4 Ways To Improve Your Novel
You finished your novel! What a monumental achievement. Whether it’s been living in your head for months or years, getting your book down on paper is an incredible feat that should be celebrated. Once you’ve finished your dance party, put the manuscript away for at least a few weeks (or months!). Coming back to it with fresh eyes is an essential part of the next phase of your work: edits, edits, edits.
In my work as a freelance book editor, here are the top four tips I tend to give writers in the editing process:
#1: First 10 Pages
In addition to hooking readers, your first 10 pages are absolutely essential for securing a book agent. In the query process, most agents ask for sample pages along with your query letter, typically anywhere from the first 5-20 pages of your manuscript. Those pages have the potential to make or break your book! Make sure that your opening pages match the style and tone of the rest of your piece, and tease the story to come.
Another good question to ask yourself is: where’s the most interesting place to drop into my story? Borrowing this excellent piece of advice from a book agent – whatever you do, don’t start with a character waking up! Get creative with it, and find a unique, grabby way to kick off your narrative.
#2: The Larger Book World
This step is best to complete before writing, but can also be used to guide an edit pass. Decide where you want your book to fit into the larger book world. There are three parts to this: genre, audience, and comparison titles.
Hopefully, you’ve selected your genre before going to draft, but maybe you realized a different genre worked better as you wrote – that’s a totally natural part of the discovery process! You can use your finalized genre selection to help shape your manuscript. Knowing your intended audience is key: is your book more commercially-minded (focusing on plot, accessibility, and entertainment) or more literary-minded (focusing on characters, themes, and formal style)? Some agents represent commercial fiction, while others focus on literary fiction, and some do both. If your book is a mix between commercial and literary, that’s usually called upmarket fiction or book club fiction. Finally, select your comparison titles, which are 2-3 books in a similar genre/audience space. Look at what these books do successfully, and let that inspire your edits.
You’ll need all three of these elements to submit to book agents, so have a firm plan in mind right from the writing or editing stage.
#3: Clarify Your Narrative Framework
As book writing is such a wide-open art form, it’s extremely important to have a solid narrative framework in place. Think of your framework as the engine that drives your story. Often, especially in more commercial writing, this framework is the genre itself – for instance, romance novels typically have a traditional pattern of plot beats that readers expect to see, which writers can either play into or subvert.
Even in literary novels, which are much less bound by plot, having a story framework is an absolute necessity. Readers – and agents – need to have a strong sense of what the experience of the book will be, right from the beginning. A great example is Station Eleven, a pandemic dystopian novel, which begins with a death that sets all of the characters adrift, foreshadowing the deadly pandemic that will set the world adrift. Think about: what ties all the threads of your plot together, what do your characters learn over the course of your story, and what driving question does your novel seek to answer?
#4: Build Narrative Momentum
When you’re confident in the above big-ticket items, it’s time to dive into the weeds of your sequences and scenes! With each beat in your plot, your aim is to create narrative momentum – especially important in literary fiction, where it’s easy to let your plot lapse into a flat series of vignettes. Take a look at every scene, and ask yourself: does this reveal something new about my characters and/or move the plot forward? If not, it might be time to kill that darling. (Keep it safe in a drawer or brainstorming document, as who knows, it could become part of a future story someday!) Another great trick for creating narrative momentum – plant questions you can answer later in the story, hooking the reader even further into your manuscript.
Need help with your novel draft? I offer developmental editing, line editing/copy editing, and proofreading services. Let’s bring your book to life!