Starting the revision process again
The process of editing a novel is a continual one. If you’ve been following the path I laid out here,…
Revising Your Novel: Read What You’ve Written
You’ve written the first draft of a novel. You may have done this as part of NaNoWriMo, or you may…
Get Rid of Ugly Wordiness: How to Cut Your Novel Down to Size
When a writer contacted me to edit his 164,000-word novel, I told him publishers don’t like books that long. We…
Reading through your draft
You’ve written the first draft of a novel. You may have done this as part of NaNoWriMo, or you may…
Performing a light edit on your novel
The initial step in turning your first draft into a novel was to read your novel. The goal of this reading…
Creating a chronology for your novel
Some people might have written their novel in chronological order, from start to finish in a straight line. If you…
Editing your novel as you read it
This is the more traditional approach that people think of when they think about editing a novel. The process is…
Creating an information guide for your novel
What is an information guide? An information guide is much like a style guide. A style guide is a set…
Sample information guide for your novel
This is a brief example of an information guide. There are no hard and fast rules for information guides, so…
Creating a new roadmap for your novel
At this point, you are ready to perform a comprehensive reevaluation of your novel. Until now, the draft of your…