Sunday 3 April 2016

Do Not Enter - Serious Novel Editing Going On


On Thursday 18th of February (you see it's etched on my memory) you may remember I went up to London to have a meeting with Eve White of the Eve White Literary Agency. You may also remember how excited I was when I was offered representation by them.

To have an agent like your work enough to represent you feels like such a huge milestone that it is easy to think you have come to the end of your journey. As soon as you come back down to earth, though, you realise that this is far from the truth. Having representation is just the first lovely step on a long, long ladder.

So what have I been doing in the month since I wrote my excited blog post 'Out of the Slush Pile - how I found my agent'?

This is what I've been doing... editing... editing... editing.

These days, a novel is very rarely accepted as it is. A lot of the changes and edits that might once have been done after the book found a publisher, are now done beforehand with the guidance of the agent. The idea is to give the novel the best possible chance - and the agents know the market inside out.

Today, I finished my first round of edits. That might not sound like a huge achievement - but it it is to me. You see, part of my agreement with the agency was to make quite significant changes to the novel. In fact, I had to take out a complete viewpoint (a rather heart-wrenching 30,000 words). This was not as simple as it sounds as all the key information in the edited parts needed to be redistributed. Instead of seeing the second protagonist's actions through their own eyes, the reader would now have to discover these things through the conversations of other characters, letters, emails etc.

I have to admit I was a bit daunted at first but I knew I needed to make a commitment to the changes. They wouldn't work unless I had faith that they would make the novel stronger (after all, my agent knows the publishing business a whole lot better than I do). 

Since starting the work several people have asked me how I went about making the changes so I thought I'd tell you here on the blog.

1. I removed the second POV completely (leaving 50,000 words)
2. I printed out the cut POV
3. I wrote down all the chapter headings and made brief notes of the key information that needed to be put back into the story
4. Beside these, I jotted down ideas of how each particular bit of information could be imparted e.g. the name of a character, letter, email etc.
5. I decided what information waranted a new chapter and what could be added to existing chapters
6. On the printout, I circled any actions/scenes/settings that I particularly liked that could be transferred to another character
7. I worked methodically through each chapter, ticking things off as I went on both my chapter headings and the printout.
8. I made notes as I went of things I needed to check once it was all done.
9. I put the revised novel onto my kindle and read it for continuity.

I have to admit I was rather nervous when I started reading. What if I didn't like the new version? What if I thought it was better without the changes? Luckily, I had to agree with my agent... the novel had a different feel to it but it was all the stronger for the changes. 

It's now sent and I'm just keeping my fingers crossed that my agent likes it too.

If not... it's out with the red pen and scissors again!



20 comments:

  1. Ooh an exciting stage! All trotters crossed, but I'm sure Eve will LOVE it :)

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    1. Thank you, Tracy. We shall have to wait and see.

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  2. Well done! It is very daunting editing a novel - they do tend to feel huge and unwieldy when you are used to short stories. My worst edit was being asked to take the ghost out of a novel that was essentially a ghost story... but you just have to tell yourself it's a challenge and you can DO it!

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    1. A ghost story without a ghost? I do agree though, Kath. If you don't have faith in the changes, no one else will.

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  3. BUT be aware that at the end of the day, is IS your book. Don't be tempted to edit out anything that YOU feel in your gut is right. Editors/agents are NOT gods...my ex-agent at David Higham (top London one) told me she wasn't going to bother sending out Diamonds & Dust as it was a load of rubbish. 3 books later and dunno how many 5 star reviews, I think she was wrong!

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    1. Yes, it's important to feel comfortable with any changes you make and for the agents to give good reasons why they want you to make them. If an author isn't happy to take advice, then the self-publishing route is probably the better one to take. Luckily I'm very happy with the result :-)

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  4. Wow! That was a big ask. I hope you agreed and are still happy with your story. Nevertheless, well done for all your achievements so far. Please continue to keep us informed of your novel's progress. Have a lovely new week.

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  5. Yes I am very happy with them thank you, Nicola. I will just have to write a few more stories as I await the verdict 😊

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  6. It's surprising and fascinating how changes that are daunting at first do improve the novel as a whole once implemented. I had to remove a whole character and it hurt a bit - well, quite a lot - but afterwards I could see it had made things better. It's so interesting to follow your journey, Wendy, and it gets more and more exciting! I like the way you tackled it - printing it out is a good idea, as well as reading the final version on Kindle. xx

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  7. It's surprising and fascinating how changes that are daunting at first do improve the novel as a whole once implemented. I had to remove a whole character and it hurt a bit - well, quite a lot - but afterwards I could see it had made things better. It's so interesting to follow your journey, Wendy, and it gets more and more exciting! I like the way you tackled it - printing it out is a good idea, as well as reading the final version on Kindle. xx

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    1. It wasn't nearly as hard as I thought it would be, Joanna.

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  8. It sounds as if you've just completed a mammoth edit, Wendy, and it's good to hear that you're pleased with the result. I was interested to hear that you checked it for continuity by reading the new version on Kindle. Good luck with it.

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    1. I think reading it on the kindle is the only way you can see how it will look once it's published, Jan.

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  9. Hope you won't need as many changes next time, Wendy.

    Thank you for sharing how you went about the process, there's some useful tips there.

    Good luck with it.

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    1. I hope so, Carol - although I know writers all edit in different ways.

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  10. Well done Wendy! It can seem such a huge task when you first look at taking a whole POV out - I know, because my agent also asked me to do the same - but when you approach it with positivity and go through methodically it can be done. Obviously, as you have done it! Good luck with the next stage!

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  11. Sounds like a lot of work, but I'm sure it'll be worth it and I imagine it's an interesting process.

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  12. You had a lot to do! Thanks for sharing your method, Wendy. Reading your work in different mediums (onscreen/paper/Kindle) – is such a good idea. All the best.

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  13. What a shock to the system that must have been, taking out a whole viewpoint - not easy at all! Well done for having faith in your agent and in your writing, Wendy. Think I'll stick with submitting straight to the publisher but your agent will no doubt get you a much better deal in the end.

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