Tackling the Big Rewrites
Tackling the Big Rewrites
POV changes, tense changes—should you edit what you have or start over?
Hilariously, I wrote + scheduled this post two weeks ago…and then three days later, I started making more enormous edits to Screechers. So it would be remiss not to mention my own Big Rewrites with that book that are currently going on.
As I explained a few days ago in this discussion post, I’m planning to share my actual revisions step by step as I go along. So make sure you’re a paid subscriber if you want to see that.
Now, onto the question and my answer! Please remember I wrote all of this a few days before starting another big Screechers rewrite!
@Kristen asked:
Do you have any advice for reaching the end of the first draft and realizing that draft two needs a perspective or tense change? Start over from the beginning? Tweak what you've already got? Basically, any tips for tackling a pretty substantive rewrite...
As I talked about here, I’ve done substantive rewrites many, many times. The first time was with my debut novel, actually! And that was only the beginning…
So first, let’s talk about what a perspective or tense change might actually look like, and then I’ll address starting over vs. editing what you’ve got.
What a POV Change Looks Like
I originally wrote Something Strange & Deadly as third person past tense, and then I changed the whole thing to first person during my first major overhaul.
As you might guess, changing a POV from third person to first is more than simply changing the name Eleanor to the pronoun I.
You also have to change the voice, shifting how you handle thoughts and the depth of your POV. Since explaining the nuance is beyond the scope of this post, I’m going to direct ou to two resources I got a lot out of: The Power of Point of View by Alicia Rasley and Characters and Viewpoint by Orson Scott Card.
You can read all about that SS&D change here!
Changing Tenses
As you can guess, changing the tense of your story also requires a pretty massive overall—and yes, I do also have experience with this.
Past tense requires a different approach to telling and showing than present tense because in present tense, the story is happening now. That changes not only what the reader knows (or doesn’t know), but it changes how we instinctively use language.
In other words, it’s much easier to rely on filter words in present tense.
To really show you how tense and POV can change a draft, I’m going to show you how I modified the opening scene to The Luminaries when I was first trying to write it.
I could not for the life of me pinpoint how to write Winnie’s voice event though I could easily feel what I wanted to be on the page. I had an opening line, but it took me literally four tries—all the possible combinations!—to figure out how Winnie was going to sound.
For my first attempt to write her, I defaulted to third person past tense, since this is what I used in The Executioners Three as well as the Witchlands series:
Only a few nons ever got foolish enough—or drunk enough—to enter the forest after dark though. Then it was up to the seven families to gather what was left of them.
Then it was up to Winnie Wednesday.
She had corpse duty on the morning of her sixteenth birthday. It sucked. The fact that her birthday happened to coincide with a Wednesday seemed patently unfair, and all she could figure was that the all-spirit inside the forest was laughing at her. Even Winnie’s mom, for whom empathy was nothing more than a word in the dictionary under the letter E, had given her a gentle pat on the back the night before.
“Tough luck, Winnie Benny,” she’d said. Then, in a more typically Francesca Wednesday manner, she’d added, “Don't track in mud when you get home.”
A fair warning, Winnie had to admit. The first of April's notorious showers had soaked the soil the night before, leaving fog and soft, red clay in its wake. Already her boots were coated, her jeans streaked, and she wasn’t even in the forest yet.
Now here is the same passage in first person past tense:
Only a few nons ever got foolish enough—or drunk enough—to enter the forest after dark though. Then it was up to the seven families to gather what was left of them.
Then it was up to me.
I had corpse duty on the morning of my sixteenth birthday. It sucked to wake up before dawn on any day. It really sucked on your birthday, and all I could figure was that the forest was laughing at me. Even my mom, for whom empathy was nothing more than a word in the dictionary under the letter E, had given me a gentle pat on the back the night before.
“Tough luck, Winnie Benny,” she’d said. Then, in a more typically Francesca Wednesday manner, she’d added, “Don't track in mud when you get home.”
A fair warning, honestly. Rain soaked the soil the night before, leaving fog and soft, red clay in its wake. Already my boots were coated, my jeans streaked, and I wasn’t even in the forest yet.
If you’ve read The Luminaries, you can likely see how this just…isn’t right. None of it is bad, but Winnie’s voice was coming through in a way that dominated. What I wanted was her voice to be intertwined so tightly with a VIBE, you couldn’t quite separate the two.
I tried first person present next, but it was no better. The vibe! Where was the vibe?!
Only a few nons ever get foolish enough—or drunk enough—to enter the forest after dark though. Then it’s up to the seven families to gather what’s left of them.
Then it’s up to me.
I have corpse duty on the morning of my sixteenth birthday. It sucks to wake up before dawn on any day. It really sucks on your birthday, and all I can figure is that the forest is laughing at me. Even my mom, for whom empathy is nothing more than a word in the dictionary under the letter E, gave me a gentle pat on the back the night before.
“Tough luck, Winnie Benny,” she said. Then, in a more typically Francesca Wednesday manner, she added, “Don't track in mud when you get home.”
A fair warning, honestly. Rain has soaked the soil the night before, leaving fog and soft, red clay in its wake. Already my boots are coated, my jeans streaked, and I’m even in the forest yet.
I finally tried third person present tense, which is really unusual. It’s not something you see often, but it occurred to me that my favorite parts in Witchshadow were the flashback scenes—which were written in third person present. They have such a weight to them. A heaviness of tension…
Should I try that for Winnie? I wondered.
Well, you already know the answer is yes. And it clicked right away.
And of course, in the writing of this new version, nothing I wrote above remained! Because suddenly I could hear how Winnie spoke through the layer of filter words that come from present tense—and I wanted that filtering. I wanted it to feel like the forest mist was between you and Winnie as you read.
Finally, I’d found my vibe!
NOTE: As mentioned above, I am in the middle of a big rewrite (again!) for Screechers.
And as you can see above in the screenshot, there are a ton more changes than mere tense adjustments. Like, I’m shifting all the verbs from past tense to present tense, but I’m also doing so much more.
This is primarily because I’m a much more mature writer now than I was 10+ years ago, and I’ve learned so much about layering in deep POV.
I will be sharing those revisions with paid subscriber soon, so you can see exactly what I mean and how I do it!
Starting over vs. editing what you’ve got
Obviously, I went through all of these different tenses and POVs for The Luminaries before I wrote the whole book, but as you saw with Something Strange & Deadly, I’m no stranger to rewriting an entire book to align with a new POV.
The process can be long, it can be tedious, but sometimes it really is what the manuscript needs.
Ultimately, thats’s up to you, though. Do you want to commit to rewriting + heavy editing or would you rather start from scratch?
I thought for years that if I were to tackle Screechers again, I would start over entirely. That’s because I’ve written, rewritten, gutted and edited and gutted again so many times that the thought of doing it one more time…
Shudder.
Except, when I went back to the pages to share them with you all, I realized that as “broken” as the chapters were, they weren’t nearly as unfixable as I’d always believed. It would seem 5+ years away from the manuscript has given me some objectivity!
That said, rather than edit some of the scenes, I have ended up tossing them out and completely rewriting them “from memory” instead. This felt easier to me than trying to stay within the framework of the old. My brain knew what happened, so I just fell into the new tense (present, of course!) and went from there.
Not all scenes, though, as you’ll see if you’re a paid subscriber!
Basically, I want you to consider that your brain works in its own unique way. What do you feel most comfortable doing? If you’re someone who hates revising, then it might be fastest and more fun for you to start over from the beginning. Write again from memory or find a totally new story with the same characters and world.
If you’re less of a drafter and more of a reviser (🙋♀️), then it might be easiest to work with what you’ve got and do a substantive overhaul.
Listen to your gut on this one! Do you feel more excited by one route or the other? Or do you feel overwhelmed by both. If it’s option 3—overwhelm no matter where you turn—then I suggest setting the book aside for a while and focusing on something else! That was how I felt about Screechers for your years and years and years…
And now here I am, rewriting it all over again!
Does this help, Kristen? If not, do let me know in the comments so I can try to give you more advice and insights.
And as always: thank you for the question and for being a subscriber!
One does not simply walk into Mordor.
Yes, I know he is a terrible human. Unfortunately, his writing advice is sound and he has excellent skill with deep POV. Buy the book used, if you (understandably) don’t want to support him.
Despite what I said in that post about filter words (which is now quite old!), they aren’t necessarily a bad thing! I intentionally used filter words in The Luminaries to give Winnie’s voice an “etherial” tone, as if you’re listening to her through the forest mist. It’s a very deep third person POV, but I wanted to then add a layer overtop that re-introduces some distance. This was a conscious choice for the prose in that book.
This is what I did for The Luminaries, you may recall! Because I knew the Sooz Your Own Adventure version could never work as a book. So I just took the world, characters, and backstories and started something totally new.
Wow, I am so glad you linked to that old post about SS&D! It's fascinating how each of the Luminaries intros you shared read differently. The power of tense and person!
Such a fantastic craft post from you, yet again! Thanks for always sharing your knowledge and insights.