The Frankendraft: Putting Life Back Into Overly Revised Novels

My first real novel (one I wrote with the intent to try and sell) was a mess of characters and subplots. I had eight or nine POVs, a main character that didn't have a POV but was someone everyone was connected to in some way so I was trying to show "her story" through their eyes, and was about 140,000 words long. Not many of them were good words, either.

I knew it was too much, so I did what any brand new novelist does. Decided to make it a trilogy! (does any of this sound familiar? Yep. Thought so)

So I hacked it up, added a few more POV characters and a few more subplots, because after all, I had to make it fill three books now.

During that year, I learned a lot about writing and had taken a few classes and figured out enough to understand I had a mess on my hands. So I decided that I really only had one book, and hacked it to bits to find (say it with me...) "the real heart of the story."

I found that heart (or so I thought) and put the whole book together again. But it didn't flow well, and there were some holes, so I wrote a few new scenes and tried to fix it. And that made it long again, so I cut back, hacking out more stuff.

Before long I had mess of scenes and plot lines and none of it made any sense because it was all reduced to the surface level for plot reasons and there was no character depth or layers at all.

I had a Frankendraft.

Now, a Frankendraft differs from a mostly written book you know needs heavy revision. A Frankendraft has been cut and stitched so many times that the scenes just don't work together anymore, and the story is either so deeply buried or so watered down that the book doesn't make a whole lot of sense.

There's not much you can do with a Frankendraft. Objectivity is lost. So much of it is in your head and you don't notice it's not on the page. It's so terribly flawed that it's best to be merciful and pull the plug. But all hope is not lost, and there are some steps you can do to bring this monster back to life.

1. Say Goodbye
Accept that the Frankendraft is dead and put the manuscript in a drawer. You got into this mess by working on it over and over, and it's time to start fresh. Forget the text and focus on the story. Rewrite it from scratch in a clear file. No more editing.

2. Trim the Fat
Figure out what's needed and what's not. What is the single most important goal in the story? This is what the book is about. We're looking for an achievable goal here, not a premise. Something tangible, not "the romance between so and so." If it is a romance, then look for what the protag's want like "Bob wants to win Jane's heart." What events are critical to resolving that goal? And I mean critical. If they weren't there, you couldn't have a book. Write down a few. No more than ten. Now revise with those plot points and get rid of everything else.

3. Kill Some Characters
Hard as this will be, eliminating characters will go a long way toward stripping out what's unnecessary. Who is the single most important character in the story? Who is their antagonist? Who is the second-most important character? Now get rid of everyone else (don't panic, you'll add some back!). Make a list of every other character. Go through them and ask if the three critical characters I just mentioned absolutely totally need them to solve their story goal. It's okay to have a maybe list here, as you'll need some minor characters down the road.

4. Go Five for Five
Take your goal list and your character list. What are the five critical events that have to happen to solve the story goal? What are the five critical characters necessary to achieve those goals? Your top three should be on this (or two if the antag isn't a POV character). If they're not, you still have a problem. The story is too broad and unfocused, and you're probably still looking at premise, not goals.

5. Spread it Out
Take those same five events and spread them out over the course of the novel. Which one is the best starting place? (Because one of the critical events in your story will be the inciting event. If it's not, go back to step 4 and try again). Which one is the ending? (this you should have figured out from step 2). Now, of the remaining three, which one is the best mid-point reversal event? It should be large enough to sustain your middle, and interesting enough to keep readers guessing. Last, take one of each of the two left and put them on either side of the mid-point.

You might be saying "But I can't do that because the chronology is off now!" but don't worry about that. Just organize and look at them. Is there a way to rework the chronology so that these events fall out in that order? Forget what you already wrote. Don't try to slip in stuff you remember that you liked. Look at the first event and figure out a way to get to the second. Then to the third, and so on. Brainstorm. Think outside the box and imagine what your characters would do. These notes can be rough, general, and very sketchy. Just try to get an idea of how this book can play out.

Odds are, you'll have a much tighter story and a clearer look at how that story might unfold. You can always add in more stuff to flesh it out, but be wary of sewing dead pieces back on and creating another Frankendraft. The goal here is to start fresh and breathe new life into the story, not fix the old manuscript.

A lot of times you just have to bury a Frankendraft to keep it away from the villagers, but once in a while, you can save it and turn it into something wonderful.