The Revisions Matrix: My Approach to One-Pass Novel Revising

I wrote earlier about how my excellent beta gave me terrific groundwork for a plan to revise my novel. I have a good framework there. I have all the characters there, and the plot works, without—as I’d feared—any gaping holes. What I’m doing now is, as the late great Blake Snyder puts it, “pulling the arrow back.”

(Side note: I’ve been reading Save the Cat! and finding a lot of it very applicable to novel writing. I highly encourage writers to check out Black Snyder's website. There’s also a great interview with him over at Writer Unboxed.)

Pulling the arrow back means setting up your protagonist at the beginning of the book so that she is in a position to make the longest trajectory to her "new" self at the end of the book. Think about an arrow you don't pull back in the bow very far. It goes only a little wobbly ways before it falls flat to the ground. Now think about the arrow pulled back so far and so hard that it strains your every muscle. That’s the arrow that’s going to make the best flight.

My plan for revision is to pull back the arrow of Lady Aurora of Cavalcata, my protagonist. I’m asking myself, why is this the greatest adventure of her life? I need to make it so the stakes can’t get any higher. I also need to make her choices stronger, so that she is more active in the change she undergoes in the course of the story. And then there are some housekeeping things to attend to: enhance the presence of the war in the story, refine the minor characters, balance the flashbacks between the first and second halves.

So here’s what I did: I figured out the top ten or so major things I need of which I need to be vigilantly aware during the revision process. These are questions I need to ask myself, thematic arcs, things I can enhance to make each scene and character work harder. Examples:

• How is the war present in this scene?
• Is this character acting true to type? Or purposely going against type?
• "My life has changed for having met another” (this is my thematic arc)

I took these things and wrote them in fat, green Sharpie marker on index cards, which I taped all over my desk. All I have to do is glance up and remember what I need to be paying attention to. This isn’t the time to be mulling over word choice or paragraph length. I need to be focused and targeted on the ways I am enhancing the book, and these index cards keep me on track.

The second thing I did was to create an enormous spreadsheet, my Revisions Matrix. Going down the left side, I have every single scene in my book. Across the top, I have the following:

• Chapter number – helps me see if I have tried to stuff too much or too little into a single chapter
• Scene number – for identification purposes
• Time – helps me ensure that the timeline matches up across the whole arc of the book, including flashbacks
• Plot – again, for identification purposes
• Character change – what is the arc of the character in this scene? These are opportunities to “pull the arrow back” in a small way.
• Opportunity (Character) – what opportunity do I have here to enhance the characters in this scene? Are they serving the themes? Are they being true to their essential selves? Are there parallels to late scenes that can be leveraged?
• Opportunity (Conflict) – what is the tension in this scene? Can it be enhanced? Am I making things too easy on my characters? Am I pulling the arrow back far enough as I aim at targets later in the book?
• Opportunity (War) – how is the war present in this scene? Did the characters seem to forget there is a war going on? How can I drop in bits of history and details that make it seem more like a character in itself?
• Theme Stated – In this final column, I take one sentence from the Chapter that sums up the theme for that chapter. This helps me focus the chapter and make sure everything is serving the mini thematic arc. If there is not a stated theme, I have a problem, and I need to address it. One of my favorites: “Sometimes locks are to keep things out.”

When this matrix is complete, it will be my scene-by-scene blueprint for revision. It makes life easier for me because I’ve gotten all the thinking out of the way first. When I get to each scene, I just have to write to my plan. And because I planned it all out ahead of time, I’ve mitigated the risk of introducing something new or making a change that will cascade to other parts of the book in a way I haven't planned for.

The plan now is to revise one chapter per night according to the matrix. Then I print out a hard copy and do my red-line edit. The theory is that, when I get to the end, all I’ll have to do is input the red-line changes and I’ll be done. Pretty sweet! Let’s just see if I can stick to that pace for all 39 chapters…