When you tackle revision on your WIP novel, is it better to rewrite or reimagine?

Writing Tip for Today: Let’s discuss rewriting scenes to determine if you can tweak them or rewrite them altogether.

Layered Rewriting

If you’ve been writing on your novel for a while, you’ve probably heard about layered rewriting. My view is to begin self-editing by addressing structural or thematic (Big Picture) areas first. If you wind up deleting a scene altogether, why waste time polishing it?

But Big Picture revision requires a level of skill that new writers often lack. So today, let’s think about revision scene by scene in terms of either editing for small stuff or reimagining the scene entirely. For instance, ask yourself what the scene’s goal is, and how it plays out across the scene. Who wins and who loses?

Look at the scene’s action as well as other characters in the scene. Is the protagonist alone on stage? What’s moving besides the dialogue? Be sensitive to too many scenes that open with a single character or scenes with everyone seated around a table. Be willing to reimagine these things in a more active way. Scenes with too much interior thought or that don’t involve more than “talking heads” are harder to keep readers engaged.

Too Late or Too Soon

You might also consider scenes in which you’ve introduced important information either too late or too soon. In the classic story arc three act structure, you withhold certain information in order to build tension. By withholding or foreshadowing you don’t let readers in on all the pertinent info until conflict and tension reach their peak

If you write a scene in the first third of the story that gives away tension or conflict, you then don’t have a way to build the tension. That’s why in media res is useful for nearly every scene. By starting in the middle of the action, you spare readers boring set-up details. Readers prefer action to explanations.

As you get near the third act you may discover that you had to add characters or subplots to flesh out the plot. By planting at least a hint of that latter addition in the first third, readers will not feel as if they missed something. The advice to not add new characters past the story middle makes sense—readers feel blindsided by characters or interactions that don’t feel logically built up.

When rewriting a scene, ask yourself what the scene’s goal is.

Reimagine Scenes

Sometimes a scene just doesn’t pull its weight. The story marches in place or is a different version of other scenes. Readers always want a story to move toward a climax and resolution. If you add scenes that are merely interesting but that don’t go forward, readers are bored or stop reading.

If you find a scene or two that fits the repetitive or non sequitur definition, instead of trying to make it better, reimagine altogether. Change up the characters or the action. Let the scene’s goal rise to the top. Reimagining, you’ll ask yourself what the scene’s purpose is, what the conflict is and how it plays out. I think it’s sometimes a better way to self-edit than just deleting ly words or smoothing out paragraphs.

When you reimagine a scene in your WIP, write it in a new file. Then, if you think it beats your original version, you can insert the new scene easily. If not, you’ve learned something and the original is still there to revise. Avoid the idea that rewriting creates “extra work.” Writing IS rewriting, as the saying goes. Reimagining a scene can help you smooth out a rough patch in your novel and make you a better scene writer too.