Why You Need to Break Your Book (So You Can Fix It)

 

It may sound silly, the notion of “breaking” your book. After all, you wrote it, you’re going to publish it, and you love it. Why in the world would you want to hurt it?

Here’s something I’ve learned from editing my two books, and especially from taking the scary step of sending those books to beta readers: your book NEEDS to be broken. So that you can put it back together. So you can fix it. So you can make it better.

The process isn’t as simple as: write a book, publish it, earn millions. *wistful sigh* IF ONLY. It’s more like: get idea. Procrastinate. Write words. Let story slowly take over. Throw heart and soul onto page. Be brave enough to edit and send to beta readers. Repeat, repeat, repeat. Writing is hard work. Editing is hard work. Taking constructive criticism is hard work. But it’s all necessary hard work.

Save for that mythical person who writes a totally clean first draft and doesn’t have to edit, the rest of us DO have to. I’ve written parts in my books that I knew needed work, and parts I thought were ~amazing. My beta readers had pointers for me about all those areas and more. The thing is when I write, I’m sort of blind to my flaws. Even when I print out my edited draft and do line edits, I miss things. Sometimes they’re small things, and sometimes they’re big things.

The truth is, my beta readers are my life savers. Not only are they a focus group, but they really go out of their way to help me make my writing the BEST it can be, whether it’s helping me catch grammatical mistakes, or pointing out a consistency error, or in the case of ONE SONG AWAY (my upcoming December release), making several suggestions that ended up making OSA SO much stronger. It was a good book before it went to them. It came back STRONGER.

Was it fun hearing their critiques? Not really. No writer wants to hear that their book is flawed. We want it to be perfect! But the truth is, almost any book can be made better, and my beta helped me make mine better.

If you are blind to your book’s flaws, you won’t be able to improve it. You HAVE to realize and see the ways your book can be improved. You have to be willing to take constructive criticism for what it is – constructive – and see that no one is trying to hurt you OR your book. They are only saying what they’re saying because they see the possibilities in your draft.

At one point I tweeted I was going to “break this book again,” and that’s what I did. Along with editorial changes, I also added several scenes, deleted almost two entire chapters, re-wrote various scenes, and worked on a few changes that made my main character seem more consistent, and ultimately made the romance and the dynamic stronger. I worked at making my main character (who is impulsive and leaps to conclusions, bless her) learn how to stand still, which was one of the hardest things I’ve done with this draft.

I cut exchanges I loved. I did a LOT of re-wording, thanks to a beta who pointed out what I can now see would have been a seriously annoying tick in the book if I’d left it as is.

And in the end, ONE SONG AWAY is stronger. The final version is not the first or second version. Counting all the passes I did before, during, and after beta readers, it’s more like the eighth version. 

Eighth. 

Now when I read it, I feel pride. I know thanks to my betas and editor, I produced the BEST book I could. I can see their influence all over ONE SONG AWAY, and I wouldn’t change that for the WORLD. I took those broken pieces and when I glued them together, they became stronger. I’m so proud of this book, and so grateful for everyone who helped me get it ready for YOU.

 

ONE SONG AWAY releases December 1, 2014. For now, you can add it to YOUR Goodreads to be read.