The Weekend Novelist Rewrites the Novel

This summer I’ve been revising a novel following (loosely) the schedule in the book The Weekend Novelist Rewrites the Novel by Robert J. Ray.

His basic tenant for revision:

“The key to rewriting your novel is not in line editing; the key is fixing the subplots.”

Why?

“Secrets lurk in the subtext. The easy way to get at secrets in the subtext is to work your subplots.”

And so, I worked the subplots.

I’m pretty linear in my thinking and writing. I draft starting at the beginning and go page by page to the end. Then for my edits, I go back to page one and slog through it all again. And again.

So focusing on the subplots as Weekend Novelist Rewrites suggests, felt a bit off to me. I kept reminding myself that I was still being linear—following one subplot (character) at a time from beginning to end. It still counted.

Then after the subplots were taken care of, I tackled the major scenes of the novel. Often, these were scenes I had gone over already because of tracking the subplots and where they collide with the main plot.

I have to admit, now that I’m nearing the end of this round of edits, I like the method. Mr. Ray uses a lot of screenwriting labels which help define various aspects of your story. I liked compressing this big story in my head into defining categories.

Chock full of diagrams, checklists (with suggested time limits), and grids, I found lots of helpful tips for rewriting my novel. There is even a continuing story of an author learning from a screenwriter about revision.

Diagrams

The author uses the standard rising action line, and redraws it for each portion of the rewrite—whether it be subplots or turning points. By compressing various parts of the story into this line, you can see what you are working on at a glance.

Lists

I didn’t use the checklists as much as I could have, but they did open my eyes to some things I can concentrate more on in my editing. For example, he focuses on sense perception and objects, and after reading checklist after checklist, I think those items are now permanently in my brain.

Grids

These spreadsheets pop up all over the book to help you get a handle on everything from your character’s role (protagonist, antagonist, helper) to their core story (coming of age, rags to riches, king replacement) to analyzing your nouns and verbs and their ratios.

The book is a mixture of scattered nuggets of wisdom combined with repetition of methods, so that by the end, you’ll be well trained on what to look for in your manuscript.