The milestone most people think about when they imagine writing is the moment when the author types “The End”. (Spoiler alert: Whenever I start a new manuscript the first thing I type is – END – in bold, centered text.) Of course this is important … it’s a rare writer who is invulnerable to doubts like “Can I finish this?” or “Does this story have an ending?” But as satisfying as it might be to get to “the end”, that is hardly the end of work, certainly for any writer hoping to publish.

What comes after? Welcome to the twilight zone of REVISION. Here I’ll share what I’m doing with my current book, FORLORN TOYS.

What are the problems?

So you wrote your book and presumably you like it – otherwise why would you have written it the way you did? But at some level, depending on your goals as a writer, you want other people to like it. How do you know how your new creation stacks up?

The starting point is beta readers – people who get a free copy of the book, read it, then tell you what they think. I use different levels of beta reader:

Friends and Family: We’re talking siblings, children, maybe parents, and of course your reading-inclined acquaintances. I actually consider this pretty important – if people who know you the best don’t find much to say about your book, either the topic/genre is super far-afield, or the book is a tough read. And don’t discount the positive feedback as just politeness – I look for specific comments from this group, like “I loved character X!” or “The spaceship was so cool!” as core validation. But don’t expect much actionable criticism here.

Your Writing Circle: I belong to a few writers’ groups and its common for members to “trade” beta-reads – I’ll read yours if you read mine. What you can expect here is a more writing-craft level of feedback. I was fortunate to get two such readers, and they gave me lots of detailed feedback on slow pacing, including *why* it feels slow.

Paid Beta Readers: Nowadays there’s a substantial industry around supporting writers, both would-be and established. I use a company that offers both editorial services and beta-reads. The actual beta-readers are all pros, one way or another: they are editors, writing teachers, sometimes authors themselves. I have found this paid feedback is the most comprehensive and best presented.

I got important signals out of the FORLORN TOYS beta-read:

• The core concept is a winner: A reaper who harvests technology from dead worlds learns of an ancient alien threat to all civilization. There’s an evil corporation, bad guys, henchmen, and a good amount of ultra-advanced tech in the story.
• Everyone liked the characters. Some cited the revenge-driven main character Irá as their favorite, others were in the camp of robotically-enhanced, cheerful nihilist Judd, while still others were taken with flamboyant Promakos or wise and thoughtful Sejal.
• The most consistent critique was on pacing, especially on scenes having to do with technical problem solving.

This gave me confidence to make the investment in the next round of feedback, engaging a developmental editor – a process that looks at the foundation elements of your book: Setting, Plot, Character, Structure. I say investment because this service typically costs between $0.02 and $0.05 per word. FORLORN TOYS is 92,000 words. Well, it was less than a full set of pro-line golf clubs.

Every editor will have their own process.  if you are a writer and are interested in this, I urge you to have a get-acquainted convo with candidate editors before you sign a contract. My editor takes about a month for an edit, and gives back a letter – a 10+ page document that gives a summary of findings and recommendations – and manuscript comments. For FORLORN TOYS, I got 1,120 comments. Some examples:

I don’t know what this means, like who are they and what was stolen? I’m okay with not knowing, but am I supposed to understand or is it supposed to be developed over time?

Fantastic description of the space station, which feels cramped, poorly lit, and probably dusty.

Here’s where the story starts in earnest. Now I know she’s waiting for someone, she’s expecting a business deal to occur, and she probably needs the money. Is it possible that the story starts around here, or maybe when her business counterparts arrive?

What to do about it?

Here’s what I do with all this material:

I read every comment and assign it a status: INFO ONLY means just that, an observation, not a request for change; EVALUATE means I see the issue described and I will (later) try and address it; finally DISAGREE means I feel the comment misses the mark and that I won’t act on it. The breakdown of comments was 68% INFO ONLY, 21% EVALUATE, and 11% DISAGREE.

My next step is I then export all that to a spreadsheet so I can more easily read through the comments in isolation. This lets me identify themes in the comments, issues that probably need action at more than one point in the book. Some of these larger themes/issues:

• More about Irá’s enemies: Irá has three adversaries, people who betrayed her and put her in prison for 10 years.  Their names are mentioned on page 11 or so, but then the next mention, of a single name, is 90 pages later. I needed to reiterate these names more and have Irá a bit obsess over them and what they did. Then when that name comes up, we know who it is.
• Irá’s Regeneration: A major aspect of the main character Irá is that she is a 70-year-old woman in the body of a 10-year-old. I always knew why that was: Irá at age 70 wouldn’t have the stamina to go on a mission of revenge so she needed to rejuvenate – but because she’s impatient, doesn’t plan on subduing her enemies by main force but instead will out-think them, and because she wants to save money (hey, those months in the regen pod ain’t free!) she opts to stop at age 10. Like I said, I always knew this, but never put it in the book; I was too taken with just writing the action. But this needs to be in there, it grounds the character and let’s the reader concentrate on what happens next, vs. theorizing about why she is 10 years old.
• Motivation. FORLORN TOYS has a fair bit of complexity, around how alien worlds are discovered, how languages are translated, how reapers compete by keeping secrets, etc. I’m afraid as I wrote the story I concentrated a lot on what was being done, and left out a lot of the why. For example, early on Irá takes on a reaping job for someone she knew in her previous life, like 50 years back. The what is to do an archeological survey, and I showed a ton about that, but the why, which was she did this in order to secure help in her revenge plot, was just not clear enough.

What does this look like in practice? Here’s a before and after for a motivation-related change:

BEFORE

But she had two distractions. First was the anticipation of Duncan Baird’s help with her master plan. She was certain Baird had contacts at Dross that could introduce him to Volkov, or to Abara or D’Amboise. . And there was some chance he might already be connected to one or more of them.

AFTER

But she had two distractions. First was the anticipation of Duncan Baird’s help with her master plan – luring her betrayers into a fake technology hunt. Between the archaic writings and the cube artifact, Irá was confident she had more that satisfied Duncan’s brief for Breezeway, and that should dispose him to help with her plans – using his contacts at Dross that could link to Volkov, or to Abara or D’Amboise. And there was some chance he might already be directly connected to one or more of them.

Calling a Halt

I’ve been working on making actual manuscript changes for three weeks now. All told I’ve added 3,400 words. That’s about the length of a chapter, but of course it’s scattered across the whole story. Now I’m going to do a short line-edit for repeats and adverbs, then a full line-by-line read through. I’m hoping that’s no more than 1 week. After that, it will be preparing a package to send to agents.

I will say I’m optimistic about the revisions I’ve done. One big reason is I always intended for Irá’s character to change from a self-centered person obsessed with avenging wrongs she’s suffered, to someone who is more aware of the amazing scope of the universe and the futility of revenge, vs. justice. Irá’s actions all fit with that story, but if we don’t hear from her the why, we can’t understand her change.

Anyway, happy to report this time “revision” was not a Twilight Zone of mirrors and no path out … with all the high-quality feedback from my beta-readers and editor I think I was able to focus on things that made FORLORN TOYS a better book.

Maybe next post I’ll share about agents, query letters, synopses and all that … but that will be less of a Twilight Zone and more of a Valley of Rejection Despair umm, Optimism. Yeah, that’s the ticket.

Till next time,