Edit a Novel Fast by Fixing Patterns, Not Scenes
This is the system I’m using, and it’s working
“Instead of attacking isolated problems, I made the resolution that I would never again solve an isolated problem except as characteristic of a class.” -Richard Hamming, You and Your Research
12 days until my Romantasy rough draft goes to beta readers.
And I haven’t touched a scene yet.
It feels slow. This new way of editing, starting with big meta problems and solving them one by one, doesn’t give me that dopamine hit. I’m tempted to go back to the old way- read front to back, fix as I go.
Sure, it didn’t work, but it felt productive.
But this time, I’m not fixing isolated problems. I’m solving classes of problems.
What does that even mean? Well, in every messy draft, there are a few foundational issues, usually with the characters, plot, or the book’s stakes, that if fixed, a large number of smaller problems immediately get solved too;
We call those bottleneck problems.
An example from my current book: I realized I didn’t know the actual relationship between two of my main characters. I discovered this in my midpoint scene- which is the scene about halfway through a book where something BIG happens. My midpoint fell flat.
Why? These characters should have major tension, but I don’t know what it is! But once I fix it, that not only fixes my midpoint scene but a bunch of other key moments throughout the book.
Cool, that makes sense, but how do you find your book’s bottleneck problems? I start by going to the most important scenes in my book and asking where they fall flat. If they’re anything less than magic, I’ll ask , ‘what bigger problem is making this scene not work?’ Usually that leads me to a bottleneck problem.
So basically:
I look at key scenes and ask myself why they’re falling flat, until I get to a problem that is endemic throughout the book
I solve these big issues before I solve anything else
I don’t touch scenes until the issue is solved
It feels slower, but the progress is light-speed in comparison to editing front-to-back like I used to.
Hope you all have a fun weekend, and I’ll see you on Monday,
Madi
PS- If you’re an author, please say hi, I want to make author friends! And if you know an author who is struggling with editing, could you share this, and make them ask kindly if they’ll say hi?