6 Powerful Rewriting Steps
Strategies to Rewrite Your Story
It takes multiple passes to transform a manuscript from a messy first draft into a polished, publishable story.
To give you a clear idea of what “multiple passes” look like as you begin rewriting, I’ll share the six steps I use during the rewriting stage.
Step #1 The Big Picture
The first time I go through my story, I’m only worried about the flow of the story and whether it’s lacking the essentials. I ask myself these two questions.
· Does it make sense? Here I’m checking to make sure the story makes sense as I move from chapter to chapter and scene to scene. I check that I didn’t leave anything out, or that I don’t need to add new sentences or even scenes. I want to make sure I don’t lose my readers and that the story progresses logically and has the proper pacing and tension.
· Is the structure solid? I check the length of my chapters and might modify them if they are too long or too short. I make sure that I’m transitioning well, that there are strong hooks at the beginning and end of chapters. I might move entire scenes around or cut them out entirely. I verify that I’ve hit my plot points and that they are working as I intended them to work.
