Papercuts

We definitely have our work cut out for us on this revision pass. Many scenes will be moved around, and although that doesn’t really impact their substance it does raise concerns about their tone. If something that used to fall in the third act is now going to be very near the start of the novel, we might want to make adjustments for the fact that readers don’t already know all the background. And, vice versa; moving early scenes to a later stage means we’ll need to be careful that we don’t introduce a lot of review and repetition, as those scenes no longer need to introduce all the ideas.

Probably the most significant change is due to reassigning POV. We realized that one of our characters needs to be fleshed out a lot more, because of the role he must play in the ending, and developed a bunch of great ideas for him. Too much stuff to get across without going inside his thoughts. At the same time, we identified a weakness with another character’s thread. He had point-of-view in several scenes, but nothing essential would be lost if we showed those events from someone else.

Meanwhile, we have our whole manuscript’s Scrivener file marked up with critique comments (our own and our group’s), on matters large and small. Project management consultants would be saying to leave the little stuff and concentrate on the big tasks first. After all, that missing comma will be irrelevant if the whole sentence — or the whole scene — gets cut. But Rune Skelley likes to do things Rune Skelley’s way, and here that means checking off as many of the dinky little things as possible first. The main benefit of that is decluttering the comments column when the text is on the screen, which is invaluable for both Jen’s and Kent’s ability to focus. We don’t like bleeding from a million papercuts, and even if the block of text where we fixed that comma does eventually get chopped, well, fixing the comma only took a few seconds. Totally worth it to us for the peace of mind.

Fortunately, we were able to agree on this order of business. There are many different ways to divvy up the work, and the optimal strategy might be different in every situation. But, in a collaboration, if the partners disagree on how to proceed they’ll likely trip over each other’s changes and generate friction. Get on the same page about your revision workflow before either of you starts editing.