This is part of a series, 30 Days to A Stronger Novel

What do you do after you turn in your manuscript?

I love Sara Miller Holmes musings about this in-between time. She’s allowing herself to be empty and expect nothing else. She’s letting whims take her to new sections of the library. Allowing poetry to fill the empty spots. Living.

Read. Sometimes, in the heat of revision, I don’t read other novels. But then, like a starving person, I gorge on novels. I take in words and story, so I can give out again.

I go back to another novel that’s sitting forlorn in my drawer, one that I didn’t know how to revise, but I knew wasn’t ready to go out, either. I re-read it, play around with sentences, phrases, here and there. Have I lived long enough to be ready to tackle this one again?

Or, I play with voices and language and ideas. Is this the start of a new story?

Mostly, I trust that writing is a cyclical process, as Sara Holmes has said so eloquently. I will write again. I will revise again. Right now? I’m just living that full life. Waiting for a new beginning, a project that will grab my heart and not let me go.

And every time that phone rings, hope makes my heart skip a beat. . .

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This is part of a series, 30 Days to A Stronger Novel

Does the revision process ever end?

Yes!

How do you know when your novel is ready to send off to a publisher?

You don’t. This is all I know: I can’t think of anything else to do that will make it better. None of my critiquers are sparking anything that raises niggling questions. I’ve done the best job I know how to do at this time. Unless I get feedback from someone that takes me in new directions, there’s nothing more I know to do.

Then I send it off, unapologetically. Even it it gets rejections from everyone, I stand by what I said: I’ve done the best job I know to do at this time of my life.

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Uh-oh. You got those critiques and your readers didn’t think your story was perfect.

I hear the groans and sighs. I see how tired you are and that you thought you were finished, but maybe–that little voice won’t let go the idea–you need to do one more big change in plot.

Yes. It happens. A major revision is a failure.

No. You mustn’t think of it that way! The revision you just finished is a major step on the way to a novel that will proudly display your name as author!

How do you face another revision, right after you’ve just done a revision? With courage and determination, just as you faced this revision. Most novels will go through three or four major revisions and some need much more than that. The key is to hold a standard in your mind and not be satisfied until you reach that.

What is your standard?

Then, think honestly about what your next step should be. Submission or revision?

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Revision can often be a long, drawn-out affair. Work, family, life crises–many things can interrupt the novel revision process. Expect it.

Some of you will have a car wreck. Some will have a major computer crash. Some will experience illness. Some will experience loss of a family member. Some will get married! Grief, love, despair, joy, vacations, trips, births, deaths, strange spaces of time, short spaces of time, crisis mode, maintenance mode. Life is short. Life is full. Never busy–full.

Your job as a novelist is, in the midst of your full life, to keep on coming back–somehow– to the novel revision process until you finish it.

Editors often say that the first chapter of a novel is superb, but the rest of the novel doesn’t measure up. Writers tend to polish and polish that first chapter, but get distracted by a full life and don’t polish the rest. Don’t let that happen to your story.

Stay the course.

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You need feedback on your novel. That’s a given.
Be careful who you ask for feedback. There are a variety of critiquing styles

Besides a good critique group, or an editor you can “trust with a draft,” you can also use “naive” readers, or those who know nothing about the writing process.

For these readers, you have some simple instructions.
1. Read the story and enjoy it. But pay attention to how you are feeling as you read.
2. When you come to a place that is confusing to you, write a big C in the margin.
3. When you come to a place that is boring, write a big B in the margin.
4. When you come to something that you don’t believe would happen in this story, put a big D in the margin.

That’s it. You don’t want their ideas on how to make it better. You don’t want them to mark misspelled words or punctuation. Oh, OK, if they are obsessive and it makes them feel better–no, even then, that’s not their job. Their only job is to pay attention to their feelings as they read.

Now, you can’t argue with their opinion. Nor, can you ignore their opinion. It’s simply how they felt as they read and you must consider if other readers will feel the same.

Another option for feedback is reading aloud to kids. You can read about my surprising experiences reading a WIP to kids here and Dori Butler’s similar experience here

Critique group, trusted editor, “naive” readers, or reading aloud to kids–each method of getting feedback has pros and cons. The important thing is to get feedback of some kind. Writing is communication and you must check how well your communication efforts are working.

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You have three subplots. How do you keep them straight and all relevant to the main plot? You knit (YouTube, “The Last Knit”) them together!

It’s a good idea to take time to build in connections. List the main characters, settings, emotions, and events of each plot (used here to mean plot or subplot), using a large sheet of paper and one column for each plot. Then look for ways you can connect the plots.

Each main characters is probably involved in at least two plots, maybe more. Can you reuse settings across plot lines? Can an event in the main plot have ramifications for the subplots? Are similar emotions displayed across plot lines? How can something in a subplot raise the stakes in the main plot? Build in as many connections as possible!

Then look at a list of scenes for the various plots and try to arrange them in the most dramatic way. Maybe one plot gets to a high point and you leave the reader hanging in suspense, while you cut to developments in another plot. Maybe you need a scene from this plot to raise the stakes in the that plot. Think hard about the suspense and tension created by the sequencing of scenes.

(BTW, did you like the You Tube video?  Do you watch videos like that when they are listed in a post?) 

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Picturebooks say one thing–emotionally.

Novels, on the other hand, comment on one thing from multiple perspectives and with sidetrips here and there. This means subplots. In a novel, you can take a sidetrip to act as a tour guide for a foreign land (such as the middle school across town!), to give extensive back story, or other reasons. The subplot, though, isn’t one of these sidetrips. Instead, it’s a set of cohesive actions with it’s own main characters, goals, setbacks and resolutions.

Types of Subplots

• Main character’s secondary concerns and goals. The main character can have more than one goal, usually relating to the main goal in some way. Romantic subplots are common.
• Secondary character’s concern and goal. One of the other characters is the hero of his/her own plot.

The key for all subplots is that they relate to the main plot and intersect with it in some way. For example, if the main plot is stopping a parent from smoking, subplots might be winning a stop-smoking poster contest, stopping single parent from dating someone, and a romance with the son of the storeowner who sells the cheapest cigarettes.

A subplot lets you comment on a side issue, show a contrasting point of view, raise the stakes in the main plot, deepen characterization through variety or contrast, provide plot twists, etc.

To plot a subplot, repeat the same steps as for the main plot, except that the subplot will be simpler, with fewer steps between the conflict and resolution.

Subplots can be introduced and resolved in just a couple chapters. For example, a chase scene that extends over three chapters in the middle of the novel could be a red herring, but gives tension for that sagging middle.

Subplots can also be introduced in the first or second chapter and have threads throughout until the end. The common practice is to resolve all subplot before the main plot, with the execption of the romance subplot, which by convention is resolved last.

Don’t let subplots be haphazard or under-developed. Give them the same thought and care you give to the main plot. Just keep them in scale to the main plot.

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If the theme dictates much of the setting of a story, it also affects to the characters and actions of a story.

Remember, this is my theme:
Work hard because you love the sport, not because you love to win.

What actions are implied by that theme? A competition, probably several. Some, the character will win, and some, he’ll lose.

OK. Good. That was easy. What else?

Well, we know from the setting that Dad is the competitive one (Remember his den, the shrine to a life of competition?), so we’ll assume some scenes with Dad (and possibly Mom) about competitive attitudes. Perhaps the parents are pushing J. to enter a competition or train for a competition.

Anything else? Yes. If the parents represent the negative aspects of competition, then we some character(s) to represent the positive aspects. Will the Positive Character have conflicts with the parents? Probably.

Look for places where these things occur in the current draft and work to deepen the conflicts and polarize the positions of each camp–and your theme will shine brighter.

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This is part of a series, 30 Days to A Stronger NovelOnce you have your novel’s theme clear in your own mind, you can strengthen that theme during revision by paying attention to setting.

Let’s assume this is the theme for my novel:
Work hard because you love the sport, not because you love to win.

I’ll need to think about settings in which my character lives. Does he care about winning? Then what posters are on his wall? Olympic medalists. What magazines does he read? Running magazines that emphasize competition.

Or, really, it’s Dad who pushes the competition, so when you walk into Dad’s study, his walls are covered with shelves of bowling trophies, pictures of Dad and famous men he’s met in his work, framed certificates of appreciation from obscure places that most people would pitch a day after receiving, pictures of Dad crossing a finish line, of Dad wearing a high school basketball tournament, of Dad in sixth grade looking misshappen by huge football pads, of Dad in first grade with a skinny chest and toothy smile holding up a swim team medal. Oh, now, we know where that competition comes from and what our character has to battle against. Before we even meet Dad, we know what he’ll say to poor J.

Here, I found the emotional landscape of the story, the setting that underlies the theme, in the description of Dad’s study.

You might find it in

• the historical time period you choose for the story: a story about loneliness could have power if set in the pioneer prairies.
• the weather: A windy coastline is a setting for a story about restlessness.
• the clothing: Stuffy Victorian clothing with high collars, long sleeves, and long skirts tells of a repressed spirit.
• the food: For a kid who feels smothered by his parents, feed him liver smothered in onions.

Your theme should be echoed in many of the choices you make about setting.

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Some interesting links:

Alice Pope suggests provides links to information about agents for children’s literature.

Janni Simner looks at drafts of a first paragraph.

Have you seen the Google Earth Flight Simulator? Awesome.