Re-plotting an old novel

I have a particular old novel that I would like another shot at. I liked quite a lot of the writing and have about 300 pages finished. It is not on any disk, in fact, I have to drive 11 hours to get it. In various circles I was told it was "brilliant" (the writing at least) but I am not enchanted with the plot, and I need to have a lot more plot-threads which are inferred but not written. I felt it was good writing then, but I was not mature enough to tackle it-- so I just put it in a box and stopped playing with it.

So the main obstacle is: it is all on paper. No electronic copies at all. No saved file. It was written on a computer system that no longer exists.

One of the main reasons I did not go back to revise (re-plot) is that I have to retype it all by hand and I hate that. I tried to scan another novel and it had all kinds of erroneous artifacts in the scan and it took hours to revise.

Does anyone know of a scanner that is not too expensive that actually will scan the words and have them come out exactly as they are on the page? Not a lot of junk? By junk I mean: !%#$---Gi##%(!), or similar strings of garbage.

Also once I have it typed I am going to go into scrivener and re-plot because I can keep track of chapters or sections there.

I am not trying to avoid original work. I just think that I can shape this up into a much better novel once it is scanned in and re-typed.

Woollybear said:

You could read it aloud using the convert-to-text feature in word or similar apps? Not what you're asking but perhaps quicker than typing.

Click to expand...

Good idea/ Something to consider. The pages are also not double spaced. So, rather long.

This is probably what I wish I did not have to do, but probably what I am going to need to do. The other manuscripts that I scanned I had to get an app to read the file I had -- they still did poorly (let behind a lot of artifacts as I reported above). If I am going to "read it out loud" I may as well re-type it while I am doing it. It will take a few months. Since I do not have the pages (they are an 11 hour drive from here), I will just move on to something else for now.

MythMonger said:

How would you replot a manuscript without rewriting it?

My next manuscript is going to be a replot of an old one as well, but I fully intend on rewriting it from scratch. I've learned a lot since I wrote it.

Click to expand...

I am seeing re-plotting defined as re-organizing it, and adding parts, or removing parts. After that is all done, it will probably need a major revision. But the characters are all the same, places are all the same, plot points that I have already are all the same.

It is like having a file drawer or something and having 17 filled complete files and then 30 sketchy files, and some empty files. How to go from a to b and so on.

Or-- maybe I could describe it as "island hopping." Envision an Archepalagio. Some islands are complete, and populated, lush foliage, beaches, some are barren volcanos, some are sandbars just indicated by a whisp of sand in the turquoise sea.

indianroads said:

I came across an old ZIP drive that had 5 novels I wrote back in the 80's (I shopped them around then, but no takers), and admit that I'm tempted to revisit them. They were written either in VI, or Wordstar, or Wordperfect, IF I were to yield to temptation I would take the zip disk to a local computer repair / guru in the area and see if he could converted into MS Word. The issue is that those books were written 35 years ago, and I'm not that person anymore and have evolved; I remember their plots, and so believe it would be best to just start with a clean slate and rewrite everything.

Click to expand...

Obviously a really good point. The ZIP drives were probably where the full scans were hanging out. I printed everything out on the off chance that the electronic media let me down. Of course, it did. The program they were written in went out of use. Even the ZIP drives are obsolete I guess. I threw that all in the trash knowing that my old work was on it. Instead, I have boxes of printed paper. But somehow I did get some novels on a scan. Still missing the one I wanted most-- but that's okay if it never happens. I guess.

I think I am doing this more because shaping up a novel that has flaws is an exercise that will make me a better writer and editor-- and we all need that sort of thing. These were written in about 2000-2001 (so not as old). The one I am having issues with was written in Works.

I wrote about 13 novels between 1996 (or so) and about 2005. Of those, only 4 are full enough not to count as fragments-- running in about the 70,000-word range as an unfinished novel (with more expansion room to make it to about 80 or 90K. I look at the writing and it is not as though I was "bad" back then, and "better" now. I was more "ornate" then, and "undisciplined, but the writing is good, in fact, I want to regress a bit after seeing it. I have been taking Master's degrees where I am expected/ was taught to be more succinct, and get brief in the John Williams mode. This is really why I thought now would be a good time to revisit the old novels-- because I am a better organizer, not because I am a better (or worse) writer. (Actually l like the areas that go totally "Salman Rushdie" on me.

In an update, I got a copy of Scrivener yesterday. I have windows but got the deal where I got 25% discount and when Scrivener-3 comes out I can upgrade for free. I spent all yesterday downloading the novels which were saved to a big Seagate external drive, They were written in Word, so they were no problem to download. Let me tell you, I love Scrivener after only one night of use. I was a bit worried because certain people have said it is too difficult to learn. I got most things right away except the first step which is a little odd. I uploaded what I had of 2 longer page length novels, and one that was more fragmentary, as well as one I just started. One of those is set in the '60s-- the one I was looking at last night was set among people who lived their childhoods in the 1960s (the initiating incident happened in about 1974)-- so it is not "present-day" the main characters are in their 30s.

I totally love setting novels in eras that did not have internet, computers, or smartphones. Is this a thing? I mean where the characters have to go to the library to do research? (No one has noticed no smartphones in Harry Potter and yet he gets away with it. Smartphones really ruin a mystery story.

So I read some of it last night. I thought it needed more bad words, and the "artifacts from scanning are worse in some parts than others-- indicating that I spent several hours with it before. I actually can say I did not "dislike it." I never like my own writing. But I can tell when something is wrong.

One thing I decided last night was that what I wrote was on the verge of "horror" but still a who-done-it. This was really subtle horror using the Onryō (vengeful ghost). But also, it takes an approach where the remembered life in 1974 is written in such a way as it is contemporary with the time in which the story is set. And, to top it off, the 1974 people who are still living in their 30's are the ghosts. -- It came from a conversation I had with someone in a parking lot in 1996 where I wondered out loud if there could be living ghosts. Oh well-- totally unpublishable.

The rules it follows are not in keeping with the typical ghost story. The only writer I truly got into for a while that I can say reflects this is Clive Barker.

Horror stories these days have more blood and gore, so in this way, it is out of touch-- the ghosts are more "literary." But it is something I can play around with.

Oh, and speaking of Salman Rushdi, this is why, just of late, I have been thinking about tossing the genre, (mystery/horror/ghost) and going full out magical realism-- literary novel. Will study this direction.

Duplicate post

gothicangel said:

So true! For some bizarre reason, last autumn my mind dredged up the first novel I wrote from around 2000-2002. I thought it was the best novel ever written, now I realise it was awful, fuelled by teenage hormones (although I recently came across the rejection letters and it would seem that agents didn't think it was all that bad). But what I've done is completely strip away the plot (it actually has one now) and all I've carried through is 3 of the original characters and switched who my protagonist is. But you are so right. Since writing that I've been through university twice, read (and watched movies) a lot more, I have travelled and worked, loved and had crushing disappointments. But you know what? I think this book is the best thing I've written. Then, of course, there's all the different ways technology has changed in the last 20 years. Writing during lockdown also inspired me to write a scene where characters are having a Zoom consultation!So I say strip the book to its bones.

Click to expand...

That's my plan. And the same thing here, I do not see why good material should be abandoned. I think at first I did think that. I gave up writing altogether for a while simply because I did not have the will to re-plot or revise. It has been a long time and I have gone to school again and was focused on how to quickly re-structure things. That's the whole thing. I may have 10% waste. One thing i Just thought about was when people make movies, they option the author, get some screenplay writer to re-write, and they shape it for an audience. Sometimes "the project" is 5 to 10 years in the making before they get a studio to put up money for the real deal. This is something I got from watching the "extras" DVDs of LOTRs. Peter Jackson and a team were working for at least 5 years before the cast had even been hired. If book writers could just see how this happens, I think they would be happier writers. And it goes to say that you should definitely work on several books at the same time-- One of them "might not sell" but you could still clean it up and self publish. One thing I told myself to do was "storyboard" sections before committing to revisions. It means a lot of sessions pretty much drawing comic strips, but if it makes the scenes clearer, it is well worth it. Just buy a 10$ big drawing pad and start re-creating your scenes like a movie.