\nOn October 31, 2012, Seawritesforfun wrote, I was wondering how can you make a book fluid? Mine is rather all over the place because I write very sporadically, (started in ’10, still not finished but very close now). I plan to do about 20 rewrites to try and fix it, but I\u2019m not sure whether or not that will disrupt the plot.<\/i><\/p>\n
First off, when we revise our first principle should be, must be: Everything is up for grabs to make the best book we can at this time.<\/p>\n
I don\u2019t mean we have to toss the first draft, because then we\u2019ll be writing a new book, not revising. And I don\u2019t mean that every element always has to change, only the ones that need fixing. For me, some drafts need just a little tweaking; some need much more. We work within the established framework, but we may have to move a few walls and change the furniture. We may have to add characters, drop characters, change POV, and even adjust (or disrupt) our plot. I\u2019ve begun my revisions for my second Elodie mystery. I don\u2019t foresee adding characters, but I\u2019m doing everything else, and my plot is definitely changing.<\/p>\n
If you\u2019re young, say you\u2019re fifteen now and you started your book when you were thirteen, of course the story feels jumpy. The you that started and the you who\u2019s writing now are separated by eons of growth and change and learning. So I suggest that you try to go through this revision in the span of a few months, tops, because you\u2019re still on a steep maturing slope. A year from now you may again be vastly different (although, naturally, many essentials will remain). If you start and then stop, fluidity may again elude you.<\/p>\n
A lot of the feeling of fluidity comes from voice. Try reading a few paragraphs from page 3 and a few from pages 25, 80, 130, etc. What do you notice? What are the differences? Which do you like? Maybe one of the pages has a contemporary voice, another goes even further into slang, another is more formal, and another has a distinct old-fashioned tone. Decide which best suits your story.<\/p>\n
Can you identify something that you can replicate to give the narration a sense of continuity? For example, in the Elodie books, when Elodie is surprised, she has a habit of saying or thinking, Lambs and calves! Just that expression helps create the sense of a single personality presenting the story. I\u2019ve switched to third person in this revision, although I\u2019m not sure I\u2019ll stick with it, but in most chapters Elodie is still my POV character, and the reader still encounters her Lambs and calves!<\/i>, not in every paragraph or even on every page, but often enough to remind the reader that this is Elodie\u2019s tale.<\/p>\n
In the past I\u2019ve mentioned a novel for adults, or for kids high school and up, The Blind Assassin<\/i> by Margaret Atwood, a fascinating mystery that switches from first-person to third, that changes tenses, and that intersperses the narrative with newspaper articles. The effect is jumpy, I guess, but the reader comes to expect the discontinuity, and the story works as a whole. The key is repetition. We can change tense or POV once right at the beginning or we can sandwich our narrative with a beginning and final shift, but if we\u2019re going to do more, we generally need to do it frequently. If there\u2019s just a single switch a third of the way into the story and not again, the reader is likely to be confused, but if it\u2019s a regular thing, she\u2019ll be prepared.<\/p>\n
Here\u2019s another, possibly weird solution. Think of Anne Frank\u2019s The Diary of a Young Girl<\/i>, which was written over several years, and which, admittedly, isn\u2019t fiction. Anne changes in the course of the book. The youngster at the beginning and the young adult at the end are vastly different. The reader accepts this because of the time span. Maybe you can work something into your structure that accommodates the two years you spent writing your book. Maybe your book can be presented as a journal. Or, if you can\u2019t separate the parts by time, maybe you can by distance. The first part takes place in an earth city, the next on recently colonized Venus, the next in a scientific station on the ocean floor. Or, separate them by narrator, so the voice is different in the different parts. Then, possibly, the revision won\u2019t be so radical.<\/p>\n
Here are four prompts:<\/p>\n
\u2022 Use the scenario I suggested. Your three MCs are geographically apart. Earth is running out of some resource, say, fresh water. Your characters are engaged in a project to save life on the planet, but there are conflicting allegiances among them, and there\u2019s a romance. Write the story, and make it jumpy, with different narrators, different time periods.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Tell a story within a story within a story, like those Russian nesting dolls that fit inside each other. Your MC is writing a novel about an actor who\u2019s in an original play. Your story includes all three: the life of the MC, chapters of the novel, and scenes from the play. Give your MC problems in her life that find expression in her novel and in the play inside the novel.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Write a contemporary story but tell it in an old-fashioned, fairy tale sort of voice.<\/p>\n
\u2022 Retell a fairy tale in a modern setting using a contemporary voice.<\/p>\n
Have fun, and save what you write!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
On October 31, 2012, Seawritesforfun wrote, I was wondering how can you make a book fluid? Mine is rather all over the place because I write very sporadically, (started in ’10, still not finished but very close now). I plan to do about 20 rewrites to try and fix it, but I\u2019m not sure whether […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[4,26],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=80"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":358,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/80\/revisions\/358"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=80"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=80"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=80"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}