Best rules for revising first draft

[Scott]

The feeling of wrapping of the first draft is excellent, and lasts for about ten seconds until we start thinking about the first edit.

What are the best rules of thumb you have ever seen for the most effective review process for a first draft?

[Rebecca]

Wait. Don't start editing until you are distanced enough from it to be objective.

[Rebecca]

When I taught at UCLA in the Writers Program I suggested the pyramid approach. First edit is for foundation - does the story hold together. Second edit is for continuity - are you missing a clue or an explanatory passage. Third edit is for style - your personal voice. If the foundation isn't big and solid, all the tiny flourishes in the world aren't going to make the book a great one. There are so many ways to edit but that one has always worked for me. Good luck. PS and if you can hire an outside editor after you've done all the leg work on the pyramid.

[Scott]

Rebecca, great advice. When you say "hold together" do you mean logically, or do you mean it stands up as a compelling story?

I love your comment about clues. I plan to work back from major events and clue them up in advance more.

I have read that every event should have an emotional impat on a main charcter - seems a bit of a challenge, what do you think of that advice?

[Rebecca]

Scott, sorry, I mean that it must hold together on all levels. Do the characters make sense in terms of motivation, is the progression of the story logical, is the place appropriate to the story you're telling. You'd be surprised how often we don't think about the story as a whole. When I wrote Hostile Witness - a book that proved pivotal for my career - I had a great plot but the character's motivations and where I was going to have her live cut off opportunities for expansion. Once I changed that part of the foundation everything else fell in place and there was not only logic there were rich characters/place to build on. The second level - clues etc - is there a place that you could create a red herring, massage dialogue to foreshadow, that kind of thing. Have you moved people realistically from place to place. I call it the transporter edit. Did I just transport someone like in Star Trek or did I add that one line that leads the reader to understand how they got to the next step. As far as eery event having an emotional impact on the main character, no, I don't think so. I do think every event needs to have an impact on 'a' character. I view every character no matter how small as necessary to the emotion growth of the hero. For instance, the witness series has 3 main characters. Heroine: Josie Bates. Her lover Archer. Her sixteen-year-old ward, Hannah. The arc off the story belongs to Josie. Within that arc the plot touches Hannah and Archer but all loop back to Josie. Don't know if that makes sense :). It's so much easier in a classroom face to face LOL. These are only my opinions and what has worked for me. I'm on my 30th book and had a traditional career for 25 years. I learned so much from New York but, in the end, you must be the one with the hypercritical eye. You also will find methods that work for you. They may be built on what works for me and others but if you embrace rules you can get bogged down. If you embrace a concept like the pyramid it seems to me that you can find your own way to the top in a number of different ways. Ugh, so sorry to go on and on. Hope a little bit of this gets you to a comfortable place. One thing I know for sure. The hard work of writing is in editing. I often do my entire manuscript 5 or 6 times.

[Scott]

Rebeca,

Thanks for that excellent advice, I really appreciate you taking the time. I basically did no re-writes to my first two books, but have scheduled one month to work on my third once the first draft is finished (aiming for Saturday).

I see the necessity for each action to have a reaction, but your point on the emotional changes within supporting characters looping back on the main character is enlightening.

Learning to write is almost as much fun as writing. My fourth book is going to be thoroughly structured.

Still, shooting from the hip has been fun too: I just read.a review on Amazon for one of my books - hard to believe that things I tap out on an Ipad in Switzerland are being read in Seatle and Hong Kong.

[Rebecca]

Scott - congrats on the international readership! You haven't posted the name(s) of your books so we can check it out. I think inevitably the key to success is creating memorable characters. I have read many interestingly plotted books but what I remember is character. I always smile when someone writes and asks "How's Josie?" "Where is Hannah?" When characters become personal to the reader it's a score. I loved the process, too, and am still learning even after 29 years.

[Scott]

Well, since you asked, my two books are listed below.

The first one (Templar Vault) has had quite few decent reviews on both the main English language Amazon sites (US and UK)- strangely the reviews are not combined. The second book has a poor title and is "off market" in terms of topic. Lesson learned as my third book comes close to the first in topic.

Really trying to hold back on planning Book Four until I get this third one wrapped up.

My ambition is to follow a path a little like the one you have taken and have a body of work of some depth (my goal is to write 20 books). I was surprised to find myself making money on the first efforts - a great encouragement.

Here are my first two.

[Rebecca]

I'm working on book 30 and I will tell you that your life passes before your eyes that way :). You can definitely do it. Love your covers and you are smart to remain on a focused trajectory. I made that mistake early in my career - writing either what I felt like or what I thought the market would bear instead of using 'my voice'. Once I hit legal thrillers my voice was established and there is enough room in the thriller/legal/political area to satisfy the creative urge while staying on track. I've been lucky to meet people along the way who have been generous with their knowledge. The trick is to understand what they're telling you. One of the most brilliant, actually, is a woman who helped me plan mid-way through my career for the marketing aspects. She runs Creative Center of America. Smartest person I ever met in terms of planning careers for creative types. She calls it creating a 'talent-driven brand'. Congrats on understanding there are many hats to wear as a writer - not just the creative one.

[Scott]

Thanks for the advice, all duly noted and added to my big book of writing advice (this is not a joke, I do have a file full of good advice). If you don't mind me asking, which of your books was the one that was closest to your original plans in terms of plot and character?

[Rebecca]

Scott, first I'm so impressed with your big book of writing advice. It's so cool to be added. That is a really interesting question. I think the Witness Series in terms of the 3 main characters but they have grown so much over the course of 6 books - so they are still the same but have back lives I had no idea of when I first started. My personal favorite book, Before Her Eyes, was extraordinarily clear on all levels: character, blending of two genres, the last page twist. That book was just crystalline in my mind but it was hard to write because I combined fantasy and police procedural and two tracks - first person and third person. It was really intricate. So was Eyewitness which had one story start 50 years earlier in Albania and a modern story. In that one the old story had to catch up with the modern story. I always knew what the book was about and who the characters were but the diagraming of the time frame was a misery.:) Also, in that one I faced a little bit of what you were. The theme was justice and how we view it. So it was a clash of Ancient clan justice versus modern legal justice. The bad guy was really mindlessly bad but there was a compelling reason for his actions.