Writing Prompt: Editing in Layers

How to edit longer pieces like novels, novellas, and collections.

Introduction:

So you’ve finally written a draft.

It could be of a novel, a collection, a nonfiction book, it doesn’t matter. You’ve done the work, and that in itself is absolutely amazing. You are a rockstar, and you need to know that the work you’re doing is hard, and it matters.

Congratulations!

But what now?

So many people think drafting the novel is the hardest part, and for some people it is, but what happens after the first draft is complete?

Editing.

Lots and lots and lots of editing.

When I wrote my first novel, I was completely overwhelmed. I had a story idea, but no one was teaching me how to write complex works or how to edit lengthy pieces. I wanted the writing shine, but I wasn’t sure how to get it where it needed to be. The longest piece I had ever written before that was about fifteen pages.

So the question is. How do we edit, or even wrap our minds around editing lengthy works of fiction or nonfiction or poetry?

The answer:

Think of it like an onion. It has many many layers!

The Prompt

This writing prompt isn’t so much a prompt as it is a suggestion for how to edit your lengthy pieces in the future.

I’ll start by saying that I am primarily a novelist. I don’t normally write poetry or nonfiction, so naturally this exercise will probably lean more toward helping the novel than other forms. This isn’t due to any hatred or disrespect of those forms on my part, but merely because this prompt stems from my own unique writing process and I have less experience writing in the other forms.

I digress.

Part 1:

For this prompt I want you to envision the whole of your piece.

I know it’s hard, but I want you to give it a shot. Think about your piece as it exists in your mind now.

What pops up? It could be images of characters, places, themes or motifs. It could be sentences, or sounds or an act of violence or love. It could be something that nebulously feels like sadness or happiness or anger. Consider your “mindscape” for lack of a better term.

Now consider all the things that you think are wrong with the piece. What isn’t coming through? Perhaps you feel that your main character needs to be more dynamic, perhaps their change throughout the story isn’t distinct enough, perhaps you think your setting is undefined, or your world has contradicting themes or rules. Perhaps you just feel that the language isn’t clean enough, or there’s words that make it clunky and awkward?

Write down exactly what you said and keep that list handy (both the good and the bad).

Part 2:

Now novels, in particular, have layers.

This can be interpreted in a lot of different ways.

I could mean that novels have layers in a sense of plots and sub-plots, but I could also mean that novels have layers in a sense of authorial intention versus character intention and action. Something one of my teachers said to me that really helped me to understand novel writing is that we, as the authors, are trying to take apart a brick wall in our own heads and build it in another person’s mind. In order to do that, we can’t simply pick up the brick wall in our mind and plop it into theirs. We have to take it apart piece by piece and painstakingly building back up again in theirs.

So, in part two of this exercise I want you to think about all of the different thinks you wrote down as your individual bricks.

For each thing that you wrote, write what you’d like your novel to do. So for example, if you said that your novel needs to have a nebulous sense of sadness. You might write:

The setting should be dreary, perhaps rainy. The sentences need to be long and flowing, but then sometimes short and punchy when something tragic happens. The character’s need to make decisions that take them away from their happiness OR things need to happen externally to them that take away their happiness.

Keep writing out these lists until you exhaust your ideas.

Part 3:

This will be the final list in the exercise:

I want you to look at all of the ideas you’ve written down. Spread them out on a table and rank them from most centrally important to least centrally important. Perhaps your main character needs a lot of work (either in their design, characterization, or dynamism) or perhaps your setting is really vague and the world is underdeveloped.

Now, take your top ten most important things and make a checklist.

This last part will take a long time for some points and not so long for others, but I want you to read through your novel with ONE check-list point in mind. Edit the sections where this checkpoint feels weak so that it’s not weak anymore. Continue until you’ve made it through the entire novel, then continue on to the next checkpoint.

Keep in mind that this might take you weeks (it took me weeks), but in the end it’s worth it because you’ve focused your mind and intentions clearly enough that you can center down on one thing and really make it shine.

You’ll find that by fixing some sections individually you will unlock new ideas and further lanes of discovery.

Conclusion

I know this prompt might be frustrating because it’s asking you to do a lot of hard thinking and work, but in my experience it’s one of the best and easiest ways to break down a large piece into smaller sections. And smaller sections are easier for us to wrap our heads around.

Thanks so much for reading. I would love to answer any questions or respond to any comments you have, but for now I wish you, as always, happy writing.