What is Rewriting?

I thought I’d start my series of writing advice articles with this topic as it is one that stumped me for years. As a writer, you’re often told that drafting is the easy part. You have an inciting incident to kick off the plot, maybe you get bogged down in the draggy middle, but then you wrap everything up nicely in the end. The hard part comes next: revision. I used to think this meant making bigger picture changes (adding a character here, deleting a scene there, changing the sequence of events) followed by an in-depth line edit which includes doing a Find and Replace of the whole document to remove filter words.

While revision should include these important steps, I missed the most crucial component that can really elevate your novel to the next level. That is the process of rewriting.

Now, if you’re like me, you hear this term and you start to panic: After buttoning up my draft, I’m now supposed to scrap the whole thing and start the story over from scratch?

Take a deep breath and reel those emotions back in. Fortunately, that’s not what rewriting is (unless that process specifically works for you). I learned of the true nature of rewriting from my soon-to-be published critique partner (the value of CPs will be discussed in another article). Rewriting is a line by line overhaul of the entire manuscript. You read through one sentence and one paragraph at a time and change how the information is presented. You can rewrite each sentence but will really reap the benefits by changing the structure of whole paragraphs at a time.

Things to consider when Rewriting:

~What details are important? Specifically if you have a first person or close third person POV, only keep in the details that your MC will notice. And if your MC notices a detail, why are they seeing it? Is it because of who they are as a character or does the detail have significance to the plot? If neither of these are the case, consider taking the detail out.

~Can the prose be more active? Look for sentences where a passive voice is used. Often changing the order of the clauses in the sentence can flip passive to active.

~Does your narrator have a distinctive voice? Often a first draft will read like “this happened, then that happened” with little to no reaction or emotion from the MC. Pay attention to this in the rewrites and inject narrator response where appropriate. This is a great time to add in voice as well.

~Are there too many dialogue tags? Dialogue tags are meant to be unobtrusive to the story so you’ll want to eliminate them as much as possible. For instance, when you have a character completing an action in the same paragraph they are speaking, let the action be the identifier for who owns the dialogue.

Now, you might be thinking, that’s good and all but how does it work? I’ll give you an example from the stories I have posted to Vocal—which were all composed without taking the step of rewriting.

Here is the original scene that you will find in my posted chapter 17. Brothers:

***

The clouds shifted in the darkening sky as Ranger reached the phone booth. Glancing around a moment confirmed that he was alone on the block. He stepped inside, pulled the door shut, and fed some loose change into the machine. He took the black receiver off the hook and dialed the last number to Melvin’s cell phone that Ranger had been aware of.

Rain water cascaded against the glass outside. Ranger twined the cool spiraled cord in one hand while the receiver buzzed in his ear. Biting his bottom lip, he moved the receiver away from his head. It had rang five times with no answer. As he was about to replace it on the hook, a voice crackled through the other line.

Ranger froze in the phone booth, staring at the shiny black device. He couldn’t believe that his brother had answered an unknown caller with a Raymond area code placing a call to his personal cell phone. Swallowing, Ranger returned the device to his ear.

***

And now here’s that same scene after a brief round of rewriting:

***

Ranger approached the looming phone booth, clouds shifting above. A quick glance around confirmed he was alone, so he stepped inside. Melvin’s old cell number rolled too easily off his fingertips as he grabbed the phone. Rain water cascaded against the glass. Five rings and still no answer. He lowered the receiver, about to hang up, when a voice crackled through its speaker.

He froze, jaw dropping in disbelief. His older brother had answered an unknown caller with a Raymond area code? And to his personal cell phone? Swallowing to moisten the sudden dryness in his throat, Ranger lifted the phone back to his ear.

***

What do you think of the rewrite? How would you change it? Have questions? Want to chat? Reach out to me via Twitter. Want more advice from a dedicated novel writer? Subscribe to me here.