Blog Chain: Rollicking Revisions
Today’s blog chain is brought to us by Sarah Bromley. She asks: “
How do you handle revisions? Do you revise as you’re writing, or do you wait until you’ve gone through beta readers and crit partners to revise? How soon after you finish do you begin your revisions?”
This is such a timely topic for me right now. I just finished the first draft of my MG and am still working on the first draft of my YA and doing copyedits on INCONVENIENT. So it’s revisions galore! I usually revise once the first draft is done. At one point, I made the mistake of giving people pages to read very early in a project’s development, and it completely threw me off course because it conflicted with my writing process. As I’ve said in the past, I detest outlining. I get a story, characters’ voices, and conflicts. If something is not clicking, I brainstorm with my crit partners (and anyone else who cares to listen) by talking/writing out my issues with the story. Once I smooth out the kinks, I begin writing. The more I write, the more the characters come to life. I may think I know where a character’s personality is headed but fifty pages in, I can be proven wrong. Basically, I work out my novel as I write. So when I sent out those early twenty pages, I didn’t fully know where the story was headed or the nuances of each character and I got many conflicting views and didn’t know where to start. I never did finish that project and won’t. I know better now.
If I’m truly stumped, I wait until I finish the first fifty pages before soliciting outside opinions. With the MG, I went back and forth with my readers about problems I was having before actually giving them the pages to read. Once I finished the first draft, I reread the pages, made notes of what was working and what wasn’t, compiled a list of questions and sent to my readers. With the YA I’m working on, I sent to readers after the first 50+ pages because while I knew where I wanted the story to go and had a clear vision of each character, I was out of ideas of how to get from point A to point B. After getting feedback, I put the manuscript aside for two months, and after finishing another project finally see what I need to do. Now, I’m going to write and no one will see it until I’m completely finished. I’m really energized about it again, but wish me luck anyway. 
Share your revision process and be sure to check out Eric’s excellent post from yesterday.
Thanks for sharing your process, and good luck with your new project!
You go, girl! You’re a writing fiend!!!
Too many cooks in the kitchen! I fully understand. Too much input too early on into a story’s development is a killer for me. Well put!
I totally know what you are talking about – no matter how much I might have my story outlined before starting – I never really know how it will work out until I finish that first draft.
Yep, sometimes sending pages out early ruins my writing process. I’m trying it this time…my crit group started up again and I’m writing as we go. It’s been interesting, to say the least LOL One thing I do like is that it’s forcing me to get 10 pages a week done. We’ll see how it goes
Sending out pages too early can be detrimental, and God knows I’m guilty of hitting my crit partners with multiple drafts of a project. However, I just had to write a synopsis for an unwritten project for my agent (something I never thought I could do because I’m a pantser), and it’s weird knowing exactly where I want to send a project before I plunk down one word.
I’d never even considered how detrimental it might be to the writing process to send out chapters to early. I can see how that would happen.