Holly Lisle - How to revise your novel course

Can't help you re the course, but here's one for free -

Step One- Imagine you know nothing about your story.

Step Two - Start reading your manuscript slowly, trying to put yourself in the shoes of the reader who starts with a blank canvas and -unlike you - no knowledge of what's happening to whom or where he is beyond the images he gets from what he reads as he reads.

Step Three - every time you stumble, ask yourself why?

Step Four - re-word so you do not stumble.

Step Five - return to Step One.

Beyond that, browse here.

In essence, the reader needs to want to finish reading the first sentence, then want to read the next sentence, and want to read the next and the next and so on through 300 pages or whatever.

Revising and Editing are fine but it is even more helpful to be able to recognise how to write with flow and clarity first, and a book I found - and still find - helpful in that regard is Techniques of the Selling Writer by Dwight V Swain.

Good luck.

I have taken it. A quick review. It takes you through different phases of the revision process, and you may learn something about revising. One of the big draws was that it pointed out that line editing -- which a lot of of people do first -- is not revision.

Where I ran into trouble is that I had weird problems. Her course assumes you have very standard problems. It also assumes that you're an outliner. Even though she tries to write for both flavors, it really comes across as for outliners. It's also very mechanical. There were parts I just didn't get because they were too mechanical and not that creative. You'll also only be interactive with the other people taking the course. You read the material, do the exercise, and then ask questions from the other people who have read it.

I have not taken and will not because it's pretty expensive. I think there are plenty cheaper and free resources out there that can help us to learn how to edit.

Have you seen Holly's One Pass Revision? It's a great source.

Editing for Fiction Writers by Rennie Browne and Dave King is an older book, but it's excellent and many writers learn how to edit by following their advice.

You can post your work in Share Your Work and ask for help with editing.

Finally, follow Bufty's advice above. The more you practice something, the better you get.

Susan Littlefield said:

Have you seen Holly's One Pass Revision? It's a great source.

Click to expand...

How to Revise Your Novel is the One Pass Revision, just in a lot more detail and explanation.

I've taken her How to Think Sideways course. It was extremely helpful and worth the money. Also did her shorter one pass revision one and that one shaved years off my learning curve.

I recommend taking her short one pass revision course and seeing if that's helpful. From what I understand, HTRYN is the much more detailed version. If her approach is helpful but doesn't give enough guidance, you'll have an idea if the course will work for you with a lot smaller initial investment.

She still offers cancellation at any point if the course isn't working out. So you cancel, and she refunds for the last lesson you got (the one that made you quit) and prorates the rest of the course so you don't have to pay for the ones you don't receive.

I use her One Pass Revision, and it's very useful. However, I don't have the money to pay for the course. I used to recieve weekly email tips and I did find that I would quite frequently disagree with Lisle.

Personally, I would have a look at the One Pass Revision first, and SYW before spending money. Especially if you can ill-afford it.

You might find these threads interesting:


http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=78081

http://absolutewrite.com/forums/showthread.php?t=204034

However, I don't go in for the 'one pass' element. I use her technique as one of my revision tools (on draft three, reading chapters out of order.)

Yes! It is the best investment I've made so far and I've read a lot of writing craft books. I wrote my first draft of my novel during NaNo last year. Without HTRYN, I would have just started reading through my book, trying to figure out how to make it better. I have a feeling it would have taken me a long time and then I would have tossed it. People on the NaNo forums kept mentioning Holly so I looked into her offerings.

I started with her How to Revise Your Novel and by the 4th lesson, I had come up with a brand new plot. That's because during the first lesson (a long one) I analyzed my entire book and saw everywhere I'd gone wrong. My first NaNo draft really functioned as a pantser story for me- it gave me the seeds of a great story, but I don't think it was worth revising the way it was. So I chose to rewrite my book, but the second I'm done with this draft, it's getting taken through the entire course. I've read all the lessons as they've come in and I can see they're going to help me get the best book I'm capable of writing.

I also have her How to Write a Series and How to Think Sideways courses. Writing books are awesome for theory and gaining understanding, but she teaches techniques- I get stuff I can put into action immediately, which I love.

I read her blog a lot before buying and I liked her writing voice and I agreed with what she had to say. If you do that, you should be able to tell if her courses will be right for you...

Susan Littlefield said:

Have you seen Holly's One Pass Revision? It's a great source.

Click to expand...

I've used that technique and I really like it.

Editing for Fiction Writers by Rennie Browne and Dave King is an older book, but it's excellent and many writers learn how to edit by following their advice.

Click to expand...

Excellent book.

Best Advice Is free

I've never taken Holly's course, but I'll freely give you the best revision advice I ever received.

DO NOT revise as you go, or you'll never finish.

By this I mean, don't just wade in and start at page one looking for things that are "wrong" and start "fixing" them. Instead take a clean pad of paper and a pen and set them next to your manuscript.

Start reading, and don't read any of your manuscript without that particular notepad next to you. When something comes up that looks, sounds, or feels "off", write it down. And, at all costs, resist the urge to fix any part of it then.

Mark typos in the manuscript, but don't input those changes until later either. The notepad is for character, structure, story, dialogue, and continuity issues.

Use only one notepad for this, so that your notes are all in one place, and in the order that they arise in your manuscript. write down page numbers as you make notes.

When you've gone ALL the way through the manuscript, making notes ( and not changes), take some time off (a day or two) to clear your head and then pick up the pad, NOT THE MANUSCRIPT. Read it through and create a new document for your rewrite plan.

In your rewrite plan you will incorporate all/some of your notes from the pad of paper and come up with a unified, organized plan of action.

You see, if you start correcting as you go, you may think that a line of dialogue on page 3 is stupid, cut it out, and then realize that it was a crucial setup for a major event on page 158, etc. So now you have to go back and fix page three again (as well as anything else related to that change).

If you head down that road, you will never finish.

Happy revising. No one will tell you this, but it can be the best part of writing.

-Glenn

Reading what worked for somebody else and being able to put it into effect so that it works for you are not the same thing.

ETA - this is not a response to your interesting post, Glenn.

Glen,

It sounds like you have a wonderful system that works for you. I do try and edit as I go along, but I don't go all the way back to page one each time, just the section before to make sure I didn't miss anything. You are right that it would be easy to delete out something that could be part of a set up.

I have learned to create a chapter synopsis as I write. When the chapter is completed, I know what I have accomplished and start the next chapter and new chapter synopsis. This seems to work well for me.

Thank you for sharing your process!

This is a really difficult thing to give advice on because we all work so differently. As I write my first draft I revise as I go. I always read over the previous day's work before moving on, making any changes I think necessary. I do the same thing at the end of each chapter, reading the entire chapter and making changes before moving on to the next. Once the manuscript is completed I lay it aside for a couple of months and then start final editing and revisions.

I DO revise as I go. It's the only thing that works for me. I make a hard copy of the whole manuscript then work on it a chapter at a time, correcting typos, any grammatical problems, punctuation stuff etc plus doing rewrites or revisions. I keep it all in a three-ringed binder and add extra sheets as needed for my revisions. I cannot separate out character, structure etc. because I see it as a cohesive whole that has to be dealt with together. But that's just the way my brain works. Yours may not. I do a final pass once I'm all done just to see if I think it reads well. Then I give it to my sole beta for his opinion.

My editor, now, he thinks that way. Once I'd sold the manuscript he went over it with me, looking at the different elements each in turn. He didn't suggest any really big changes but he was viewing it freshly, something I couldn't do unless I'd put it away for a couple of years first.

By all means use whatever tools you believe will benefit you in the revision process. I know of writers who never revise. Once they've written it it's already in its final form. I don't know how they do it but they do and they sell, so go figure.