In this stage, you’ll look at the big-picture elements in your story. You should address these first because fixing them may require significant revision or rewriting. You don’t want to painstakingly copyedit or proofread your story only to find you need to do it all over again after making changes to your story’s plot, characterization, or structure.
Here’s how you might go about it. (tThis is what works for me; as always, YMMV.)
Before you dig in with your red pen, you need to get your head right.
As an author, you’ve written what you like (I hope!) Now it’s time to think about what others will experience when they read your story.
Stephen King said it well:
“Write with the door closed, rewrite with the door open. Your stuff starts out being just for you, in other words, but then it goes out.”
You’re going to have to read your story not as proud author looking fondly at your baby, but as Jane Q. Reader, who’s never seen it before, isn’t sure she really wants to read it, and has no emotional investment in the particulars of the story’s plot, characterization, etc. Impossible? Yes. But one does one’s best.
Here’s my advice for making this shift easier:
After you’ve finished your first draft, stick it in a drawer and let it sit for a bit. A week, a few weeks, or even a month or more will give you some distance from the story so you can read it with fresh eyes. Things that don’t work are more likely to stand out after a little time away.
Once you’re ready to work on your story again, read all the way through it, paying attention to plot, structure, point of view, characterization, and other major elements that take readers on the ride you want to give them.
As you read, make notes of things you think need improvement, but I suggest you don’t make any major revisions until you’ve gone through the entire story, because revising one bit of the story may require revising other bits.
Is there sufficient conflict?
One of the most important elements in a compelling story is conflict. Conflict occurs when your character wants something but must overcome significant obstacles to get it.
This can be external conflict, internal conflict, or both (both is better, natch.)
An example of external conflict is the classic “good-guys-vs. bad-guys” plot:
Young wizard Harry Potter must defeat the powerful Lord Voldemort if he wants to survive and prevent the wizarding world from falling into tyranny.
Internal conflict happens when something intrinsic to a character—morals, beliefs, personality, or competing desires—prevents them from getting what they want:
Harry is in love with Draco, but he hates everything Draco stands for, and vice versa.
Not every chapter has to relate directly to the central conflict, but every chapter should move a conflict closer to resolution.
Are the stakes high enough?
The higher the stakes—the potential consequences of the protagonist’s failure to resolve the central conflict—the more compelling the story is.
Harry defeating Voldemort to save the world? Huge stakes, obviously, but what about the Harry/Draco plot?
If the reader is deeply invested in the characters, the success or failure of the romance may have high enough stakes. (Fanfic tip: This is easier to achieve in fanfic with canon characters, in whom readers may already have some emotional investment, than with original characters, which the author must develop carefully if they want readers to care about them.)
You can raise a romance’s stakes even higher by adding more obstacles or consequences—will Draco forfeit his inheritance if he hooks up with Harry? Does Harry risk losing his best friends if he gets with Draco? Will Voldemort kill Draco if he gets with Harry?
Are there plot holes?
This is where letting the story sit for a while pays big dividends. It can be easier to see where things don’t make sense if you have a bit of distance from your story.
Does the plot have enough ups and downs?
A longer story needs scenes where things seem to be going well for the protagonist(s) and scenes where all seems lost.
Does the pacing hold the reader’s interest?
Are there long, slow portions where little happens, plot-wise or character-development-wise? Or bits that move so quickly that you confuse readers or miss out on character development? Most readers enjoy balance, with some zippy scenes and others that unfold at a more leisurely pace.
Is the exposition sprinkled or dumped in?
Avoid the dreaded info dump. Exposition and background information should be sprinkled into your story like spices rather than poured in all at once. Unless verbal diarrhea is a key part of her personality, you don’t want a long scene where your original character tells Harry she was tossed out of Ilvermorny and has a Muggle father and witch mother and is a great Quidditch player and lousy at transfiguration and has a little brother who is a Squib and has brown eyes and hates Scottish winters and loves Hippogriffs. Instead, you can add these things as needed over time, in scenes where they make sense and, as a bonus, add a bit of color to the story.
Fanfic tip: Exposition is one area where fanfic authors have an advantage over original-fiction authors because we often need to do less of it.
Unless you want to write a so-called “fandom-blind” fic, you don’t need to fill readers in on major canon events. You do need to make sure readers know where in the canon timeline your story takes place. If your story focuses on original characters, you’ll need to make sure you establish where they are in the context of canon.
Is there unnecessary repetition?
For most of us, writing isn’t a linear process, and it’s easy for repeated information or similar scenes to creep into a longer story. Be on the lookout for places where you can cut or reduce without confusing the reader or making the story less vivid. Try to avoid giving the reader the same information twice. Harry doesn’t need to recount his first kiss with Draco blow-for-blow (as it were) to Ron in the next scene; instead, you might focus their dialogue on how Harry felt or on other elements that didn’t make it into the earlier kiss scene.
Fanfic tip: A fanfic-specific corollary is to avoid rehashing canon scenes blow-for-blow unless you’re certain you’re adding something new, like showing the scene from a different viewpoint.
Are divergences from canon deliberate?
Fanfic tip: Speaking of canon, check for accidental divergences from the canon timeline, canon character traits or relationships, and other elements that will piss readers off if you get them wrong. If you deliberately change something, make sure it has adequate explanation in the narrative.
In the case of a major canon divergence, tagging it (if posting to AO3) or adding an author’s note is an option.
Does your plot revolve around an anachronism?
Anachronisms—elements that are inappropriate to the story’s time period—are a frequent problem in fic that takes place in the recent past. Often, readers just shrug and ignore them, but a story’s plot can fall apart when the author has forgotten about differences between the present and the story’s temporal setting.
If your story is set during the time of the original seven Harry Potter novels, for example, it’s a bad idea to make a key plot point revolve around texting, since most people in the early 1990s didn’t have cellphones unless they were VIPs or pretending to be.
Does your timeline make sense?
It’s easy to make timeline errors. Lots of authors use spreadsheets or even dedicated software to keep track of the timelines and events in their stories, but a simple list of dates and times of scenes works too. If you didn’t keep track while writing, make your list during your first read-through and make notes on places where you might need to revise or move scenes.
Does your protagonist change and develop during the story?
This is the meat of story tropes like enemies-to-lovers, but even in other kinds of stories, your main characters should undergo some changes, whether that’s realizing something important about themselves or coming to grips with a challenging situation.
Are your canon characters consistent with their canon selves (or are they deliberately OOC)?
Fanfic tip: If you’re writing canon characters, your readers are going to expect them to conform—more or less—to those characters as they know them from the canon source. Certainly, you’ll want to flesh them out with your own ideas—especially if they’re minor characters in canon—but if you stray too far from what readers expect, you may lose them. Of course, what is and isn’t “in character” is a matter of opinion, but there are usually some generally agreed-upon traits within a fandom.
That said, some of my favorite stories are those that subvert canon expectations. It only works when the author ensures that any “OOCness” is deliberate and justified or explained within the narrative through character development or plot elements. If you’re going to woobify Snape, for example, many readers will want a reason beyond “I just like him better this way.”
Author MMADfan gives a good example of the plot-device technique in her story An Act of Love, in which a stray spell causes Severus to bring flowers and recite poetry to the unlikely object of his affection. Part of the story’s genius is the way the author uses this rather horrifying OOCness to bring Snape to some realizations about himself—realizations which have important ramifications to the plot later in the series and contribute directly to some serious character development.
Are the characters’ traits consistent?
While you want your characters to change and develop over the course of your story, you also want to ensure they don’t magically morph into someone else (unless they actually, you know, magically morph into someone else). Personality traits may evolve, but they generally remain consistent, even if they are expressed differently as the character develops.
If Draco insults Harry whenever he feels insecure at the beginning of the story, he’ll likely continue with some version of this trait even after they fall in love. The insults may turn into affectionate ribbing rather than true insults, or some such, but Draco retains the instinct because (in this theoretical story) it’s an essential part of his character.
Narrative structure is the framework of the story—the way it unfolds and how all the pieces hang together.
Does the structure serve the story well?
Many stories are linear—chapter one shows the first plot event, chapter two the second event, and so on—but sometimes a nonlinear structure serves the story better.
Some stories benefit from having the reader knowing something before it occurs within the plot timeline—for example, to build suspense by showing us a scene of the dead body before showing us the buildup to the murder. Or you might want to show the reader something important about a character that other characters don’t yet know.
In my story Exotic Matter, I alternated scenes from Minerva McGonagall’s life (she’s dead in the story’s present) with scenes from Hermione’s life in the 2040s as she’s trying to solve a mystery about McGonagall. I wanted to show readers things that Hermione doesn’t find out about McGonagall until later in the fic to make her a character that would interest Hermione (and readers) enough to want to uncover her story.
Who is telling the story?
Whose mind are we in as we experience the story? Is there a single viewpoint, or do multiple narrators tell the story?
The basic narrative points of view are:
The key to using point of view well is to always know whose head you’re in and what the effect (e.g., distance or intimacy) is on the story. You might want to avoid “head-hopping”—jumping from one character’s thoughts or observations to another’s within a single scene—which many readers hate. You might choose instead to alternate points of view between scenes or chapters if you want to provide varying perspectives.
Is your narrative tense consistent?
Fiction is generally written in either the past tense (Harry kissed Draco) or the present tense (Harry kisses Draco). The present tense can provide a sense of intimacy and immediacy, but some readers (me included) find it tiring to read a long story written in the present tense. YMMV.
If it serves your story, you can alternate tenses between chapters, for example, if you want to emphasize immediacy for one character’s arc and distance for another.
Whatever you choose, make sure you’re consistent within scenes. It’s surprisingly easy to slip into a different tense when you’re writing, especially when using the alternating-tense technique.
Once you’re happy with these big-picture elements of your story, you’re ready to move on to the next phase of editing: the sentence-level edit, which includes line and copyediting.
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