Redrafting 2: Revising

Writing fiction, according to James N. Frey, is a hundred times more difficult than you think it is ‘because a writer has a damn hard time evaluating what he has written, and unless he knows the strengths and weaknesses of a manuscript it will not be possible to turn a draft into a finished piece of work.’

1

This is part of the challenge when you come to revise your work. Another difficulty is ensuring that your characters and situations are fully realised. Struggling to imagine himself in the shoes of a young woman who robs a bank, André Dubus had a moment of illumination:

I could not get inside of her, become her. Then one day or night I decided to try a different approach. I told myself that next day at the desk I would not leave a sentence until I knew precisely what Anna was feeling. I told myself that even if I wrote only fifty words, I would stay with this…

At my desk next morning I held my pen and hunched my shoulders and leaned my head down, physically trying to look more deeply into the page of the notebook. I did this for only a moment before writing, as a batter takes a practice swing while he waits in the on-deck circle. In that moment I began what I call vertical writing, rather than horizontal. I had never before thought in these terms. But for years I had been writing horizontally, trying to move forward (those five pages); now I would try to move down, as deeply as I could.

2