If you’ve got a big story, this might take a lot of notes, but it must be done. You must, by this point, start to “see” your book in front of you. You will see that there are missing scenes. You will see where you have repeated yourself in either action or emotional outcome. Besides, there is a huge relief in seeing the piles and piles you have produced organized into a logical, manageable, nifty scheme to guide the revision. You can lay the scheme out on a big sheet of newsprint or other paper; and/or you can create index card sets for each scene sequence. Paper-clip sets with front cards that clearly label what each one is.
If your manuscript is heavy with narrative summary and commentary, so much so that you feel the layout of scene sequences doesn’t aptly represent the flow of the story, you should make cards to represent the auxiliary (nonscene) elements of your narrative, and attach them to the appropriate sequence. You would sum each passage up according to the function it serves for the story, such as:
history of marriage after the baby was born
reflections on motherhood
analysis of the conflict going on in the detective department
meaning of the Dutch painting in the family
description of an English garden
summary of the aftermath of the student strike
You should be able to storyboard the novel now. See the Resources section for a description of this process.
Lines of Threads
5. Develop a scheme of lines of threads.
What are “threads”?
They are lines of action and meaning that run through the story.
But didn’t we just do that with plot and subplots?
Well, yes, but there are other ways to think of them.
What questions are raised that the story answers?
What motifs throughout the manuscript enrich meaning?
What are the major emotional issues in the story interiority?
What elements of backstory illuminate the story?
How does setting strengthen story?
At this point in your analysis, the most important consideration is what questions are raised, and when, in our story. These are your lines of plot and subplot.
Make notes if you have ideas about the other lines of threads. You will come back to these as one of your last revision tasks.
QUESTIONS
Read your first forty pages. Every time a question is raised, write it down. If it is answered in those forty pages, put the page number where it was resolved. Most questions will remain open that early in the manuscript.
Let’s look at Christopher John Francis Boone (The Curious Incident of the Dog in the Night-Time) and the dead poodle, Wellington.
Can Christopher identify the killer? (This is, of course, the line of considerable action and musing.)
Christopher is arrested. Will he be blamed for the killing? (Quickly answered no.) This is a very short line in the plot.
Why is Christopher’s father so upset (angry, crying, etc.)? The quest to answer this turns up information about Christopher’s parents—his mother is alive, though he was told she was dead—and adds a major subplot.
How will the father handle this turn of events? (He hits Christopher hard enough to knock him out.)
His father admits to killing Wellington. But by now we have the second plotline: Christopher wants to find his mother.
Can Christopher navigate a journey to London?
Will his mother want him?
Every question is the canopy for a sequence of events. Christopher making his way to London, for example, involves challenges such as overcoming his claustrophobia in a busy train; navigating a city station; finding his mother’s flat, etc.
And by then we have a new question: Will Christopher’s father and mother be able to come to terms with their history (both had affairs)? How will the family sort out an arrangement for Christopher to have both parents?
And all along there has been this question: Will Christopher pass his A-level exam in math?
At first, the plot of this novel sounds simple. But because of Christopher’s special abilities and limitations, it is quite complicated. And the most interesting thing about the story is how Christopher solves problem after problem, going through experiences of paralyzing fear, confusion, determination, analysis, invention, and so on. His voice, his explanation, and his feelings—though he claims to have no feelings—are fascinating and engaging. For all along, it turns out, Christopher has been writing a book, this book, about his quest, and so he has a lot to say about what happens and how he solves the mystery of the dog, sets in motion the meeting of his estranged parents, adjusts to a new way of living, and conveys it all, by writing it down.
To understand the structure of the book you would need to list the questions raised and then the line of action that answers each. You would also need to list all the ways that Christopher makes special adjustments, his very own strategies, for accomplishing what he does. I would call those adjustments “motifs” in our analysis. So your line of threads would look something like this:
story question → actions that lead to answer → character’s special adjustments
MOTIFS: IDEAS OR DEVICES THAT RECUR
Madame Bovary, as you would expect, is chock-full of motifs. I think right at the top is lies. Emma’s whole life is a lie, sometimes because she doesn’t understand the truth, sometimes because she can’t admit it, sometimes because she feels she must hide it.
There are numerous references to sickness and death, so many that you wonder if Flaubert wasn’t a bit morbid. So many things decay: potatoes, legs, the skin of a beggar. I’m sure Flaubert saw this as being realistic. And every reference to death or dissolution is a step toward the inevitable death of poor Emma.
In All the Pretty Horses horses matter to Grady, the protagonist, as much or more than people. He talks to his horse. He wishes humans could be like horses. He trains horses. And there is blood. Men are shot. Horses bleed. Grady bleeds. His lover bites his hand and draws blood. So much in this novel is about being a man, a westerner, a cowboy: prevailing, bearing up stoically. There are many kinds of pain.
I don’t think you plan motifs, at least not at first. They rise to the surface as you write the story. You are reviewing your manuscript and they pop up at you. Then you can exploit them. Suddenly you realize that every door seems to get slammed shut; that boys without fathers get into trouble; that photographs can be sentimental but also cruel; that cars are thrilling but also dangerous. You see that characters come bearing gifts but they get cast aside.
Certain things come up again and again; in revision, you watch for them, you consider their effect, you emphasize or mute their appearance. You don’t want to hit the reader over the head, but repetition echoes through a story. Look for echoes in yours.
EMOTIONAL ISSUES
Study your passages of interiority. What issues come up again and again with your protagonist? Sure, there will be reactions to what is going on, what she wants. But what is she afraid of? What haunts her? Look beneath her behavior for things she doesn’t say. Know what she would never ever do, but does.
BACKSTORY
Closely allied to emotional issues, obviously, are events in the past that still resonate for a character. In revision, you want to edit backstory. Is it crowded by too many memories of different things? Could they be compressed so that one event, or one trait of a character, or even one thing that Mother always said, gets repeated, and proven?
In Walking Dunes, David thinks about his parents’ history. His father, a New York Jew, met his mother, a West Texas nurse, during the war in a New York hospital. They moved back to Texas, and something about that has always troubled David—the sense that his mother made the choice of how he, David, would be raised. That his father let himself cede power to David’s mother. David is afraid and perhaps contemptuous
of this idea, and it matters to him that his own future gets tied up with a pretty girl who loves him and is his link to a better life. Are all men users or losers? Do women hold the power?
In Plain Seeing, Lucy can’t get over her mother’s death. She feels cheated. She feels as if her mother died just when she was most needed (Lucy was a teenager). How could Lucy know how to be a woman? How could Lucy know if she was making her mother’s mistakes?
SETTING
There is immense power in where.
Geography is paramount in The Great Gatsby. East Egg and West Egg are contrasting representations of two kinds of wealth: inherited, “classy,” aristocratic rich versus flashy new rich. There is also the contrast of the immoral East to the solid values of the West. Weather is exploited, too, with pouring rain and scorching sun.
In All the Pretty Horses, it’s all about geography. John Grady has left Texas behind for what he thinks is a true West, a place where he can be a cowboy—a man of virtue and skill. He encounters fierce blasts of weather, the long vistas of terrain, and the beauty of a prosperous ranch. But Mexico isn’t his place, and he is forced to leave it. McCarthy’s descriptions of the landscape are vivid and violent and precise and poetic.
As I said before, another consideration—besides choosing settings that evoke powerful connections to emotions—is variety. You don’t want to be everywhere, but you also don’t want to be boring. Try to think of setting not only as a place, but as a place where certain things are true, and certain things happen. Let your event be part of that inevitability, or let your event contradict expectations. A young couple take a picnic to an idyllic spot, but a fierce wind comes up, blowing away their cloth and sending their lunch tumbling. So what? What better place for them to embrace, to express their love that cannot be assailed?
There should be places in your story that mean something; those are the settings for major events. From setting can come interruptions, solace, harassment, harmony, danger. As you work through your manuscript, think about every single scene’s setting to be sure you have exploited the possibilities, that you are not choosing the boring default site. And keep in mind that although you probably don’t want to spend a lot of words on description, choose the words you do use carefully. Wherever you can be precise about a tree, a plant, a sky, a room, a window, you build believability and texture.
EXERCISES
Choose a scene in your manuscript at random. Identify the thread—the line of action or meaning—that comes from or leads into another scene or chapter. The second instance of the thread may not be in the scene immediately following, but you should recognize threads and be able to look forward or backward in the manuscript to connect them.
When was the thread introduced, and how? This is your initiating event of a line of meaning that appears again.
Where does it logically reach some kind of end? (It may not be the end of the book.)
Choose a plot point late in the manuscript where something important happens. Now plot backward in steps until you come to the scene where you can see that the seed was planted for its outcome at that later point where you started the analysis. Identify the “interruptions” to the line of action or theme, and consider whether there is too much space between scenes that develop it.
You want to have several strong threads that pull through the manuscript, but you don’t want so many that they become confusing or intrusive. Subplots should increase engagement and tension, not excessively interrupt the ongoing dramatic line.
6. Identify key scene sequences in each plot movement.
These do not make up all the scenes; you are choosing your strongest sets.
You probably have already done a lot of work with scene sequences, if you followed my suggestions in the section on core scenes. Here, though, start by isolating three key sequences, one for each movement. It’s likely that the first one will come some time after you introduce the problem. It’s more difficult to pin down what’s most important in the rest of the book. But pointing your finger and saying Here’s where I’m putting my money makes you deal with structure (how the story is organized) and meaning (what it adds up to) in very specific ways. A sequence by definition is made up of one thing following another, so you want those steps in the sequence to have pace and rhythm and an undercurrent of feeling. If scenes “belong together” in that they build from one situation to the next, you have to look at what (if anything) comes between them. If, for example, between a first and second scene you employ a long passage of backstory, be sure to evaluate how you bring the reader back to the business of the line of action.
You are trying to identify where it is in your manuscript that things happen in the most interesting, most forward-motion way. Once you have done that—named three sequences—you can look at your other sets of scenes, the ways that you link plot points. Unless you are writing a thriller, you don’t want a constant drumbeat of action. You want sequences that have scenes of respite, interstices of response and commentary, gentler movement. You want variety. Don’t worry about writing those sequences quite yet.
It is possible that this will be a difficult undertaking. I often see manuscripts that don’t organize scenes into sets or sequences. Scenes are, instead, strung out like beads on a slack cord. If you see that yours are related like that, try to make the line taut, bring the scenes closer together, and be more deliberate about where the breaks between lines of action take place.
This analysis will help you handle the tension in the manuscript, and also help you find the best places to let the story sink into its history or meaning in passages of interiority or commentary. Reviewing your lines of threads will help you balance scene and response.
7. Identify passages, scenes, and chapters from the first draft that will be used in the revision.
Remember what you have at this point:
Your original manuscript, with the many notes you made and exercises you did.
Your summaries of the three movements of the novel.
Your major scene sequence for each movement.
You will need to fill in the rest of the scene sequences later, but first, look at your original manuscript and decide what you can use in your revision as is or slightly revised, and what you can’t.
It will help if you have a page that lists your core scenes in front of you, and your three scene sequences (for the three movements) handy for reference. It’s like a map as you look back over your bound manuscript. You are looking for the writing that is basically solid and can be transferred to the revised draft. As you decide on such a chapter, go to your loose pages and put them, paper-clipped, into a stack. Call it “Yes” or whatever pleases you. This doesn’t mean perfect passages. It means passages that are substantially sufficient. You will critique each as you come to it and write to improve it if necessary, but these are parts of the manuscript that “fit” and do what you want them to do. Hurrah! I’ve been known to put on lipstick and kiss the first page of such a chapter.
Right now, you need to survey the manuscript to see what proportion of it is fairly solid.
8. Identify passages, scenes, and chapters that need new drafts.
It is possible that your concept of your novel has changed so much in your analysis that what you have now is a broad summary of a new version; you should also have the summaries and scene sequences of the three movements of the story. It is likely that you will have much that you can use.
Also, this is a good time to be especially alert for weak or tangled complications. You want the problems in the story to be tightly related, to escalate the reader’s concern for the protagonist, and to give opportunity for passages of deep interiority.
Deciding what needs to be rewritten may be a matter of choosing a scene or a whole chapter that just does not work, knowing that you will have to take it apart and start over from the crumbs. Or it may be a matter of recognizing the essential function of
the scene or chapter and not liking the way it is shaped and developed. Either way, when you pick it up for revision, you will read it, think about what strengths can feed your rewrite, and then write from scratch. No filling in holes, no borrowing nice phrases. An organic, coherent, flowing new passage.
If the selected passage has a lot of notes on it from the work you’ve done as you passed through these pages, stop now and sum up your critique, write it out, and attach it to the front of the chapter from the loose pages. You want to be able to pick it back up later and know whether you are revising an essentially adequate chapter, or if you are going to replace it. If you come to a chapter with a scene you definitely aren’t going to use, block it out with a felt marker and make a note, but keep stacking the manuscript so you have things in order. When you identify a section you know you aren’t going to use, mark it to indicate whether you are deleting it entirely or replacing it. You may have notes from your many exercises, and you can attach or tape them to pages and insert them where they are relevant.
Keep the loose pages (caught in scenes or chapters with paper clips) together in sequence, separate from the chapters that you think you can use in the revision more or less as is.
So now you have two stacks:
Scenes and chapters you can use, with some work.
Scenes and chapters you don’t think you can use (but you might want to look at again).
You also have your summaries and your scene sequences.
If you have a gush of inspiration now, by all means write, but if you feel very much in the analysis mode, set the pages aside and keep going.
The Last Draft Page 20
