Revision Workshop: Day Seven: Focus the Narrative Drive

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy

Congratulations! We made it through week one.

Welcome to Day Seven of Fiction University’s Month-Long At-Home Revision Workshop. This first stage is all about getting the story and plot worked out, and identifying any holes or problems to guide us in our revisions and let us know where we need to focus our time. We’ll be analyzing plot and narrative structure, and making sure the novel is working as a whole.  

We’ve analyzed and tweaked our plot structure and character arcs for a week now, so it’s time to do one last run through to make sure everything is indeed unfolding as we want it to.

Today, we’re going to check our narrative drive in case we knocked things out of alignment with our week of fiddling.

1. Check to Ensure There’s a Strong Narrative Drive

Narrative drive is the force that moves the story along. It's the reason the characters do what they do and makes the story feel as though it's going somewhere and not just wandering aimlessly. After all the work we’ve done so far, this should be in pretty good shape. Take a look at your scene analysis and ask for each scene:

• Does the protagonist have a plan of action?
• Is the motivation for that action clear?
• Is there a story point (author’s perspective) to every scene?
• Is there a story question (reader’s perspective) in every scene?
• Are these points and questions clear from the start of the scene?
• Is the protagonist making decisions that change how the story unfolds?
• If you took the scene out, would the plot change?

2. Identify What Changes in the Scene

The whole point of a scene is to move the story forward in some way, so if nothing at all changes, that’s a good indication that the scene is unnecessary or needs more work to serve the story.

What changed with the goal? The protagonist should be closer to or farther from that goal for having gone through this scene. If she's not, then what was the point of the scene?

What changed in the stakes? What about the situation got worse? Maybe new information shed light on an existing problem, or an action didn't go as planned. Maybe things that were impersonal are now personal.

What changed in the conflict? The conflict might now be harder or more personal, or it could have shifted to something that will destroy the protagonist if left unresolved. As tension comes from conflict, this is an area where changes can have a major impact on the story.

What changed in the motivations? Characters who started out with good intentions might have sunk into more selfish wants as the scene unfolded. The good guy might be sick of always playing by the rules and decided to cut loose, or the character with ambiguous allegiances picked a side.

What changed in the plot? Three in a row of the same type of scene with the same resolution will feel repetitious and make the story feel stagnant.

What changed in the setting? When the setting changes, it often heralds a change in another area.

Not every scene will have or need every one of these changes, but it's worth looking at each one to see if a change would strengthen the scene. It can also be helpful to consider the point of the scene, both from the author's standpoint (what you want to show by having this scene there) and the character's standpoint (how she sees the scene and what she wants from it). If the point is to explain something, odds are there's not enough change going on.

This concludes week one (we made it!). We should be feeling pretty good about our plots and character arcs and how they unfold in the novel. Tomorrow, we’ll move on to characters and setting, deepening both our story people and their worlds.

Tomorrow: Flesh Out the Character Development

New to the At-Home Workshop? Find the current list of revision steps and earlier prep work on the introductory page.

Looking for tips on planning, writing, or revising your novel? Check out one of my books on writing:  Planning Your Novel: Ideas and Structure, a self-guided workshop for planning or revising a novel, the companion Planning Your Novel Workbook, Revising Your Novel: First Draft to Finished Draft, your step-by-step guide to revising a novel, and the first book in my Skill Builders Series (and Amazon bestseller), Understanding Show Don't Tell (And Really Getting It).

A long-time fantasy reader, Janice Hardy always wondered about the darker side of healing. For her fantasy trilogy The Healing Wars, she tapped into her own dark side to create a world where healing was dangerous, and those with the best intentions often made the worst choices. Her novels include The Shifter, Blue Fire, and Darkfall from Balzer+Bray/Harper Collins. The Shifter, was chosen for the 2014 list of "Ten Books All Young Georgians Should Read" from the Georgia Center for the Book. It was also shortlisted for the Waterstones Children's Book Prize, and The Truman Award in 2011.

Janice is also the founder of Fiction University, a site dedicated to helping writers improve their craft. Her popular Foundations of Fiction series includes Planning Your Novel: Ideas and Structure, a self-guided workshop for planning or revising a novel, the companion Planning Your Novel Workbook, Revising Your Novel: First Draft to Finished Draft, your step-by-step guide to revising a novel, and the first book in her Skill Builders Series, the Amazon bestseller, Understanding Show Don't Tell (And Really Getting It).  

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