Rewrites can be a pain . I know from my recent experiences. Even now as I work on the 2nd draft . I find  myself still  rewriting scenes and changing characters names. But revising and rewriting is a vital  component to writing. Without it the story and characters might  suffer, fall apart  and readers  will  get bored and tired, ultimately throwing the book down .

So what do you do? How  do you revise and rewrite your novel ?

A revision is when you’re only changing the text, and not the story.

While revising you concentrate on the text and the way  the  scenes  flow.

There  are often minor changes while revising because you like how the story is.

Rewriting is considered totally different than revision. Rewriting  is more substantial .  Remember there is  also no editing in rewriting. Your literally taking out all the problematic potholes,  characters , and scenes within the novel.    

First off  remember that you  must not be afraid metaphorically to kill your darlings  from the page . So anything that doesn’t make sense within the story but you like it take it out and put it aside for another  time because you might need it for later . IE deleted  scenes. 

I  love my deleted  scenes . I  have by now a  whole pile of them.  Sometimes  I ‘ll  put them back in when necessary  if I’m rearranging the  story around.  Or  I’ll  save them  to make a  new  story with the deleted  scenes( I talk  more about that in the post A SHORT STORY / NOVEL CONNECTION).

How  to focus on reworking what we  wrote  to bring out the core  idea  of the  story . 

I did this after  finishing up my 1st  draft of my current work in progress  novel. But  to tell you the truth  it took a long time.  It’s quite the process. To find the core  idea of my work in progress  novel  I  ended up deconstructing  it page by page.  Scene by  scene , sentence  by sentence .

The next thing to think about  is trying to figure  out how you can  make it better than  what  and  how you  wrote it the first time.

This is what I learned  when working on my  first draft . You are going to have to change  the story whether  you want to or not. Sorry  but  it is  true .  I ended up changing almost everything about my story except for the main plot and the fact that it is about werewolves. When I read through my first   draft  I  found myself cringing at moments , most scenes preferably  in the beginning of the draft and   towards  the ends it was okay but still  needed a lot of work.

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HOW DID YOU REVISE  YOUR NOVEL?

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