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Revision Is Half The Battle

Good writers compose sentences. Great writers craft language.

One thing you will find plenty of on this blog is advice on how to edit your manuscript. Tight editing can make all the difference. It is important if you decide to submit to agents and editors. It is essential if you decide to go the independent route.

Here are a few of my favorite posts on revision.

Self-Editing One Step at a Time: How to Identify Dragging Narrative

Self-Editing One Step at a Time: Fine-Tuning Sentence Structure

Top Ten Things I Know About Editing

Self-Editing One Step at a Time: Analyzing Sentences for Redundancy and Wordiness

Self-Editing One Step at a Time: Cleaning Up Those Dialogue Tags

I created Story Building Blocks III: The Revision Layers to collate all of the advice I had collected on how to revise my own work. This book will not turn you into a professional editor. It will, however, help you present the cleanest and tightest manuscript to your agent or editor. If you self-publish, it is a critique partner that helps you polish your work.

We examine common plot holes. We identify speed bumps that affect the readers' enjoyment of the ride you are taking them on. We explore rhetorical devices and how to use them to craft expert-level cumulative sentences. We spend a little time proofreading.

Revision is the most time-consuming, mind-numbing, aggravating part of writing a book. Taking it one step at a time gets you through it and keeps you from burning the manuscript. You’ll be tempted to quit and go spearfishing in Fiji. It only delays the inevitable.

Life is too short for bad fiction.

Buy Story Building Blocks III - Revision from Amazon.com

Story Building Blocks III Revision ebook



Diana Hurwitz is the author of Story Building Blocks: The Four Layers of Conflict, Story Building Blocks II: Crafting Believable Conflict, Story Building Blocks III: The Revision Layers, and the YA adventure series Mythikas Island. Her weekly blog, Game On: Crafting Believable Conflict explores how characters behave and misbehave. Visit DianaHurwitz.com for more information and free writing tools. You can follow her on Facebook and Twitter.

Comments

  1. "Life is too short for bad fiction." Well said and right on. This is a great post, Diana. So glad you repeated it as a reminder to those of us who read it five years ago and those of us who didn't have that privilege. Thank you!

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  2. Thanks for all the great links. Even after many publishing credits, I always feel I can learn more about tight writing.

    ReplyDelete

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