Revising: Things Fall Together

The way things fall together when revising isn’t something I can teach. The way it works for me is: it just happens. But if I could figure out how to do it intentionally? That would be my writing utopia.

Take one small change just because. I want to see how it works. If it doesn’t work, I’ll cut it.

Inner Circle by James Lee via Flickr

So I make the change. And it clicks into place perfectly because it’s meant to be there. A dozen little details suddenly become part of the pattern. They’d been missing that connection, and the new change was it.

I can’t keep every bit of a novel in my head – especially when I move so slowly through it – and I’m not one of those writers who keeps an encyclopedic binder full of notes.

For one, I don’t have the patience for that. For another, I have yet to write a story that monstrously complex.

The trick to consciously determining what changes to make and why lies in deepening your understanding of the craft of writing and storytelling. And to do that, you need to immerse yourself in stories of all kinds. Take classes and workshops with instructors you trust. Read books on writing (the good ones). Read other books – fiction and non-fiction, as much as you can hold. Surround yourself with writers. Find a writing group that both challenges and supports you.

And write. Finish what you write. At least a first draft. If you haven’t done that yet (it took me years until I finally finished stories), you will be amazed at how much it teaches you.

The more you learn, the better you’ll be. Ten years ago, I didn’t have the faintest clue about anything like story structure. What was it? How did it work?

Now I’m getting better at picking out where the structure is flopping and how to fix it, though most days I still feel clueless.

Maybe in another few decades, I’ll have figured out the secret to making all the story pieces fall into place. Or maybe it will remain a mystery.

And if you’ve figured it out, let me know in the comments. I’ll pay! Money, my first born . . . I’m sure we can work something out.

The post Revising: Things Fall Together appeared first on Anxiety Ink.