Tackling Revision

Tackling Revision

By Julie Tollefson

You’ve won NaNoWriMo! Congratulations!

Now what?

Tony Perona, author of eight novels and numerous short stories, offers five tips for 2021 NaNo winners and all authors who’ve completed novel or short story drafts and now face the sometimes daunting task of revision.

1) Celebrate! — “It’s such a high when you accomplish a goal,” Tony says. “I think NaNo is really cool and for a lot of people who have never finished a manuscript, never finished a story before, they see this as a way to spur themselves to get it finished. And it works! It’s a great accomplishment.”

But when you inevitably come off that high, take the momentum, the confidence, the motivation you earned in November and build on it to polish those words and give your story the best possible chance at publication.

2) Give yourself the gift of time — First, set your manuscript aside for a few weeks. Read the books you didn’t have time for while you were drafting. Tackle a home improvement project you’ve been putting off. Rest your brain and let the story sit.

“I feel like a week isn’t quite enough. If you’re working through the story and you come to the end and you’re writing fast, your mind is still working in that story mode for another week,” Tony says.

But after two weeks, he’s ready to look at the manuscript with fresh eyes. That’s when he finds typos, sees that his character rolled her eyes nine times in two chapters — “The shortcuts you take when you’re writing fast, pushing your way through” — and uncovers plot holes and lapses in logic.

Giving himself time after finishing a draft means he can be more objective when it’s time to revise. It’s a process that’s carried him through three solo novels, a thriller with co-writer Paul Skorich, and, with his daughter, Liz Dombrosky, four books in The Bucket List Mystery Series under the pen name Elizabeth Perona.

3) Share your work — “I have, and I hope everyone has, a writers group, people who are writers. People who can be critical,” Tony says. And they are a vital part of his writing and revising process. He sends chunks of his manuscript to the group and then they have an honest discussion about the story’s strengths and weaknesses.

In addition, as part of a writing team, Tony is never writing totally alone.

“Liz, my daughter, is like my final editor,” he says. The way they’ve established their collaborative workflow means that, although Liz is part of the creative process from the beginning, she’s more hands off with the writing until the later stages, when she reads the manuscript through from front to back and adds in details to help with scene-setting, makes revisions, and often questions her dad about how they can make the ending better. (Tony says that Liz can be adamant — in a good way — when it comes to story endings.)

4) Revise, revise, revise — Some writers take multiple passes through their manuscripts, each focusing on a specific aspect — character, subplots, description, dialog.

Tony looks at the story as a whole and estimates he makes at least five complete revision passes before he’s confident the manuscript is good enough for publication.

“I may veer off slightly or not so slightly from the path that we had intended,” he says of the initial draft. “You really do have to go back through the manuscript and ask, given that this is the way it ended up, did I get there satisfactorily? Does it work? Does it flow the way it should?”

Each revision brings him that much closer to a polished, ready-for-publication story.

One of his very last steps is to read the entire manuscript or story out loud.

“When you read it out loud, you hear dialog that’s not quite there yet. Would she really say that in that way? You pick out typos. You hear places to put in or leave out commas,” he says.

5) Be kind to yourself — Revision can be a formidable, even overwhelming task.

“I constantly feel overwhelmed,” Tony says with a laugh. “First of all, I procrasti-bake for a few days and then finally realize ‘you’re going to have to do this, Tony.’”

If you’re in the same predicament, having a process to turn to helps. Take Tony’s advice, blend it with what you’ve learned from others, and find what works for you.

“At some point,” he says, “your determination to finish the project overcomes your anxiety.”