Now What? How to Deepen Your Manuscript Before Publishing

During the second month of our “Now What?” Months, we’re shifting our focus to publishing in all its myriad forms. Today, Orna Ross of the Alliance of Independent Authors kicks things off and focuses on helping you make sure your manuscript is ready for the publishing process:

This is the first in a series of four blog posts in association with The Alliance of Independent Authors, leading novelists through the process of self-publishing, from first draft to reaching readers. Over the coming weeks, we will cover

• design and formatting
  
• production and distribution
  
• marketing and promotion
  

Today, we’re talking about deepening and editing the first drafts you completed during NaNoWriMo.

Writing a book (indeed any creative project) has seven stages:

1. Intention
2. Incubation
3. Investigation
4. Composition
5. Amplification
6. Clarification
7. Completion
   

Expressed as actions these are:

1. Choosing
2. Germinating
3. Researching
4. Drafting
5. Deepening
6. Correcting (Editing) 
7. Finishing / Publishing
   

By the time you’ve completed NaNoWriMo, you’ve been through the first four stages. After that comes a rest.

The next stage is Deepening, also known as amplification. You’re making sure your novel actually does say what you wanted it to say. This stage requires the ability to read between the lines and expand on meaning, metaphor and form.

It is characterised by deep care and attention to your own words, both what has and has not been said.

Stage 5: How do you deepen your novel?

Before you start on cutting and curing, you first need to amplify what the draft is saying.

This is generally a most satisfying stage in the creative process, so long as sufficient time is set aside for it. Unfortunately, it is also the phase that beginner writers are most likely to skip or hurry. Wanting it to be over, to get on to editing and to the holy grail of publication, can shortchange the process.

In the deepening draft, you think about how you can enlarge upon, elaborate, add to, supplement, develop, flesh out and add detail in ways that will make your work higher, deeper, larger and more expressive of you.

Deepening: The Steps

Take A Rest: Once you’ve completed a first draft to your satisfaction, you need to get away from it and the longer you can stay away from it the better.

Engage An Expansive Attitude: The deepening stage is all about expanding your sense of the novel and your sense of yourself as a writer. Think about how you can enlarge upon your novel in ways that will make your work deeper.

Before You Edit, Do An “Anti-Edit”: Look for what is good and put aside any negative judgement. When you find something that works well—a chapter, a passage, a page, a paragraph, a phrase, a sentence, a word, even—circle it. These become your touchstones. 

As you read and search for the good, be alert to the emotions you are feeling. Name them in your notes. Every book is primarily an act of self-discovery, and this is where you develop your book’s heart.

Ask Open Questions: Ask yourself questions during this phase. Keep your attitude open to possibilities. Answer your questions in writing, quickly but expansively.

Think About The Reader: The best question that encompasses all the others is: How do I help the reader to see more clearly?

Once you’ve finished the Anti-Edit, you’ll know what parts of the draft you are almost certainly keeping. Everything you’ve circled now becomes the standard by which the in-between bits will be evaluated. Some of these in-between bits will be discarded completely, others will be altered, others shifted about.  

You’re moving now towards being ready, finally, for the editing process. Just before that starts, give yourself a another break from your manuscript to ask more questions and mull the answers.  

Stage 6: How do you edit your novel?

The editorial phase is handled by the writer and then by others. It begins with self-editing, moves on to beta readers, and then to professional editors.

Self-editing: The Steps

Aim for four qualities in your writing: brevity, clarity, simplicity and unity. 

Remove / move / improve: anything that interferes with the reader’s appreciation of what your book is saying and how it is being said. 

Do the removing first, then the moving and improving, so you don’t waste writing hours doing small edits on a paragraph or page or chapter that is destined for the trashcan.

Take it slowly. Give yourself lots of time. Work in 90-minute bursts with breaks in between.

Don’t edit on a computer. Print off a copy of your book with wide margins and double spacing.

Keep in mind what you’re trying to effect with each chapter, scene, paragraph, sentence, and word—what point you’re trying to establish, what sort of mood you’re trying to create, what background you’re trying to suggest. 

Read it aloud as you go. Preferably in front of somebody else, or into a recording device so you can play it back. 

Keep an editing notebook by your side and make regular notes to self. Make an editing to-do list and tick off each task as you do it.

Beta Readers

When you’ve done all you can, give your book to some trusted others for feedback before sending it to an editor. If there’s something particular you’d like a reader to comment on, be sure to ask, but this isn’t essential. Sometimes it’s nice to see what different readers pick up on, instead of guiding them

You can find more about working with beta readers here.

Editing.

Finally comes professional editing. Every writer you’ve ever read in book form has been edited, so there is no way that you can skip this process. Editing comes in a variety of forms, and your book may require some or all of them, even after a great deal of self-editing and feedback from beta readers:

Structural Editing looks at the big picture, analysing how well a book’s constituent parts contribute to the central message or narrative. 

Line Editing focuses on how you use language to communicate your story to the reader. Is your language clear, flowing and enjoyable to read? Does it create the appropriate atmosphere, emotion, and tone? Where have you slipped (we all do) into broad generalizations fuzzy language or clichés?

Copyediting is making sure your book abides by the “five c’s”: that it is clear, correct, concise, comprehensible, and consistent.

Proofreading is the final stage, making sure that no errors remain from the manuscript or have been introduced in the editing.

ALLi’s Author Advice Centre has a section on finding and working with editors. We also have a vetted directory of editors, all qualified with good testimonials from our members. 

Once all this is done, you now have a publishable manuscript. In the next post in this series, we’ll be covering the two publishing processes that follow on from editorial: design and formatting.

Orna Ross writes and publishes poetry and fiction as well as creative guides, and is greatly excited by the democratising and empowering potential of author-publishing. Her work for ALLi has seen her named as one of The Bookseller’s “100 Most Influential People in Publishing” since 2013. ALLi  (The Alliance of Independent Authors) is a non-profit professional association for authors who self-publish. Our motto is "Working together to help each other”.