitting and staring into space. I spent several hours today staring into space and trying to unravel a plot knot I'd worked myself into. I knew I wanted my character to get to Point B, but after getting notes back from my editor, I realized she has to get there a different way than how I'd written it.

Which means, you guessed it: Rewrites. Completely rewriting scenes makes me grouchy. I far prefer revision, just editing and tweaking what's already on the page. Rewrites mean throwing out old pages and writing new ones. Now don't get me wrong, I'm not grouchy that things need to change, but that I didn't take the time to fully think the situations through in the first place. I look at the lovely pages that will just have to be completely sacked. I think about how much time it took to write those pages. I make a grouchy face.

Then, I sit and stare into space, trying to figure exactly HOW I'm going to unravel this mess with the new angle on the scene (i.e., remove all adults, have our plucky teenage heroes do it on their own). And how to do it logically so that the suspension of disbelief can be achieved as seamlessly as possible.

So today, instead of piling up word count as I like to do, or editing through and then satisfyingly marking a chapter off my mental map, I scribbled on notebook page after notebook page trying out ideas and solutions before I commit to them. Answering questions like:

• Can I get BOTH characters to point B logistically, or does it work better if one stays behind?
• If only my main character goes, should she do it one way, or another way?
• Is it too much of a coincidence if this other thing happens while she's there, or is there a way I can make it feel natural? Maybe if I drop a foreshadow-y feeder hint ahead of time, it won't seem so oddly coincidental. In fact, I need to make it part of the cause-and-effect cycle (A causes B which causes C, and then it's not so odd when A comes back around again and surprises everyone), and it will feel even more logical.

Some things, you just can't see ahead of time until your Very Smart Editor points them out , even if you're big on outlining like me. Rewrites (unfortunately!!!) are part of the game. But still, I'm going to make sure I spend extra time sitting and staring into space to REALLY think out scenes for the next book before I write them, especially ones that are kind of iffy (yes, I'm looking at you, opening scenes of next book, I can smell from here I haven't fully thought you out yet).

The Bits of GLITCH that are Bits of ME

So I was doing my pre-writing or editing quiet/meditation time with my favorite Natalie Goldberg. Today this was the nugget that jumped off the page at me. It's chapter 4 from Thunder and Lightening, and it's all about the way we naturally write ourselves into our book.

I read a piece online lately and the young author was writing about the elderly, something far beyond her years and experiences, and the characters felt like bad imitations of stereotypes. No, Goldberg is right. She suggests we can't make a fictional character exactly like ourselves, because rarely are we able to be that vulnerable, to even understand or be willing to share all our motivations. But through fiction, the conscious and unconscious parts are ourselves pour out all jumbled up. This is a universe all in our own head, so naturally it is built of our parts - our hopes, fears, insecurities, life experiences.

Goldberg says: "The people we befriend usually mirror ourselves, our known and unknown parts." Now this is a very big statement that makes me look around at the relationships in my life and think, huh! she's right! But it also can be said of our characters. Characters who feel real aren't ones we picked out of a stereotype catalogue. All the formative things that have happened to me, that I've read, movies I've seen, things that seeped into my psyche slowly over the years are poured out in this book. What's funny, is I didn't think to realize it until 1) I'm a year out from writing the initial first draft 2) I'm in editing, where I really think consciously about each character's motivations and 3) the fabulous Goldberg.

Now that I look at it, I'm like, holy crap! There's the obvious--my love for 80's and 90's sci-fi and fantasy movies, the melodrama of romance novels, even watching The Little Mermaid EVERY day after school for all of 2nd grade. Then there are the less obvious, the unconscious things working themselves out--I see how that rough patch in my marriage is reflected, the deep ache of longing for beauty and hope in a hard, painful world, that time I was so sick with my chronic illness that I was in a wheelchair--especially the anger of that period. I was always such a good little girl, I'd never felt anger like that, and such a sustained anger. I woke up angry and went to bed angry for a year and so now I can draw knowingly from that texture of anger.

In a way, I see that all the characters in my novel are almost stages of myself. Zoe, naive, just waking up to the world of emotion and good and evil (something I think happens with most teenagers). Adrian, at least in Book I, is most like me now in his belief in beauty and hope, though it will be tested. And Max, dear Max, you are so many things to me. You are what I have wanted and who I have been and chaos and rule-breaking. You are Id, trying to grow up, needing a little Super-ego to come along and tame some of that into a healthy place.

I'm only 29, and maybe my book reflects that too - at 50, I'm wonder if this would be a very different book? But at 29 I've been poor to the point of impoverished, have been well off while my husband had a posh office job, deal daily with chronic illness, have lived in a bad part of Chicago, have lived in a safe pattern-stamped suburb neighborhood, gone back to school, am married, have a kiddo, have swam in a river, have gone to Romania, have pooped in an outhouse, have had older adventurous brothers that I loved and wanted to emulate SO badly, have been religious, have been not religious, have been sexy and have been plain, and more, so much more. And the key to life as well as writing: hope and compassion, always.

Edit Land: Experiments with Language

My editor mentioned on the first round of edits for Glitch that she'd like to see if we could make the Glitch time and the being Linked up time (the Link is a method of societal control, with a chip in everybody's brain) have different kinds of language. As if we could really experience through language, the difference Zoe feels when she's Linked and when she glitches out from the Link. Yeah, so I had bigger things I was focusing on in Edit Round I, and now we come to Edit Round II, and she's gently nudging me about this again. And better yet, suggesting places I could do it and some ideas of how!

So I'm editing today, spending an inordinate amount of time on Chapter 1, but I think both Edit Gal and I count this as a key chapter where we set up the world and let readers get to know Zoe and want to be on her side. I start playing around with the language for when she's Linked, how a computer controlled mind might think and behave. And then it hit me: there wouldn't be personal pronouns in a group-think setting. There wouldn't be any I or me. Also, computer-think, like sign-language, wouldn't bother as much with transition articles like "the" or "as" or even forming complete sentences. They would want to get information across in as few words as possible. Period.

So anyway, I've been experimenting with this, and having Zoe transition back to personal pronouns when she's glitching, slowly learning how to get the feel of being an individual. It's exciting. We'll see what Edit Gal thinks when I turn it back in to her!!

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