Good Prose Is My Last Concern

How I Revised My Novel in Two Stages

I am a lyrical writer, but I literally do not care about good prose. For most of my writing life, I would bend over backwards to keep a pretty line or paragraph or even an entire chapter that ultimately made my story weaker. In doing this, I was refusing to revise, and a lot of my stories did not reach their full potential. This is why I’ve broken my revision process into the two stages we talked about last week: the macroscopic stage and the microscopic stage.

If you’re interested in an overview of how I approach my first draft and macroscopic revision, check out our earlier posts:

• First Draft

• Second Draft

• Third Draft

Today, we’re breaking down the microscopic revision that I completed for the fourth, fifth, and sixth drafts of my novel. In these revisions, my priorities were (1) deepening the interiority of all three POV characters, (2) polishing scene craft, and (3) strengthening line-to-line writing.

Here’s the novel’s pitch for context:

YOU WILL SURVIVE THIS follows Izzy Hayes, a Black folklore anthropologist in Seoul who falls in love with a thousand-year-old man. It is a story about love, loss, and living forever.

A lonely expat, Izzy spends her days studying Korean folklore and isolating herself from the world around her. While touring an art museum, she meets Kim Taejong, a strange, wildly wealthy man who takes a special interest in her work. Taejong flies Izzy out to Jeju Island for a research trip, and they stumble across a woman from his past. In an act of violence, Blanche—a survivor of Taejong’s former cult—reveals his secret: he’s spent the last thousand years cursed with immortality. Back in Seoul, Izzy agrees to help Taejong find a cure for immortality using her folklore research. But when she finds something that might actually work, she must choose between spending her life with the man she loves and giving his long life a well-deserved end. Alternating between the perspectives of Izzy, Taejong, and Blanche, the story complicates as Taejong wants to find peace in a permanent death immediately, Izzy wants him to stay alive for the remainder of her lifetime, and Blanche wants to kill Taejong to take his eternal life for herself.

Using immortality as a lens to explore love, loss, and what it means to be alive, YOU WILL SURVIVE THIS has the magical realism of Jesmyn Ward’s Sing, Unburied, Sing, the dynamic setting of Frances Cha’s If I Had Your Face, and the tone and style of Claire Vaye Watkins’ Gold Fame Citrus.

Draft 4

The start of draft 4

Stats

• Goal: Line Editing

• Schedule: 10 weeks

• Timeline: November 1, 2022 to January 9, 2023

• Audience: My agent

Process

This was the most fun draft because the story’s structure was set and I finally got to play with the writing on the line level. When I studied screenwriting in college, one of my professors had said that actors act for free; they’re paid for all of the waiting they have to do between shooting their scenes. In a similar vein, I see line-to-line writing as a reward for designing a strong narrative. The next time I start a new novel, I’ll frontload the hard work of crafting plot and story with an outline, so that I can have fun with the writing itself earlier in the process. 

What Worked for Me

• Reading my novel aloud

• Having my partner read scenes and answer my questions

• Writing at night after work

• Limiting myself to one social activity on the weekends

• Sending my agent a list of editorial questions in a separate document and asking her to address them after her read

What I Wish I’d Done Differently

• Better self-care, mostly cleaning my writing and living space

Draft 5

Tabbed up and ready to start draft 5

Stats

• Goals: 

  • Address Agent Feedback:

    • Add one more Blanche chapter in the middle

    • Deepen interiority and emotional responses of all three POV characters throughout

    • Fix continuity errors

• Schedule: 4 weeks

• Timeline: January 23, 2023 to February 20, 2023

• Audience: My agent 

Process

After I got my second edit letter from my agent, I did another revision focusing on deepening interiority and adding one more new chapter from Blanche’s POV. By the end of this draft, I was sick of reading the words I’ve written.

What Worked for Me

• Having Siri read the draft back to me

• Using light imagery to ground a scene whenever I was getting burned out

If you’re interested in a post about how I use light imagery as a writing prompt to get me out of a rut, let me know in the comments:

What I Wish I’d Done Differently

• Nothing, a sign that the manuscript was almost ready for submission to publishers

Draft 6 — The “Final” Draft

A photo of draft six from my Instagram story. If you’re on IG, follow me at @katjolewis.

Stats

• Goal: Accept track changes and address small, line-level issues

• Schedule: 13 hours

• Timeline: February 25, 2023

• Audience: Editors

Process

I put “final draft” in quotes because if a publisher buys the book, I will have to do another round of edits. But this draft was the last draft that I did before submission, and most of it was small, final touches.

 I am about a month out from finishing, and I’m still so exhausted and burnt out that I never want to write another metaphor again.

What Worked for Me

• Having Siri read the track changes from my agent to confirm I wanted to accept them

What I Wish I’d Done Differently

• Nothing, the manuscript was definitely ready for sub

Recap

Kat’s Advice for Novel Revision

• Set concrete goals for each draft

• Set a deadline

• Remind yourself who your audience is

  • For me, my first drafts are most productive if I plan for no one to see them but me.

• Make sure everything serves the story and omit anything that doesn’t

• Use an outline to save time later

If you’re looking for an outline to try out, check out our craft lessons on character goals, crisis decisions, and the first act of a story.

What does your revision process look like? Are you a discovery writer or an outliner? How do you approach your second draft? What about your fifth? Share your writing practice in the comments:

Until next week,

Kat