revijhion... revizeon... revision!

So, you've got something which looks like a novel. Well it's a big bulky wad of paper with words on it

(should be no less than 80,000 of those.)

Once you've worked out that what you're waving around isn't a phonebook, chances are you've got the first draft of your novel. But is it literature? And... will it sell?

Although you will be itching to get your masterpiece into the hands of a publisher, it can pay to put your work away in a drawer for a while before you commence revision. This way you can come to it with fresh eyes.

Approach it like it's someone else's work and be brutal.

This scene which took you months to write, does it move the story on, or develop your characters? If it wasn't there would anyone notice? You may just need to ditch it and not look back.

Is a passage economical?


Sometimes it helps to slow down the pace, to have a brief meditation or 'set piece.' Sometimes the information imparted could be passed on in a line of dialogue.

Does your prose flow? Does it have a natural rhythm? When characters speak,

is it believable that someone would talk like that?

Read your work out aloud. If you find you get tongue tied over a phrase, maybe it needs changing, shortening, or to have the order of words altered. Any sections about which you have doubts, try recording them, or get someone else to look. (Not that I could do that- I can never show my work to anyone until it's as good as I can get it.)

How many times do you revise? I'm with Hemingway on that one-


you revise until the day you go through it and you can find nothing else to change.


I think that this is a common trait of all successful writers, but how they approach this can vary from one to another. Rather than writing a novel then going through it and through it, Dean Koontz writes one page at a time. He will then revise that page thirty or forty times, before he is happy to move on.

I found a real difficulty with my revisions in that some chapters just didn't work in the person in which I had written them. I once turned the entire book from a first to a third person narrative. It didn't work, because my aim in having a first person was for him to be an everyman with whom the reader could identify in an unfamiliar world. I eventually decided to mix the voices. A common criticism of this is that it 'jars.' But several people have now read my text and not one of them- even the most critical readers- has even mentioned this.

A good example of the use of multiple voices is 'Captain Corelli's Mandolin.' There the change of voice is well indicated by section headings. If you are not going to do this you need to

make sure that the voices are sufficiently distinct,

so that from the first line of the new passage or chapter the reader is left in no doubt as to who is speaking.


In 'Tasting the Wind' I have attempted to do this by making Martin's narration a little more colloquial, and having him always speak in the present tense. Have a listen to the Prologue, which I added to the first posting on this blog, followed by the opening of Chapter One (below) and judge for yourself whether or not it works.

Structure: a beginning, a muddle, and an end.

At the Galleria dell'Accademia in Florence not only can you see 'David' but also several of Michelangelo's unfinished sculptures.

An assumption I had always held about sculpture was shattered the day I visited that gallery: I had always assumed that a sculptor would chip away at the front of his slab of marble, then gradually move round it, whittling it down to a figure. Not so Michelangelo- He worked from front to back- and the unfinished pieces look as if all you have to do is to break the remainder of the 'cocoon' from aroud them to reveal a complete statue.

Some writers work that way. Stephen King, for instance, starts at the beginning and writes until he gets to the end, developing characters and situations naturally as they emerge.

I don't think that I could write that way as long as I'd got a hole in my **** (or, for any American readers, ***.) I'm more of a potterer around the marble with my chisel sort of writer- I may start at the beginning, but in my mind I have scenes from the end or half way, and I need some sort of structure- loose as it may be- to hang the story on- a plan, an idea of major themes and significant scenes.

I don't mean anything too complicated, and it doesn't even have to be written- especially not on stone, so that once the characters start to find their feet they can run if they want to.

Having a structure can help when you hit the block- you might be getting bogged down with an earlier part of the story, but feel inspired by a theme which has flashed into your mind from further on. I would recommend that you go for that, write it (In these days of Word Processing it will hang around for you below the earlier pages until you catch up with it) then return to where you got stuck, refreshed with a dip into your creativity. Usually I go back to the sticking point after this and find that it is so below the level of what I've just been writing that I just delete it and start again.



And what about chapters and where to end them? Remember: each chapter MUST add something to the story- either in moving the story on or revealing something new about a character. If it doesn't, you might as well get rid of it. And try to end your chapters with 'page turners.' Although my last posting was partly a bit of fun, there is something to be learned from an aspect of Dan Brown's writing which is shamelessly parodied there. You get to the end of a Dan Brown chapter and there is always something there you didn't expect, or which makes you ask 'what happens next?' or 'how do they get out of that?'

To my mind, a lot of Brown's page turners draw too much attention to themselves for what they are, and I think that he produces tiny chapters in order to do this (Look at chapters 53-59 of 'Deception Point' for example.) But who am I to knock this? I have read and enjoyed all of Dan Brown's novels (with reservations about the DaVinci Code because I am a qualified theologian and know just how much he twisted the 'evidence'- but hey, this is entertainment, and his sales figures speak for themselves.)

The point is, if you want to know what a page turner is, just go through a Dan Brown novel and simply read the last line of every chapter.

And when you've done that, if you are a writer, go through the last lines of each chapter of your novel. Do they just fizzle out, or do they make the reader want to read on?

This is your homework until next time.

As 'The Wizard of Oz' is to Pink Floyd, so The Seven Dwarves are to...

For some time now there has been a school of thought on the internet which has pointed out a spooky synchronicity between Pink Floyd’s ‘the Dark Side of the Moon’ and the film, ‘The Wizard of Oz.’ (Go on- check it out!)
The latest rumour of this type is that an unidentified bestselling author based the characters in his novel upon those of the Seven Dwarves. Judge for yourself from the exerpts below, which are taken from an early draft of the work acquired only this week...



Chapter 94


'The curator even died with a smile on his face,' said the albino assassin. 'He was always happy, even in death. What bloody right had he got to be happy all of the time? He should have tried living my life.'

The Doc tried not to pay too much attention to the rubik's cube which he was holding, because he now knew beyond doubt that it held the answer: at its centre was a parchment, wrapped around a vial of vinegar, which, if broken, would cause the material upon which the clue was written to disintegrate.

The Doc had had no trouble securing the cathedral for his private use. After all, the Archbishop owed him one, and all he'd had to do was say 'nice frock, Bish,' to reduce him to a blushing, beard twiddling, malleable heap.

So now it was a case of waiting with Miss White, whose skills as a cryptographer were second only to her indescribable beauty, to see who turned up.

And so far, it had been the albino.

It occurred to the Doc that even in the unusually tourist-free cathedral, the monotone voice of the albino failed to produce an echo, as if the immense walls were themselves finding him too tedious to engage with.

Just listen to him, whingeing again about his cilice. And it's not even about it cutting into his flesh... oh no, it's the style and colour this time... not what he would have chosen... so who did choose it? Who is the mastermind behind all of this?
The Doc's train of thought was interrupted by the rustling of paper.

'Gee what a nice little museum. Have they got dinosaurs?'

It was John Doe, P.I.

'Surely,' said the Doc, 'you can't be the evil genius who ...'

'No, I just got these from an English chipshop and stepped in out of the rain- want one?'

The Doc suddenly realised that in the last twenty-four hours he had traveled the length of two continents and as well as having no sleep the only thing he'd touched which resembled food had been a poisoned apple.

He reached out to take a French fry, but his hand froze as he heard an all too familiar sound from a dark corner of the cathedral:

'Aaaaaa-choooo.'

'Professor Teabing... I should have known... or 'Sneezing Teabing,' as we called you at the seminary.'

The Doc slipped the Rubik's cube under Doe's 'chip paper' and into his oily palm, whispering: get this to lecouchez at Interpol.

He knew that this could be a gamble. Lecouchez's narcolepsy tended to kick in at inconvenient points during investigations... but who else could he trust?'

Spinning round, he saw Teabing hobbling toward him, and wondered why he had never noticed his strong resemblance to Magneto.

'Give me the... A-a-a-a... give me the... A-a-a-a-CUBE!'

'Haven't got it,' said the Doc, holding up both hands.'

'Don't lie to me, Doc, I know that.. Aaaaaaarrrrrrgggghhh...'

'Was that meant to be a sneeze?'

'No, it was meant to be an aaaarrrrggghhhh... you fool! What have you done?'

Teabing was staring over Doc's shoulder. He turned to see Doe, who was holding one half of the cube over his dinner.'

'Gee,' he said, waving the broken puzzle , 'who'd have thought: a Rubik's vinegar shaker.'

Jack felt his pulse quicken, but the cube was no longer the focus of his attention. Something else, something he had never expected to see, was rising from the midst of the grease-soaked potato snack.



Chapter 95

Grabbing Miss White with one hand, and the bag of chips in the other, Doc ran for the door, leaving behind him the crumpled, sneezing theologian, the hapless Investigator, and the grumbling albino.

'Where are we going?' asked Snow.

'Haven't you worked it out? What we are looking for is not a grail, but a woman with royal blood from the line of king David.'

'But who could it be?'

'I don't know Princess,' he said, pulling a long turd-shaped object from the bag, 'but I've got the next clue.'

'What's that?'

'Deep fried Mars bar... we're off to Scotland...'

I would be interested if anyone has any information of a similar kind. A.M.