Returning to My Completed Novel: My Process and How I’m Tackling a Beast

Welcome back, my dear readers, to the Writing My World blog! 

As you likely know, I have been very busy working on an exceptionally long blog post analyzing The Last of Us Part 2. Because I am a masochist, and crave large helpings of creative dopamine to my brain on a daily basis, I have also decided at the same time to jump back into my book that I finished in 2023 and do a second rewrite. 

So I decided I would talk a little bit about my creative process when it comes to rewriting, what that looks like, and how I break it down. If you don’t know, this is the first book I’ve ever actually finished, and I’ve done it twice. 

What started as a historical fiction romance novel about a French girl and a native American boy became a high fantasy adventure full of romance, twists, and a battle for redemption. 

I currently have two completed manuscripts, (printed and on my computer) a notebook to take notes in, highlighters, pens, sticky tabs, and various maps (including a massive one that details the entirety of my world of Feiradyr.) Said map will hopefully be a future blogpost, as I have a goal to copy it onto old looking paper and decorate it to hang on my office wall. But that is a project for another day. 

My first step in rewriting is to make a list of the things I plan to change right off the bat. This is why I will recommend to ANYONE who is writing a book to shelve it after you’ve written it. Shelve it for several months, come back to it, and read it with fresh eyes. And if you’re like me, you’ll come up with brand new ideas to include when you come back to it in those months. 

With this technique, you’ll avoid overworking and overthinking your story. You won’t write it to death, rewriting scenes over and over and over and over again trying to get every single line right. (At least not until you get down to the true nitty gritty and make the last few little polishing edits.) 

So, I’ve come up with my list of initial changes for the story, and I’ve written them down in my notebook. These are things I will keep in mind when reading over my two manuscripts. I’ll make note of how to incorporate the changes into my next draft, and mark down areas where the changes could be executed well in the narrative.

Next, I’ll read over my two manuscripts and make note of things I definitely want to include, things that could be useful to include, and things I want to cut entirely. These decisions can be tricky, but narrowing them down into these 3 categories helps to work through everything and not get overwhelmed. I can do this with scenes, characters, lines of dialogue, plot points, and even themes. Some scenes will need to be moved around to fit better in the new draft. Others will need to be longer. Some shorter, and some cut entirely. These are all decisions I have to make, and by taking it one chunk at a time, the process becomes less stressful. 

Once I have my list of changes and notes from my previous manuscripts, it’s time to write up a rough outline for my new draft of my story. I can include themes I want to hit, character arcs I want to happen, and of course plot points and scenes I want to take place. It’s important to keep track of your characters and their motivations, so that you can include them in the story but still have a central plot that everybody follows in their own way. I may write up character sheets for everyone I plan to include with their motivations, desires, wants, needs, likes and dislikes as reference material later. By doing this, I can view every scene from the angle of character motivations. What does each character hope to achieve through this scene?

Character work is something I hope to improve upon in this draft. Alongside that, I hope to narrow the focus of my story just a bit to afford myself the ability to flesh out more of the settings, characters, and themes I’m working with. 

I also now have a map of Feiradyr, which helps a lot in my creative process because I can understand where characters are in my world. My magic system is still a work in progress, but it is certainly more fleshed out than it was when I completed my first rewrite, enough so that I can reference and provide a broad understanding of how it works in my story. 

There are some things that were core parts of my story that I believe are going to get left on the cutting room floor this time around. And I think that level of change and growth is healthy. Realizing that an idea simply isn’t working or that it needs to be completely redone shows a good amount of understanding of one’s own work. 

To be able to critique my own work is truly one of the biggest blessings I’ve been granted. Having the ability to go back and read something I’ve written and have both kinds of thoughts about it is amazing. “Wow, this is really great. I love this scene.” Or “I adore this character, I’ve created something beautiful here.” Alongside critiques like “wow, this idea was just bad. Let’s remove that and focus on something different here.” Or “That dialogue line just comes off as inhuman. I’m going to rework it to sound much better.” The fact that I can do both is really great to me, because having the ability to really look at your work from an outside perspective is invaluable. 

I think being able to separate your work from yourself, kind of draw it out into the ether and judge it objectively is incredibly important. I hope it’s a tool I never take for granted or let slip through my fingers. 

But anyways, tangent aside, I’m now ready to actually start my next draft of my book. This will be my second rewrite, and the novel has been shelved for almost 2 years. Completing this thing was grueling, thus the long break between rewrites. 

The reason for this was, as is most things in my life, self inflicted. My writing flow simply wasn’t coming unless I was doing it with good old fashioned pen and paper. Which meant after I was done with all the thousands of words I’d penned, I had to type it up… 

I gave myself a time limit, and that task was absolutely brutal. I’d reached the upper limits of burnout by the time I dragged myself across the finish line in late December of 2023. So I suppose technically if you subtract the time it took me to type the thing up, it’s been shelved for a little over a year. 

I try to be kind to myself when it comes to how long I tend to leave books before I come back to them. After all, I don’t just stop writing. I work on other projects in the meantime, so the only things that happen when I come back is that I have a pair of fresh eyes, and I have improved in my writing. But the harsh truth of almost 2 years disappearing from my life, when it feels like it was only a few months ago that I shelved my book does sting. 

But at the end of the day, creativity takes time. It isn’t a conveyor belt to be made as efficient as possible. I’m not a machine that pumps out AI generated drivel to the masses. I’m a person who’s soul is full of stories, and I am only capable of putting forth the best of what I can create. 

I do hope to streamline my process a bit more in the future, making it where I can create a bit more efficiently as I complete more books. 

But in the meantime, I’m happy with my process, and I still love writing stories as much as I did almost 15 years ago. 

And now I want to thank you for reading here, and I hope you enjoyed learning a bit more about my process. I hope as my book gets more complete I will be willing to share more distinct details. At this point in time, I don’t want to overshare for fear my story will change too much and I will be giving false information. I hope you’ll join me next time, and thank you again! 

Happy writing!