Why Rewriting Is Essential

Oscar Wilde once proclaimed that he spent all morning adding a comma and all afternoon deleting it.

As a writer, it is important to learn the art of analysing your own work, and not only relying on the use of a professional book editor. A novel must go through many rewrites before it is ready to send to a publisher. Many writers find this almost impossible, so you are not alone. So how can you read your manuscript and critique it honestly? The first thing you need to do is accept that, as the creator of the work, you are never going to be 100% impartial. Secondly, you will have to accept that the manuscript will never be perfect; there will always be something you feel is not just right. A word or a piece of dialogue by a character, you will always have that uncertainty in the back of your mind that more changes could be made.

The good news is that there are a few simple steps you can take to give the whole manuscript editing process a better perspective.

When you have spent weeks or months working on a new novel, most writers become so engaged with their work, they cannot look at it with any form of objectivity. Put the manuscript to one side and start thinking about your next project. Your mind needs to distance itself from the book, and focus on something new. When you return to the book, weeks or even months later, you can evaluate it clearly as you have now detached yourself from it. If you still cannot find any faults, then you will need to send it to either a friend who will give you an honest review or a book editor.

Try to write a logline for your novel. Asking yourself the following questions will reveal if the structure of your novel is publisher ready. Who is the main character? What is their goal or objective? Why is reaching this goal so important? Have you included strong, believable obstacles for the character to overcome? How realistic are your characters, what are their distinguishing traits? Why would the reader want your character to triumph?

You may already know what is wrong with your manuscript, because your unconscious mind keeps telling you. So when you have those niggling questions on how you can improve the novel, write them down. You will notice that you have quite a few insightful notes and comments. Ask yourself what would make you travel to the nearest city, stand in line and buy your book. If the book doesn’t inspire you to buy it, why would your reader? Once you have organised your notes into an orderly fashion, then sort them from easiest (which includes grammatical errors) to the more difficult alterations such as storyline, plot and conflict. Beginning with the easier notes first will psychologically give you the motivation to continue on to the more difficult ones.

Finally, I want to urge you to practise a little patience and ensure your novel is completely ready before sending it to a publisher. You may think that the publisher will overlook errors, but they will not. You have worked so hard on completing the novel, what harm will waiting a few more weeks do? Give yourself and the manuscript the credit it deserves by making sure you have got everything right.