Power Down

How (and Why) to Begin Reworking Your Novel Away from the Computer

Kathleen McCleary

At one point while I was rewriting my second novel, I printed the entire book and spread it out, chapter by chapter, in a grid across the floor in my office. I had thirty or more chapters, plus blank pages to mark where yet-to-be-written chapters might go. I spent days deciding how to structure the book: what to cut, what to add, what to move from this part of the book to that part. I came home one day about two weeks into the process and found my husband in the kitchen.

“Oh, hey,” he said. “You know that mess all over the floor in your office? I picked it up for you.”

I stared at him, speechless.

“I’m kidding,” he said. “I’m kidding!” The fact that my first reaction to his joke was the feeling that the bottom had dropped out of my life says something about the challenging, head-banging, but ultimately rewarding process of rewriting a book. Revising is “the hardest work there is,” Ernest Hemingway told author Arnold Samuelson. (He also mentioned that he rewrote A Farewell to Arms “at least fifty times.”) But learning to revise away from the computer—with markers, sticky notes, whiteboards, index cards, geographical maps, and even desk calendars—can give you fresh insight into your book and how to approach it.

I’ve revised three novels now (four, if you count the rewriting I’ve done already on my work-in-progress), and I’ve learned that working on my story off the computer helps enormously in focusing my attention on what needs to change, sparking ideas for new directions, and identifying what and where to cut. If you’re ready to dive into your own revision, here are some off-line techniques to try.

PRINT IT OUT

Print out your manuscript. Holding the entire physical book in your hands will give you a major sense of satisfaction. You made something out of nothing—how cool is that? Give yourself credit for your amazing accomplishment in finishing an entire novel, something few people actually do.

Also, reading on paper instead of on your computer screen will help you better see, understand, and track changes you want to make. A 2013 Scientific American article found that in multiple studies people were able to create better “mental maps” when reading on paper—they had a better sense of where in a book they read a certain scene or bit of information. This, in turn, helped readers better comprehend what they were reading.

“When we read, we construct a mental representation of the text in which meaning is anchored to structure,” writes SA’s Ferris Jabr. These representations are like “the mental maps we create of terrain—such as mountains and trails—and of man-made physical spaces, such as apartments and offices.” People often can remember where in the text they read something—at the top of a right-hand page, for example—just as they might remember walking past a watercooler before turning right to enter an office. Because reading on paper provides “more obvious topography” than onscreen text (left and right pages, eight corners, etc.), it’s easier to make a mental map of what you’re reading.

Reading through your entire book on paper will help your brain map your story—what occurs at what point in the novel, how far into the journey it is. And that helps you understand the pacing of your book as well as any components that might be missing or repetitive.

SPREAD IT OUT

Once you’ve printed your book, spread out all the manuscript pages across a large surface—a table, counter, or floor (my favorite). You can organize it in whatever way works best for you.

I lay the book out chapter-by-chapter across the floor, as mentioned earlier, going from left to right in a giant grid. This gives me an immediate sense of the story as a whole. I determine how many chapters are devoted to each character’s POV, how the chapters compare in length (I don’t want a book with some chapters of thirty pages and some of two pages), and I mark where, according to my outline or plot synopsis, transitional scenes (or more major scenes) are needed by putting a blank sheet of paper in the correct spot on the grid. This technique helped me enormously with my second novel, which included two POVs and chapters that frequently switched time lines. By laying it all out, I saw how much of the book belonged to one character and how much belonged to another, and where and when I needed better transitions between their stories. Where in that grid does the climax happen? When does the character move from the ordinary world into the journey that launches the novel?

Tish Cohen, author of five novels, including The Search Angel, prints out all the chapters and lays them “on the floor with giant stickies noting the narrative point of each, for a bird’s-eye view.” Try it. If one character’s POV fills twice as many pages as another character’s, does that make sense? Does the character who gets the most space deserve or need it? Similarly, is there a character or POV that deserves more space? You can pinpoint these issues at a glance.

And don’t be afraid to chop up that grid of papers if you have to. Ania Szado, author of Studio Saint EX and Beginning of Was, wove together the present-day narrative of her protagonist with a time line from that character’s past in her first novel. The memories didn’t appear chronologically in the book, but Szado wanted to be sure information flowed in a way that made sense to the reader. So she cut up the manuscript, split it into two stacks—present and past—and put each in chronological order. “I read through each one as though it was its own manuscript, reordered where necessary, and then put the whole thing together again.”

MAKE A MIND MAP

Mind mapping is a visual form of outlining. After I finished my third novel, I struggled with the revision. I knew parts of the story didn’t work, but I wasn’t sure why or which parts. Finally, I got out a big piece of poster board, markers, scissors, and tape. The novel tells the story of two women, good friends, who both desperately want a baby. I cut out a photo of one of my daughters as an infant and taped it to the center of the poster board. Then I drew a branch from the center to represent one character and another branch (in a different color) to represent another character. I drew sub-branches off each branch, representing the important people in that character’s life. I drew lines across the branches and scribbled in major events that happened in each character’s story arc. This exercise helped me see the story in a completely different way.

You can find mind-mapping software online, as well as thousands of examples of mind maps and blank mind-map charts. The basic elements of a mind map are as follows:

• a central image (this should be a visual image, not words) that represents the main focus or idea, which for me is always the “want” that is driving the main character
• branches radiating from the center that embody the main themes (or characters)
• twigs shooting out from the branches to represent ideas directly connected to the relevant branch
• curved lines, images, color—visual stuff that excites your brain

You can put your character’s goal or desire in the center of your map and work from there. Or you might put your character in the center, and the branches could represent the different obstacles or adventures the character faces through the course of the book. Experiment.

HANG UP A GEOGRAPHICAL MAP

My second novel took place in the San Juan Islands off Washington State’s coast. I put up several large maps of the San Juans on the wall of my office as I was revising so I could see where the characters lived and worked and played, and so I could make sure that anything I wrote about the geography was accurate. Catherine McKenzie, author of six novels, including Smoke, put a large map of Cincinnati on her wall while working on her latest novel (Fractured, October 2016) so she could track characters as they moved around the neighborhood in which the book takes place.

OFFICE-SUPPLY THE HECK OUT OF IT

Whiteboards, bulletin boards, index cards, markers, magnetic boards, chalkboards, sticky notes, pens, thumbtacks, tape, and scissors are all your friends. While revising one novel, I bought a large magnetic whiteboard and lots of little magnet “tacks.” I wrote a one-sentence summary of each scene on index cards, using green for scenes that were in one character’s POV and yellow for scenes in another character’s POV. Then I arranged the book scene by scene on the whiteboard by “tacking” each index card with a magnet. Seeing the entire novel on one space (a space smaller than the floor of my office) helped me see where it was dragging, where it got off track, or where one character was too dominant.

Writer Tish Cohen uses different-colored permanent markers and gigantic sticky notes to chart each revision task on her wall. For smaller details, she uses index card–size stickies. As she addresses the issue on each note, “I get a little thrill—okay, a big one—from balling them up and throwing them away,” she says.

Catherine McKenzie has used a corkboard with giant sticky notes to “see POV, the number of scenes, and whether it’s past or present narrative action.”

SET IT IN TIME

You know those big desk calendars, the ones that are almost two feet wide and a foot and a half tall? Try using sticky notes and one of those calendars to help you plot out the time line of your story. This tip comes from Allie Larkin, author of Stay and Why Can’t I Be You. She writes individual scenes on different-colored sticky notes and posts them on the calendar to track what happens when.

TRUST YOUR INSTINCTS

Michelangelo supposedly said, “The sculptor arrives at his end by taking away what is superfluous.” (You’ll find that quote online as “Sculpting is easy. You just chip away the stone that doesn’t look like David,” which is Michelangelo as interpreted by social media.) No matter how or if he said it, the point is a good one: You’re honing your book into what is true and essential, and the ultimate best guide for that process is the instinct that led you to write that story in the first place. Trust it. You’re a writer. You know what to do.