So I’ve just finished off the 1st draft of my WIP. 76,267 (probably terribly written) words. Unfortunately I know it needs some pretty major surgery, the main bit being about 25-33% is written from a 2nd POV character and I’m ditching that character as a POV character. This is the first time I’ve gotten to this stage, so the editing process is new to me. So any tips on doing the sort of large scale editing I’ll need to do?
Do you know what a beat sheet (aka a step outline) is? After the 1st draft is a good time for one if you're inclined to use them.
I’m not familiar with a beat sheet but will definitely take a look into them. Elements of the story have been chopped and changed since I started, so something to help make sure everything is still in the right order and makes sense would be useful! Thanks
Ok, I wanted to find out if you're already familiar with the concept before launching into a big post about it. Here's a good page explaining how they work, and why you don't want to start off by making a beat sheet. You want to write the story the first time through, feel your way into it, not break it into bite-sized chunks of info and cold hard factoids. That part comes later, after you've sweated out an actual living breathing story with people in it. You have to get the heart and soul in from the beginning, it can't be transplanted in later. But your first draft has issues. It needs to be reworked drastically. Here's one way to do it: Step Outlines Scrivener software is designed to help you create something like a beat sheet, they call it the corkboard. But I played around and found a nice simple way to do it in any writing app that lets you create even the simplest Tables. It doesn't have to be in Evernote. You can use whatever word processor you already use as long as it lets you make tables, which I believe all of them do. The important thing is to be able to grab a cell and move it wherever you want, and to be able to easily edit the text in any cell. Though doing it in Evernote or a similar app does give the amazing added benefit of being able to include links in each beat leading to pages with more information. Or you can do it the old fashioned way, on 3 x 5 cards. There's definitely a romance to that. There are levels of beats in a story. What I've been discussing would be the larger story beats. Those can then be broken down into scene beats, at a much higher level of resolution. You break an individual scene down the same way you just broke the whole story down. This is the beauty of the Evernote setup, it lets you create your story outline and then each beat links to its own scene outline in greater detail.
Wow thanks for such a detailed response. Looks like I’ve got a lot to read up on but I think I get the gist of it (will read the link you sent later to get a better idea). I don’t have Evernote, but I think I can replicate something similar in Excel (if I’ve understood right).
Just finished my first edit, the structure of the story is now in much better shape. Thanks for your help Xoic! Now onto line editing I guess, or is it worth trying to get a beta reader before I do that to make sure the story holds up?
congrats! I would line edit first. I want my beta readers to really engage with the story and not get distracted be bad syntax or confusing sentences.
Thanks, a line edit it is! I'd kind of already started line editing anyway in places where I knew there were issues. Think I just need to go through it from start to finish though or I'll miss bits.
