Simplify Novel Revision with These Best in Practice Methods

Revision is a key process of novel writing, but to the detriment of many an aspiring author, it is often overlooked and/or misunderstood. Having knocked off that first draft of a novel – the one you’ve already spent hours, months, sometimes even years writing – you might think that the really hard work is done. But it is not done. In many ways, it’s just beginning. The reason we have a manuscript “first draft” is that there are subsequent drafts.

For some, the second draft means running a final spell check, cleaning up punctuation, and they may go as far as removing some of their overzealous adverbs and adjectives. They then declare their work a finished novel.

But not so fast. There is much more to novel revision than spelling and grammar. Much more. Revising a manuscript is a big job, one that an author cannot afford to skip.

Objectivity – the Key to Novel Revision

The new writer tends to be overly attached to their writing and is reluctant to remove any part of it. This is the first thing a novelist must overcome. Novel revision calls for objectivity – it’s not an easy thing. Sometimes we think we’ve written the perfect snappy line of dialogue, the most beautiful scene, and there’s no way you want to edit it out of your novel.

Advice: don’t be too much in love with your own writing. If something isn’t working to either move the story or reveal more about your characters – get rid of it. You don’t have to press the delete button, forever banishing your beloved words

Writing a Novel – 7 Tips on How to Create Character Emotion

How do we breathe authentic, effective emotions into characters when writing a novel?

The emotions of characters inform every aspect of a novel. Emotion is what pulls readers in and keeps them hanging on every word of every page. The best fiction writers take readers on an emotional journey, one with emotionally complex characters that readers will be thinking about long after they’ve finished reading the book. Because of this, novel writing is only for those who are willing to work hard enough to create complex characters that believably portray complex emotions.

Writing a Novel with Authentic Emotion

A typical writer understands feelings – we’ve all had our share of grief, happiness, anxieties, fear, exhilaration, depression, love, hate, and so on. Much good comes from writing a novel when we take the feelings and experiences we’ve had and use them to understand and portray our characters emotions. Using our experiences allows us to write with authenticity.

For example, in my novel, Peripheral View, my lead character (Pearl) suffers from epilepsy and her fear of having a seizure in public led her to have, first anticipatory anxiety, and eventually full-blown panic attacks. I wrote a scene that showed her reacting to the attack by trying to claw her way out of a bus.

A reviewer of the novel happened to be someone who had epilepsy. She asked if I suffered from it too. After I told her that I didn’t have epilepsy, her next comments both amazed and pleased me. She said that

The Top 4 Types of Point of View with Eyes on the Reader

Who said that???

“Who’s talking now?” That’s a question you don’t want the readers of your novel to be asking. In novel writing, the different perspectives from which a story can be relayed are known as types of point of view. In this section about novel writing, we will look at the top 4 types of point of view (POV) and how to select the best one from which to write your novel.

 

Top 4 Point of View Options of Novel Writing

• First person
• Third person, subjective
• Third person, objective
• Omniscient observer

1. A first-person point of view would read like this, “I traveled up the tree and down again in 60 seconds.” This point of view allows for only one perspective and everything the reader learns about the story comes from that perspective. The storyteller is allowed to reveal only her own thoughts and feelings. The feelings and thoughts of any other character are only exposed to the reader through that character’s dialogue or actions. The storyteller cannot get into the other character’s heads and can only reveal what she thinks and feels. She can have impressions of other characters, but that’s all.

2. A third person, subjective, point of view would read like this, “She traveled up the tree and down again and was sure she’d done it within 60 seconds.” This perspective is from the gal who climbed the tree, but it can occasionally shift to other characters. Using this type of point of view allows more characters to think and feel. This way of writing can be used with either a third person singular or third person multiple (or changing) perspective.

Writing Voice, Style, Point of View and Other Terms

In writing fiction, “style” is defined, in the most simplistic terms, as the way a writer writes. It’s the “voice” a reader hears when they read a novel. It’s your preferred method of telling a story. Your style seasons the entire novel whether you want it to or not. While you might try to emulate another writer because you admire their work and enjoy reading their stories, you may come close, but your story will still have your unique brand of writing style.

A person’s writing style is a mixture of many elements. It’s about how you like to write. Writing style comes through your choice of words, tone, and syntax. It’s also influenced by your personality, attitudes, thoughts, likes, dislikes, and idiosyncrasies – everything that makes you who you are.

Point of View and Other Novel-writing Terms

Terms like “point of view” (POV), “narrative voice”, and “writing voice” are understandably confusing. They are so often used interchangeably with “writing style”. However, each term represents a