You've finished the first draft of a book or a story. What now? It's tempting to show it to someone else right away, but hold off. Do some revision yourself, before muddying your vision. This checklist is designed to help you get closer to that vision before showing your work to someone else. (It will also help you get more from your editors when you get to that stage.)
And iron out bigger issues first. Problems with characterization and plot require extensive revision: you may spend hours on the sentences in a paragraph, only to delete that section later.
Long passages of flowery description aren't necessary, but make sure you've given your readers something to go on. The internal qualities of your protagonist may not need overt description, but his or her physical qualities should be described, even briefly. Is she short, thin, tall, fat, dark, or blonde? Is he confident or indecisive? Active or passive? Is your character consistent? If he or she changes, is it a result of events in the story, or of your own changed conception of the character?
Conflict drives your plot; without it, there is no plot. Is your protagonist's motivation clear from the beginning of your story or novel? What is the central question of your work? Before going any further with your revision, ask yourself this question. When you know the answer, it's much easier to know what to cut and what to expand.
Make sure the dialogue sounds natural. Read your story or passages of your book out loud to yourself and note anything that strikes the wrong chord. (And be strict with yourself: don't just hope your reader won't notice.) Also look out for long passages without dialogue. There should be a balance between exposition and dialogue.
It's easy to switch point of view accidentally if you're writing in
third person. Have you made a clear choice between
third person omniscient and
third person limited? If you've chosen limited, be sure that the story adheres to one character's point of view throughout. If not, much of your revision will focus on editing or deleting the sections that veer off to another point of view.
Locate your story firmly in a place, even if it's an imaginary one. Again, pages of description aren't necessary. Setting can be established with a sentence or two. The right details are everything, but to conjure those details, your setting must be real to you. If you haven't gotten there yet, use this exercise to bring your setting to life.
In other words, is your protagonist a round character, as opposed to a
flat character? In much contemporary fiction -- especially short fiction -- this is hard to evaluate. But your readers want to feel that something has happened in the course of the story, even if it's hard to pinpoint exactly what it was.
Spelling and
grammar may not seem that important compared to everything else, but nothing destroys your credibility faster than basic mistakes. Use this checklist to be sure your ducks are in a row.
