Cohesive Story Building: formerly titled FROM FIRST DRAFT TO FINISHED NOVEL {A Writer's Guide to Cohesive Story Building} by Karen Wiesner

Author:Karen Wiesner [Wiesner, Karen]
Language: eng
Format: mobi
Tags: writing advice
Publisher: Writers Exchange E-Publishing
Published: 2014-12-01T16:00:00+00:00

Structure

Character, setting, and plot credibility and the cohesion of these elements

Depth of conflicts, goals, and motivations

Scene worthiness

Pacing

Effectiveness of hints, tension and suspense, and resolutions

Transitions

Emotion and color

Hooks and cliffhangers

Character voice

Consistency

Adequacy of research

Properly unfurled, developed, and concluded story threads

Deepening of character enhancements/contrasts and the symbols of these

Revision is redoing or reshaping in an effort to make what's already there better, stronger, and, of course, utterly cohesive.

Maximizing the Benefits

After you've completed a first draft and allowed the book to sit for a long time, the next step is revision. While I used to do this step off the computer on a hard copy of the book, the work involved after the revision done by my own messy (practically unreadable) hand, having to make all those corrections within the story file on my computer, became too immense. Literally, there was never a single page that didn't have countless changes, additions, or deletions. I now find this job a world easier to do on the computer.

I strongly believe that revision should be done as quickly as possible, with as little interruption from the material as possible. This won't compromise the quality of your revision, I promise--just the opposite, in fact! Ideally, if you can set aside a block of time of about a week (three days is generally the maximum time it takes me, but I always allow for a week) to work exclusively on the revision, you'll find that your story will be more consistent, and you'll remember details much better. In my case, I remember things photographically--I could argue that I memorize the entire book during this time, and any error will jump out at me as I work. During revision days, I may even be woken from sound sleep because a glaring error in some portion of the book will emerge from my subconscious. The whole book is quite literally laid out in my mind, ready to be accessed at a moment's notice during this short revision period. If revision on a project is broken up over a period of days or weeks, especially if you're working on other projects during this time, the book will most certainly suffer from consistency issues, and possibly even structural and cohesion problems. If you can set aside that crucial, uninterrupted block of time to focus on revision, your story will benefit from it immeasurably.

To get started, read through your punch list, which you've used to organize and state the items in need of final attention. Fix firmly in your mind the details you need to attend to while reading your book from start to finish. Check off what you've finished at the end of each work day so you'll know what you need to deal with when you come back to the revision.

Yes, during this time you'll be working on fixing more serious problems, but you probably will be doing some editing and polishing during this stage as well. You're there; it wouldn't make any sense to not clean up something small but not quite right that clearly needs a little elbow grease.

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