{"id":3109,"date":"2011-06-18T12:00:08","date_gmt":"2011-06-18T17:00:08","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/polarbear60.org\/randr\/?p=3109"},"modified":"2025-01-22T10:24:44","modified_gmt":"2025-01-22T16:24:44","slug":"revise-update","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/revise-update\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Revise Your Novel Update"},"content":{"rendered":"

I haven’t spoken much about this lately, but I have been plugging away at the How To Revise Your Novel* course, and, thus, the revision of Polar Bear on the Loose<\/em>.\u00a0 I was bogged down for quite a while.\u00a0 Then I made a burst of progress.\u00a0 Now, I’m at another lesson that’s crucial for the novel revision.\u00a0 That doesn’t sound right.\u00a0 They’re all crucial, but some of the tasks on the last couple lessons were easier for me to do.<\/p>\n

I am finally at Lesson 12 (out of 23).\u00a0 Lesson 12 is where we refine our characters.\u00a0 I thought I had 52 characters, but I had 15 that were “blinkies.”\u00a0 They weren’t characters at all — merely window dressing in human (or bear) shape for the story.\u00a0 They didn’t have lines.\u00a0 They didn’t always even physically appear in the story.\u00a0 They were just mentioned.\u00a0 That brought me down to 37 characters.\u00a0 Or, I thought I had 37 characters, but I’d made notes earlier in the process to the effect of, ‘Why is this person here?\u00a0 What do they contribute?”\u00a0 There were five of those.\u00a0 I eliminated them.\u00a0 If I discover they served a useful purpose, some other character will pick up that function.\u00a0 That brought me down to 32 characters.\u00a0\u00a0\u00a0 I managed to smoosh five more of them into other characters.\u00a0 Yes, I downsized them.\u00a0 The remaining characters will have to “do more with less.”\u00a0 Which, if you’re keeping track at home, means I have 27 characters remaining, and some of them are on shaky ground.<\/p>\n

The rest of this lesson has me going through my modified scene for revision\u00a0 cards (all but five are red or orange, indicating major revision is required) and documenting each scene’s purpose and which characters make an appearance in that scene.\u00a0\u00a0 In some form or fashion, I have some notes to make on the manuscript regarding character changing, but I haven’t figured that out yet.<\/p>\n

I do sense when I complete this lesson, I’ll have the foundation laid for the way ahead in the revision.\u00a0 My not understanding how to get to this point is my whole reason for wanting this course — and if you struggle with knowing how to get to this point, I highly recommend How To Revise Your Novel* as a course you should consider.<\/p>\n

Don’t let time concern you.\u00a0 I’ve been working on this course for nearly a year and a half now — I am a member of the inaugural How To Revise Your Novel class.\u00a0 I may be the slowest member of the class, but speed is not what the course is about.\u00a0 Learning the process and getting the best book possible IS what the class is about.\u00a0 If you can do that in 23 weeks (or less), that’s great.\u00a0 I can’t. Not yet, anyway.\u00a0 That, to me, is the beauty of Holly’s classes — the classes become available at one week intervals, whether you are ready for them or not, but once they are available, they are ALWAYS there.\u00a0 You can work at your own pace.\u00a0 You can go back and review (I have!).\u00a0 You have the forum community available for encouragement, advice, and general interaction\u00a0 — as much or as little as you like.<\/p>\n

* Yes, both links to the course\u00a0 go to my affiliate page.\u00a0 All proceeds generated from someone signing up for the course through my links go directly to support Forward Motion for Writers.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

I haven’t spoken much about this lately, but I have been plugging away at the How To Revise Your Novel* course, and, thus, the revision of Polar Bear on the Loose.\u00a0 I was bogged down for quite a while.\u00a0 Then I made a burst of progress.\u00a0 Now, I’m at another …<\/span> Continue reading →<\/span><\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"footnotes":"","jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":true,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","default_image_id":0,"font":"","enabled":false},"version":2}},"categories":[52,4],"tags":[151],"class_list":["post-3109","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-pbotl","category-writing","tag-htryn"],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"jetpack_featured_media_url":"","jetpack_likes_enabled":true,"jetpack_sharing_enabled":true,"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3109","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=3109"}],"version-history":[{"count":2,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3109\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":16090,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/3109\/revisions\/16090"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=3109"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=3109"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/jeanschara.com\/pmtoo\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=3109"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}