The Rewrite: The How To Guide for Revising Rewriting & Editing Your Novel: Writer to Author, #4

By Scott King

The Rewrite: The How-to Guide for revising, rewriting, and editing your novel

Unleash the Power of Rewriting!

The Rewrite can help any writer take their shapeless draft to a completed novel!

Instead of getting lost in the labyrinth of endless revisions, let The Rewrite show you how to structure your process and finish your novel.

In this book, you'll learn:
•How To Do A Pass
•Common Character Problems
•Common Plot Problems
•Common Structural Problems
•How to Fix Pacing Issues
•World Building Tips
•Self Editing
•How to find Beta Readers
•How to Incorporate Feedback
•How to Know When Your Novel Is Done

The Rewrite offers a guided approach to the entire rewriting process and as always, author Scott King, plays along, making sure to do the assignments in the book so you can learn from his successes and mistakes.

Stop letting your novel kick your butt and beat it with the help of The Rewrite!

• Language: English
• Publisher: Scott King
• Release date: Nov 5, 2019
• ISBN: 9781393430803

Book preview

Introduction

Salutations. This is either our first time meeting or we’ve hung out a bunch. If you are new, welcome. I’m Scott King. I write novels and I write books about writing. If we are old friends, welcome back, g-funk! Either way, grab a coffee, or your drink of choice, sit down and let’s chat.

Over the course of The Rewrite, we are going to discuss all kinds of ways to bring a draft of something you have written to its finalized version. The Rewrite will serve as a Swiss Army knife you can adapt into your own writing process. When you need a specific tool, you can pop it out and use it. When done, you can fold it back up and put it away.

Your process may be different from my process. That is okay. I don’t want to teach you how to write the way I write. I want to give you tools you can adapt into your own methods to make them work for your process.

I know plenty of full-time authors, both indies and traditionally published who think rewriting is the worst thing possible. They write clean, almost word-for-word perfect drafts and that is what they turn in to their editors. I cannot do that. Even if I tried, I would never be able to do that. My brain doesn’t work that way… and that’s okay. Their method of writing is fully valid and if it is working for them, awesome. Just like it’s perfectly fine if I believe that writing is rewriting. For how I write, it is.

Because the topic of rewriting is a behemoth, we will be covering a lot of ground in The Rewrite. First we will talk about goals, because it is important to know what you want from the thing you are writing. From there we will go over various ways to assess a story, and how to diagnose problems. The bulk of The Rewrite will focus on the various kinds of passes you can do when writing, and we will wrap things up with editing and how to get and use feedback from readers.

Every section of The Rewrite will have assignments for you to complete, and they build upon each other. If you are reading this for the first time, I recommend doing them in order, but if you are doing a re-read, you are fine to jump around.

Before I broke into publishing, I was a college professor and, as a result, whenever I list assignments in a non-fiction book, I like to play along. Doing so is the closest way I have found to simulate a classroom environment in book form. By seeing me do the assignments, and sometimes screwing up, it will help you not only have a better idea of what you need to do, but also learn from the mistakes that I make, and see how I fix those mistakes.

In unison with The Rewrite, I will be working on my novel, The Stardrake Effect, taking it from first draft to a ready-to-be-published book. The Stardrake Effect is a new adult sci-fi character drama. Think of it as something like Rainbow Rowell’s Fangirl, but set at Starfleet Academy, and instead of a romance, the main storyline focuses on a woman and her space-dog. It’s a bit mushy. It’s got lots of heart, humor, and it seems to make people cry both happy and sad tears. If that sounds like your jam, and totally something you’d want to read… and you don’t want to be spoiled, read it before reading this book. Otherwise, don’t worry about it.

We will talk about it more when we discuss beta readers, but in general readers have a huge preference when it comes to genre. Many readers don’t like to read outside of their chosen genre. So if The Stardrake Effect doesn’t sound like your cup of coffee, that’s okay. You can still learn from watching me fix it, without having to read it, or even being a fan of the genre.

Before we move on, you need to know one final thing… the most important thing to know about writing is that there is no right way to write.

To be a writer, all you have to do is write. If your current process is allowing you to do that, then keep doing it. The best way for you to write, or rewrite, is what works best for you. No matter what I tell you in this book, or what anyone else tells you, listen to yourself first.

Part I

Know Yourself & Your Story

1

Know Why You Wrote The Story

So, you wrote a thing. Said thing might be super awesome, or only slightly awesome. It might have lots of problems, or only a few. You are looking at your finished draft and most likely dreading having to deal with it. Before going any further, you should take a moment and really appreciate the fact that you wrote a thing.

From being a college professor, to having author friends, to interacting with those who have read my non-fiction books, I can promise you that many people want to have written a thing but only a small percentage ever actually do. So take a moment and be proud of yourself. Writing it was an achievement.

I wish I could tell you that the hard part is behind you, but that isn’t necessarily the case. Getting the first draft out of you and written down might have been time-consuming and taken an enormous amount of determination, but the next steps of revising, rewriting and editing are a different kind of brutal.

Books are born out of the writer. They are pieces of the person who created them. Over time it may become easier to separate yourself from the work, but often the more novice a writer, the harder it is. It will hurt to look at a thing you were excited about and thought was awesome. It will hurt to then murder it by scraping out bits of dialog, stealing a piece of a scene to put somewhere else, reconstructing it, or doing a dozen other things in the goal of making it better.

Getting through the first draft was rough enough but now I’m telling you… go ahead. Keep going. Do it again, but this time it will hurt more… and I’m sorry about that.

Although it can be emotionally painful, this act of rewriting shouldn’t be as tedious as the first draft. It is often easier to tweak and adjust a scene to make it stronger than it is to create a scene from nothing. That is what we will be doing together, going in and adjusting specific parts of your manuscript with the goal of improving the overall quality.

Before we jump into doing that, you need to be clear on a few things. You need to dig deep and figure out why you wrote the story you did. You need to know your overall goal with the story. You need to have an idea for your personal preference and taste when it comes to storytelling.

There are many valid reasons to write a book. Maybe the story is one that is important to you and you want to share it. Maybe the idea has been festering in your brain for years and writing it down is the only way to get rid of it. Maybe you are doing it because you want to win an award. Maybe you are doing it because you think it will sell well and will make you money. Maybe you were excited about a new magic system. Maybe you really just wanted to write a Firefly clone because it is your all time favorite TV show. Maybe you just wanted to write something that breaks people’s hearts…

There will be those who try to tell you that your reason, whatever it may be, is not good enough. That if you want to be an author you must do it for the Art with a capital A, or that if you want to make it in the publishing business your reasons for writing your story must be driven by what is selling on the market.

Whatever your motivation is for writing this story, it is valid.

Seriously.

Listen to what I am trying to tell you.

Your reasons for writing the book that you did are justified. You wrote a thing. That makes you a writer. Don’t let anyone else try to take that away from you. Don’t let anyone try to police or gatekeep what it means to be a writer.

You are a writer.

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Assignment

Write down why you chose to tell this story. There is no right or wrong answer, but be honest with yourself.

Try to keep your reason focused more on story choices as opposed to your business goal for writing this story. Even if your overall reason was to write to market and you hope to make some bucks off it, you still made story-related choices. Why did you choose the point-of-view (POV) character you did? Why did you give them the arc that you did? What motivated you to give them the main goal that you did or why did you set up the conflict the way that you did? Those are story choices. What drove those choices?

Why this story?

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The Stardrake Effect

Since I am playing along with the assignments, it is only fair that I open up and be honest with you about why I wrote The Stardrake Effect.

Last summer, our dog Winchell died. He was thirteen and a half years old. While grieving and as a way to help cope, I decided to write The Stardrake Effect.

Winchell was raised and trained to be a seeing eye dog, and I wanted to write his story. I knew it would help me deal with the loss, but beyond that, my main goal is that I wanted to share him. I wanted people who had never met him, to know him, and I wanted to immortalize him in story form so that even though he is gone, he will still live on.

2

Know How You Intend To Publish

You wrote a book and now you know why you wrote that book. Now you have to decide what you intend to do with it. This probably sounds like a horrible time to make such a choice, but knowing the end goal for a book can impact the story.

There are two major routes you can take with your novel:

Self-publish it.

Try to traditionally publish it.

I offer no judgment on which route you decide to take, but you do need to decide.

If you self-publish, you will be taking on the role of publisher. This means you will have to find and hire an editor. You will have to pay that editor. You will have to pay any other readers or consultants that you use. You will have to hire a cover artist. You will have to hire someone to format your book or pay for software that will allow you to do it. You will have to plan the book launch. You will have to pay for advertising.

Self-publishing is a lot of work. It is not simply writing a book and then uploading it to Amazon. By self-publishing, you are taking on a lot of tasks and