https://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/MedicineFlower7735/Edward C. Patterson, author of thirteen novels, and old fart extraordinaire, shares tips and techniques for revising THE NOVEL. These techniques are a matter of experience as opposed to a thing of catechism, but are offered up to visitors of this ON WRITING section as a matter of a helping hand, not to mention a yearning to get this shit down on paper. hourly12000-01-01T12:00+00:00https://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/MedicineFlower7735/509844This will be a short entry, devoted to the kinetics we like to call stage directions. Again, this is a brainiac thing, where our minds work one way when we write and another way when we read. When we settle in the ZONE and get on a ROLL, we tend to visualize things in a progression. A character...https://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/MedicineFlower7735/509656Imagery in a novel is essential to lock into the reader’s five senses. When we are vomiting our draft guts out, we sometimes (not sometimes... we do it indubitably) over-image or... under-image. Providing imagery for the reader is what we are about as novelists. Without similes or metaphors...https://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/MedicineFlower7735/509415By rights, the next topic should be change control, which could be defined as affecting those cuts and modifications that you have tagged, all of which ripple throughout the work. For example: if you change your ending to include a stronger motivation or a punch on your grafted theme, you must...https://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/MedicineFlower7735/509155Ready to revise? Has at least 7 weeks past since you wrote the last word? If not, tsk tsk tsk... not yet. If so, print yourself a paper copy of your manuscript or (if you have a new-fangled Kindle edition, which is easy to order) download it NOW. Reserve a quiet space in your favorie chair. Get a...https://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/MedicineFlower7735/508976Then the first draft happens. And it... happens. I read my blueprint for the chapter. I beef it up a bit, and then think about it. I test it for logic and flow, and then write. I try to write the chapter straight through, not worrying about anything but telling the story and seeding the initial...https://www.blogit.com/Blogs/Blog.aspx/MedicineFlower7735/508751I decided that since the second most important act of writing a novel is revising it (the act of drafting it is the ultimate feat), I would share with my fellow writers my take on the revision process. In the next few weeks, months, years (centuries, mayhap), I will clog the blog with tips,...