Color-coding for reasons TBD

I'm so proud of myself! I actually started novel revisions yesterday.

My goal is to revise a chapter a day, but some of the chapters will need to be broken up into smaller chunks. I need to do this anyway because having only 16 chapters in a 70,000 word novel is not a good idea.

I'm hoping that during this process, I will be struck by some genius title for my novel. The working title of "The Career Killer" makes it sound like the criminal makes a habit of killing people's careers, which is a bit trivial compared to serial killers. Still not sure what direction I'm going there yet. But if I go the traditional publishing route in the end, it might not matter because they like to make those decisions themselves.

The first thing I did was color code the revision process. I bought sticky notes and wrangled up matching highlighters. Character is pink, world is green, language is blue, and plot is orange. 

I got the color-coding idea from my young adult writing teacher, Jennifer Lynn Barnes, which is hilarious to me because she explained in detail how her process works and then said she does absolutely nothing with all of the colors when she's finished. I have a feeling my color-coding will end up going down a similar path. But it's fun, and the colors keep my brain engaged.

So far, revising has consisted of writing down line edits on the printed copy, adding more descriptive words, and rewording passages of dialogue to give characters more concrete voices.

I've also created hand-written pages for each character, where I am writing down all of the details about the character as they are mentioned in the novel. I have word documents like this already for each character, but this way, I will be able to tell which details I've left out and which ones I've mixed up. 

I talked with my good writing friend, Rachel, about revising and she suggested that when I actually go to make the changes in my 380-page word document that I should save a new copy with the changes. She said this is in case I end up not liking the changes in the long run. I'm glad she told me this now rather than once I was halfway through the novel.

Keep checking back for more revision updates as I learn how to revise a novel.

Update and a Game Plan

Since my last post, which I am ashamed to say was about a year and a half ago, I have come a long way in my writing career. I interned at The Oklahoma Gazette and was offered a paid freelancing position. I wrote the first draft of my police procedural novel, which currently stands at 70 thousand words. And I began a second internship at The Chickasha Express-Star, where I currently work.

Despite all of this progress, I still feel like I don't know what I'm doing. Even though I have days at the Express-Star where my brain slides into the familiar speed of writing, it still scares me to think that this is what I want to do with the rest of my life.

Other days, it's like pulling teeth. Phone numbers are no longer in service, sources are on vacation, and there's nothing in all of Grady County to take a picture of for the lead art. It's usually on those days, the days where I can read 100 pages of Anthony Doerr's All The Light We Cannot See, where I question myself.

In my opinion, it's a documented fact that doing new things is scary. As humans, we fear the unknown, even when we perceive the outcome to be positive. So much of journalism, and writing in general, is groping around in a dark attic looking for the pull cord on the single light bulb. And some days, you give up because it's just too hot in the attic. You climb down the stairs, fold them up, and push them back up into their place. And then, you pretend like the attic, it's stupid light bulb, and even the stairs to that annoying place don't exist.

But other days, the pull cord is right where it's supposed to be. And when you touch it, everything comes into focus. The sources call you back and have riveting things to say. You connect with this community on a new level and can come to understand something new about yourself or about humanity as a whole. You can see a difference being made. It's a difficult balance between these two types of days.

Even though the euphoric feelings that come with finding the light bulb give me positive reinforcement, I often pat myself on the back one-too-many times for finally finding the pull cord.

"Go take a break. You've done enough for the day," my inner voice tells me. "You deserve to pretend your finished novel hasn't been sitting untouched on your dresser for two months. It was an accomplishment just to finish it. Continue to revel in that fact, and don't worry about making progress."

For the past two months, I've listened to that voice. I had a lot of major life changes take place around the same time. I started going to the gym, not only to improve my health, but to find a time when my brain would slip into that familiar speed like when I write.

I got on here originally to make a novel game plan with the inspiration of a blog post from my previous teacher, Jennifer Lynn Barnes. In her blog post on revision, she explains that the four most important components of a book are language, world, plot, and character. Then she offers many questions to ask yourself about each of those elements during revision. I've got to start somewhere. So it might as well be here.


Revision Game Plan:
Character

• Develop character backgrounds

Plot

• Make every scene do more than one thing (language, world, plot, character)
• Break up chapters
• Add fingerprinting of suspects

World

• Describe each scene, character fully
• Do a pass to add emotion
• Add nuances of police/medical worlds
• Add presence of guns?

Language

• Remove extra dialogue tags
• Give each character individualized voice
• Make sure Sailor's voice is consistent
• Remove anything that doesn't NEED to be there