Latest / Show, don't Tell Writing with Suzy Vadori / 126. Developmental Editing Your Own Book: Big Picture Items (Part 2 of 3)

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126. Developmental Editing Your Own Book: Big Picture Items (Part 2 of 3) · Show, don't Tell Writing with Suzy Vadori

• 0:05
  Welcome to the Show, Don't Tell writing podcast with me, Suzy Vadori, where I peel back the layers of how to wow your readers with your fiction, your nonfiction.
• 0:13
  Anybody can bang out a first draft, but it takes a little more work to make your book as amazing as it can be.
• 0:20
  Join me as I share the step-by-step writing techniques you could apply to your writing right away, as I host successful writers who share a behind-the-scenes look at their own writing lives, and as I live coach writers on their pages, giving practical writing examples that will make your own writing stronger.
• 0:38
  Nobody is born knowing how to write an engaging book.
• 0:42
  There are real and important skills that you need to learn.
• 0:45
  On this show, I cut through the noise and get you all the info you need.
• 0:49
  I can't wait to see how this information is going to transform your writing Welcome back to this three-part series on how to developmentally edit your own book.
• 1:00
  This is a bit of an experiment because I have taught this before, but it's a lot of information.
• 1:05
  In part two here, we're gonna talk about your book's big picture opportunities.
• 1:09
  Now, this is what most people think of traditionally when they think of developmentally editing their own book or having a developmental editor perform this work for you, and they often skip the lesson that I did in, uh, one, which is what you need to do to prepare.
• 1:26
  I highly recommend if you're jumping into this and you haven't listened to part one, hit pause, go listen to part one.
• 1:31
  There's some work that you need to do before you do this big picture stuff that often gets missed, and basically what it is defining what you as a writer want to do.
• 1:42
  And so nothing in this section is gonna make any sense if you don't know the answers to those And then the part three in the series is going to be going to the scene level, which is again, something that not all developmental editors do, but I do because I think it's really important to teach how to use scene craft to get all of your ideas across, and I work with a lot of newer writers, and some of the ideas are new to them.
• 2:07
  So this episode specifically is about big picture opportunities.
• 2:10
  In episode one, I'm gonna repeat this one because we talked about identifying your known issues.
• 2:16
  Now, what I mean by that, so hopefully you did that in episode one already and we can move through this quickly, but basically be honest with yourself.
• 2:24
  If you know in your gut that there is something wrong with your book or something that isn't, you know, that you kinda half-assed or that you think that you need to slough through, and you think that readers will miss it, they won't.
• 2:35
  They will notice.
• 2:36
  They may not know why, they may not know how, but they will lose interest in that section of the book.
• 2:43
  So if there's something there, put it down.
• 2:45
  During this developmental editing process in the big picture, we're gonna compare what you think to all the other things that you could be working on once we evaluate it objectively, and you're gonna see whether or not you should address it, but probably you should.
• 2:59
  So one of the other things in big picture, these are all based on what I actually look for and the criteria that I do subconsciously, and now much more consciously since I've defined all of this, when I evaluate books for writers, which I've done over 200 in the last decade.
• 3:16
  So the first thing that you wanna do that we talked about in episode one is read your whole book, and I highly recommend just reading it, and don't edit or anything else.
• 3:25
  Just kind of let it absorb.
• 3:26
  And the reason why this is important is many times I work with writers who have been working on their books for three months or a year or 10 years, right?
• 3:36
  There are sections of your book that you remember really well, and there are sections that you don't.
• 3:40
  So you're gonna catch things like continuity errors.
• 3:43
  You know, you've moved characters someplace, or you've moved something around and now things don't make sense.
• 3:47
  You're gonna see those things, and just jot them down, okay?
• 3:51
  So when you read it from the beginning, but it's also reminding yourself of what exactly is in the book, and hopefully you're still really excited about the story when you do this read.
• 3:59
  Enjoy it.
• 4:00
  Try not to be too critical, because that's what we're gonna do here.
• 4:03
  We're gonna identify areas that are a little bit slower or that need a little bit more work, and then we're gonna work on 'em.
• 4:10
  So after you've read it, here's what I want you to do.
• 4:14
  Sit down, this is the biggest exercise in all of these three episodes that you're going to undergo.
• 4:20
  You're going to create a summary of your entire book.
• 4:23
  Now, don't get scared.
• 4:26
  You can use any outlining method, any synopsis method, anything you like.
• 4:30
  This is just for you.
• 4:32
  This is not for an agent to read or not for your readers to read.
• 4:35
  This is just to remind yourself, and we're going to use this summary that you do.
• 4:41
  Try to keep it tight, like three to six pages.
• 4:43
  I think the longest outline that anybody's ever sent me is over 80 pages.
• 4:47
  We're kind of missing the point at that point because it's not usable.
• 4:50
  You can't do anything with that outline.
• 4:53
  You can't move things.
• 4:54
  You can't test it.
• 4:55
  We're gonna have a quick, short outline of your entire book to look at the shape.
• 5:01
  We're gonna test all kinds of things using this outline so that you don't have to keep reading and rereading your manuscript, okay?
• 5:08
  This is something that I do with all of my clients for coaching, regardless of whether they have completed a draft and are working on revision or they're starting from scratch.
• 5:18
  And the reason is that it is just so helpful as an editor, as a coach, to see the book as a whole.
• 5:24
  I cannot give good advice if I am only seeing one piece of the picture.
• 5:29
  You have to see it all, and I invite you to do this.
• 5:32
  So the, the method that I prefer to use is called the Inside Outline.
• 5:36
  It's by Jenny Nash, the CEO of Author Accelerator, which is where I have my book coaching accreditation.
• 5:41
  And the basic formula is very simple.
• 5:44
  In the template for the Inside Outline for your entire book, for every major scene … Now, don't write chapter, not chapter by chapter.
• 5:52
  If you must do that, it's probably gonna be too long.
• 5:54
  Major events in the book.
• 5:56
  For each scene, what is in the scene and why is it there?
• 5:59
  Scene and what is the point of the scene?
• 6:01
  What do your readers need to take away?
• 6:04
  What is it that you are actually teaching us?
• 6:06
  What, what's happening with your character?
• 6:08
  What's happening with the plot?
• 6:09
  Why is the scene here?
• 6:10
  Okay?
• 6:11
  So create out a summary of your whole book.
• 6:12
  Keep it tight.
• 6:13
  If you can do three pages, that's best, maximum five or six.
• 6:16
  If it's longer than that, you will not be able to do the further exercises because it'll just be too unwieldy, okay?
• 6:23
  So all of the major scenes, put that together.
• 6:26
  Spend some time doing it.
• 6:27
  Don't spend more than an hour and a half or two hours.
• 6:30
  This does not need to be rocket science.
• 6:32
  You do not need to perfect it.
• 6:34
  You just read a draft from end to end.
• 6:37
  So while it's fresh in your mind, what are the things that happened?
• 6:40
  And then we're gonna test them So the next thing you're gonna do after you complete that outline of your entire book or summary of your entire book in three to six pages, you're gonna test the causation.
• 6:51
  That's the very first thing.
• 6:52
  Now, we're gonna do this South Park style, and what I mean by that is that the creators of South Park have shared that their storytelling, yes, I do mean that South Park, the really crass cartoon, but they have something that's really cool, and that's a very simplistic way of looking at storytelling.
• 7:09
  And what they do is for everything that happens in their episodes, they brainstorm on a storyboard with their team and they say, "Because of that, because this one thing happened, therefore something else can happen," or, "This happened, but this happened." If you start to say, this happened and then this happened and then this happened and then this happened, you don't have causation, you don't have narrative drive.
• 7:37
  Now, I'm gonna back up a minute'cause these are big words that I'm throwing around.
• 7:41
  Basically, when a reader picks up a story and wants to keep going in the story, it's because of this thing called narrative drive.
• 7:49
  It's what keeps us turning the pages.
• 7:51
  And so you can test your draft to make sure that you have this.
• 7:56
  It's the reason I use this exercise with my clients, because I do hundreds of these in a year with all of the courses and all of the in-person events that I do, I often have people write this three to six-page summary.
• 8:07
  I can read them pretty quickly and I can tell you where the problems are in your book because you can see it.
• 8:12
  It-- And what I mean by that is that when a scene doesn't cause something else to happen and you're just kind of generating something else happening and it, it isn't all connected, you're gonna lose your reader.
• 8:23
  Sometimes if you have this thing, if you know that you have this problem, it's really easy to fix it.
• 8:31
  Sometimes the writer actually knows the connection in their brain, and they just didn't put it down because I asked them to make it three pages, and that's fine.
• 8:38
  I don't care whether it's in your outline or not, but let's make sure it's there.
• 8:42
  So some examples of this might be a character might want to become the president of his or her company, let's say her just for funsies, uh, the president of her company.
• 8:55
  So she lobbies for this or makes her intentions known and therefore in the next scene other people are coming for her, right?
• 9:05
  Or that might be a but actually, but other people are coming for her or other people throw their hat in the ring Therefore, she has to campaign even harder, she has to spend a lot of her time, it pulls her attention away from her family, it pulls her attention… I mean, I'm j- just making this up on the fly.
• 9:20
  But you can see how this works, right?
• 9:23
  Versus she decides to become the CEO of the company, and then she does.
• 9:30
  Right?
• 9:30
  So what are the things that she does, and what are the steps that happen?
• 9:34
  So we need to be careful that we're creating narrative drive.
• 9:37
  So what you can do with your summary is between each of those scenes, I invite you to write the word but or therefore, right?
• 9:46
  Is it therefore, like one scene causes the things, the events that happened in one scene cause the next scene to happen, or is it a pattern interrupt, but.
• 9:56
  You know, we're going along swimmingly, but something happens.
• 9:59
  An obstacle is suddenly in our path.
• 10:01
  But something unexpected comes along, and that's a great way to keep a story moving.
• 10:07
  If you've got and then this happened, and then this happened, and then this happened, I can guarantee that you have a problem with your book that you need to fix.
• 10:14
  Okay.
• 10:14
  How do you fix it if you have a problem?
• 10:16
  It's actually very simple.
• 10:18
  Sometimes it's just adding a sentence or two to describe how the scenes are linked.
• 10:24
  Sometimes it's understanding your character's agency.
• 10:27
  There's a whole episode that we did recently on agency that you could check out.
• 10:31
  And sometimes it is just a matter of timing.
• 10:35
  So I said at the beginning of this when you're creating your summary for your big-picture opportunities that you want to just have the major scenes, and the reason for that is because I don't care at all, by the way, about, about chapter breaks.
• 10:47
  Chapters are relatively arbitrary.
• 10:50
  It's a point in time where a reader can put the book down and go get a drink of water or go to the bathroom, right?
• 10:56
  And hopefully, they come back, so there's some strategies that we're gonna talk about in the next episode to make sure that they wanna keep flipping the pages when a chapter breaks.
• 11:03
  But you can basically break a chapter anywhere.
• 11:06
  It doesn't matter.
• 11:07
  With the exception of the end of chapter three, I believe that that is a very important chapter break, and I will talk about, I talk about that in lots of other episodes, but I'm not gonna get into it here.
• 11:17
  Okay.
• 11:18
  So we are talking about scenes, and by that, I mean in your outline you may have several important things that have to happen that all end up grouped into one chapter, um, whether it's with scene breaks or whether they are all in one sort of big scene that's continuous.
• 11:35
  You may also have something, an important event like a big epic battle that actually spans three chapters, right?
• 11:42
  So get the notion of chapters out of your brain when we're talking about this.
• 11:46
  This is between important events that we're gonna test this causation.
• 11:50
  So go ahead and do this.
• 11:52
  Are you putting but?
• 11:53
  Are you putting therefore?
• 11:54
  Are you putting and then?
• 11:56
  The and thens are what you wanna test and pay attention to, and the ones that you likely need to fix Okay, I know this is a lot of work, right?
• 12:04
  So the next thing that I want you to do in your book's big picture opportunities is test your agency.
• 12:10
  Okay?
• 12:11
  So basically this is what do your characters want?
• 12:14
  You want to be doing this for at least your point of view character or your main character, all of your point of view characters, and possibly some secondary characters as well if they're important.
• 12:24
  So we wanna know what are their overall goals, okay?
• 12:28
  What do they want in the story?
• 12:29
  What is their deeply personal reason for being willing to go above and beyond what any regular human would do in order to get what they want?
• 12:38
  Then we wanna go to scene level goals.
• 12:40
  I'm gonna talk about that in the next episode.
• 12:42
  But we wanna make sure that we're never resolving these goals completely.
• 12:46
  And if you do resolve a goal, you need to make sure that you open up something new for them to want before, because what happens when we resolve a goal?
• 12:53
  The reader goes, "Oh, that was great. I have the answer." And they put the book down and they go to sleep, and they may never pick the book up again because they're happy.
• 13:01
  The character's kind of in a spot where they don't want anything, where they're not striving, and so your book dies.
• 13:07
  Okay?
• 13:08
  So we, this is really, really important.
• 13:10
  You need to be able to define what your characters want That's what agency is always about.
• 13:16
  This agency is really, really important because it makes your readers care more.
• 13:21
  Now, they're not gonna understand it.
• 13:22
  A lot of times as writers, we don't even understand it, right?
• 13:26
  You know, you can- a lot of writers will say to me, "Well, my character's doing stuff." I'm like, "Yeah, but why? And in service of what?" So defining this actually makes sure that all of the actions that they have in a scene are going toward either their overarching goal or their scene-level goals.
• 13:43
  It also means that everything that you put in their point of view, whether it's third person close, first person, whatever you're writing in, everything should be colored with that- with that point of view, and what they notice in the scene and everything, right?
• 13:57
  So if you don't know these things about your character, you may have paid every attention to the plot, you may have perfectly scripted sentences, beautiful prose, and your readers won't care one lick because the whole thing will feel flat, okay?
• 14:13
  So these are really, really important concepts.
• 14:15
  I invite you, if you- if agency is new for you, if you're not sure, we have a whole Scene Piece on agency that was with my colleague Natalie Pohlson, that you should go and listen to.
• 14:24
  Okay, so next on your big-picture opportunities, you're going to take a look at your story arc, okay?
• 14:32
  You're gonna take a look at your story arc. Check the progression of your story.
• 14:36
  Now, you're gonna do this with a summary.
• 14:38
  We don't wanna work with that big, huge, unwieldy manuscript that you have.
• 14:43
  That's sort of the nitty-gritty of it.
• 14:44
  We wanna look at the shape of the story, okay?
• 14:47
  So that's why we have the summary to work with.
• 14:49
  So check the progression of your story.
• 14:52
  Now, when we graduate, you know, from high school, we probably remember, or even middle school, we remember story mountain, which has your beginning, your inciting incident, your rising action, the climax, the falling action, and what is not taught in schools anymore, so depending on your age, the denouement, uh, which is now called the ending, which I don't think means the same thing at all The denouement is your character's new normal at the end, and sometimes requires an extra scene.
• 15:21
  Now, this is one place where sometimes if you break a scene at the end and you have sort of two or three scenes in your denouement, then you can actually have an and then, and I'm not gonna be as, as picky about it because we're really just showing and then they lived happily ever after, or and then this is the way that their new life is.
• 15:41
  So that's the one exception to the test that you just did in the last exercise.
• 15:46
  For formula genre, so if you are writing mystery, romance, something that has a really tight formula, you gotta test that all of your beats are there during this exercise as well.
• 15:56
  So make sure that you have a beginning, that you have an inciting incident, that you have a rising action, that you have a climax, that you have falling action, that you have an ending or a denouement.
• 16:06
  Okay?
• 16:07
  If you're missing any of those things, this is really basic, but this is how story works, and this is how our readers' brains are actually hardwired over, you know, centuries and thousands of years to accept story, to remember story, to love story, to engage with story.
• 16:24
  And if you break some of those rules, you're gonna lose them.
• 16:27
  The one that I see most commonly, this is really a great test of the shape of your story, and the one that I see the most often is that we have the climax too early in the story, and rather than falling action, we keep, we keep trying to ramp the story back up again in the end, right?
• 16:46
  If you've got your climax in the middle of the book, you got a lot of space to fill.
• 16:49
  Your climax is not in the middle of the book, or shouldn't be.
• 16:51
  It should be quite near the end and because once that's all resolved, that's when their big goals are resolved, then the reader loses interest, and you can introduce all the new goals that you want and- but it just starts to feel like a yo-yo.
• 17:04
  It starts to feel too long.
• 17:06
  So if you have that, then you might be starting a new book.
• 17:09
  Okay?
• 17:10
  So you want this to be really tight, so take a look at the shape of your story and see if you have it balanced.
• 17:15
  See if it actually matches.
• 17:17
  We can break some of these rules or we can push some of these rules, but if we break every rule or we don't pay attention to it, we're gonna lose readers because that's not what they're expecting.
• 17:27
  Especially for formulas, if you do not have the beats in a romance or a mystery, please do not call it a romance, do not call it a mystery.
• 17:35
  Call it something else.
• 17:36
  Call it women's fiction with romantic elements.
• 17:40
  Whatever other genre fits, because if you break this norm, those readers will pan your book even if it's a good book in another genre if it doesn't hit those beats.
• 17:49
  That's what they're expecting.
• 17:50
  That's what they love.
• 17:51
  That's what they are judging it against.
• 17:52
  Reader expectations in your genre is really important for your story arc. Okay.
• 17:58
  Hopefully you're still with me.
• 18:00
  This is a lot.
• 18:01
  Okay, so there are other arcs to test in addition to story arcs, and they are your character arc, your world building arc.
• 18:09
  It may have-- You may even have a magic arc. Depending on your genre, you might have different things.
• 18:14
  In historical, you know, your world building or the history arc is really important as well, and it might be where you start your planning.
• 18:21
  But make sure that it's there.
• 18:23
  So again, we wanna work with your summary, not with the whole unwieldy manuscript or you will never finish.
• 18:30
  For those of you who are on your 10th iteration of a, of a manuscript or of a draft, if you're on your 10th draft, it's probably 'cause you're trying to work with the whole thing and you can't see it concisely.
• 18:40
  So try this exercise, okay?
• 18:43
  So your character arc, take a look at all of your major characters, be your, you know, your, your main character and your, all your point of view characters and any secondary characters that are important, and take a look at what their change is.
• 19:00
  What is their arc of change from X to Y?
• 19:02
  Where are they at the beginning of the book?
• 19:04
  Where are they at the end of the book?
• 19:06
  If they haven't gone through a change, you have a bigger problem'cause you don't have a story, okay?
• 19:10
  If they haven't gone through a change, you do not have a story.
• 19:13
  Every novel in the world involves character change So what are they at the beginning?
• 19:18
  What are they at the end from X to Y?
• 19:21
  I invite you to map out, take a look and see what are the stages that they take to get there.
• 19:26
  You should have four or five distinct stages at least, maybe more, depending on how complex your book is.
• 19:34
  You may have more, but there's sort of these stages.
• 19:37
  So if you're going from wallflower to world dominance, let's say, then we go from wallflower to sort of stepping out and starting to speak up in smaller circles, to starting to speak out in bigger circles and getting a response, to getting addicted to that response, to getting a big head, to getting… I don't know what those stages are, but you can see it's a growth, it's an arc. So map that out for each of your characters that are major characters.
• 20:05
  Make sure, and then take a look at the scenes that you've written down in your summary.
• 20:10
  How are you showing us those stages?
• 20:13
  How are you demonstrating?
• 20:14
  How are the scenes that you chose actually demonstrating them being pushed along that arc?
• 20:20
  What are they doing?
• 20:21
  How are they reacting?
• 20:23
  How is their behavior changing?
• 20:25
  How is their thinking changing?
• 20:27
  How are their actions changing?
• 20:28
  How is how they are perceived changing?
• 20:31
  All of these things, and make sure that you have those steps.
• 20:35
  When we have a plot character arc, this is one of the first things that I do with the writer is, is map this out and then find ways to put it into the scenes, okay?
• 20:45
  You might have a world-building arc.
• 20:45
  Again, I like to think of world-building or, and I don't just mean, and I'm gonna talk about magic in a second'cause that's the one that comes to mind, but world-building is not just for science fiction and fantasy.
• 20:57
  It's just as important in a contemporary novel.
• 21:00
  It's just as important in a historical, and in fact, more important in a historical novel, even if historical means the 1980s, which some of my clients are really sad to find out that that is now considered historical fiction Make sure that, you know, we bring people into that world, that we are mentioning things along the way.
• 21:19
  Treat your world, treat your magic, if you have magic, treat this as a character just like you would.
• 21:25
  So what are the stages?
• 21:26
  How does it grow and change?
• 21:28
  How do you expand it?
• 21:29
  You are teaching the reader as you go to live in your world.
• 21:35
  You can't dump three pages of world building at the beginning.
• 21:38
  You've gotta dole it out.
• 21:39
  So what are the ways that you're doing that, and how are you expanding?
• 21:43
  A lot of times we start with one small kernel of, say, magic, and then add to it, and add to it, and add to it, and then in the next books maybe we expand or change that magic, right?
• 21:53
  We keep adding to it and adding to it.
• 21:55
  The same thing is true of a world.
• 21:57
  We start with a scene where we are in a room, we are in one location.
• 22:03
  We gradually expand that to see other locations, right?
• 22:07
  So be really mindful about how many things you're introducing, and teaching, and building, and growing.
• 22:14
  We don't wanna be redundant.
• 22:16
  We don't wanna tell the reader the same things over and over again.
• 22:19
  We want to be learning, and growing, and changing, and giving them new information each time you describe your world so that they feel honored that, hey, they were paying attention.
• 22:30
  You're not, you know, repeating things, but also so that they continually expand and get more and more immersed.
• 22:37
  The last arc that you're gonna test is, if you have it, is romance or any type of relationship arc, okay?
• 22:43
  So there's individual character arcs, and then there's how they actually interact with other humans or other beings.
• 22:52
  So the romance arc is one that is really interesting.
• 22:56
  There are lots of articles out there that you could find which are the stages of intimacy, right?
• 23:01
  So if you were writing, whether you were writing something spicy or something with closed door that is not explicit, there are pieces of progression, and if you have them jump into bed in the first scene, I mean, you can do that, but then you have to be aware that you've diffused a lot of tension.
• 23:17
  You gotta get really creative.
• 23:18
  But more typically, there are stages to that romance, right?
• 23:22
  First touch, first eye contact.
• 23:25
  There's things that you can actually track.
• 23:27
  There's, you know, especially if you're doing enemies to lovers or something like that, there are ways that you can approach this that I invite you to write out what are the stages in that relationship growth.
• 23:39
  This can be true of any relationship, by the way.
• 23:41
  This could be true of a familial relationship, of a friendship.
• 23:45
  What are the stages?
• 23:46
  Map those out and then take a look at that three to six-page document that you have with all of your scenes, and see how am I, or am I demonstrating those stages and that growth, and did I actually make an arc?
• 24:00
  Or was it just something in my brain that I skipped in completely because I'm so focused on the plot?
• 24:05
  Make sure that these are built into your scenes, that they are there.
• 24:09
  Let these unfold and check in on these stages for each of these arcs, and note where they are on your summary.
• 24:15
  If a scene doesn't move the story, your characters, your world building, the romance, your magic, something forward, cut it.
• 24:23
  Why is it there?
• 24:24
  Sometimes we just … You need a lot of ideas.
• 24:27
  A, a novel is a compilation.
• 24:29
  I mean, a short story is much tighter.
• 24:31
  You don't need as many ideas to write a short story.
• 24:34
  But a novel, we tend to bring in lots of extraneous things, and if it isn't satisfying one of these arcs or demonstrating that, we are on the Show Don't Tell writing podcast after all.
• 24:42
  If it's not showing something, cut it, or consider cutting it Okay, that was a lot.
• 24:50
  I hope you're tracking with me.
• 24:52
  These are your book's big picture opportunities, so I'm gonna recap them for a moment, and then I'm gonna tell you what to do with them.
• 24:57
  So again, we're gonna identify all the known issues, which is something I asked you to do in the first episode in this series.
• 25:03
  Then you're gonna create a summary of your whole book.
• 25:06
  You're gonna test the causation, South Park style, but, therefore, or, and then.
• 25:12
  You're gonna answer the question: what do your characters want specifically?
• 25:17
  You're gonna answer the question: What is their deeply personal reason for being willing to go above and beyond what any regular human would do in order to get what they want?
• 25:25
  You're gonna answer the question: You're going to test your story arc first.
• 25:29
  You're gonna answer the question: Check the progression of your story.
• 25:30
  You're gonna answer the question: Does it fit?
• 25:32
  You're gonna answer the question: Does it follow the mold?
• 25:33
  You're gonna answer the question: Are you breaking something?
• 25:34
  You're gonna answer the question: Maybe that's okay, but if you're breaking everything, you probably n- need to move things around or change the emphasis to fit better because readers' brains… And this is true, by the way, even if you're writing a memoir.
• 25:46
  You're gonna answer the question: Even though our stories kind of unfold in a certain way, you the writer, your job is to take that director's hat and decide where are you zooming in, where are you zooming out, where are you focusing, where are you telling us to draw our attention?
• 26:01
  You're gonna answer the question: And It is permissible in a memoir to have a slightly flatter story arc because it doesn't always fit perfectly, but you should try to group those events as much as possible into something that will work really well with your readers' brains.
• 26:15
  You're gonna answer the question: Okay, and then the other arcs, character arcs, world-building arcs, romance arcs, relationship arcs, magic arcs.
• 26:24
  You're gonna answer the question: Make a list of any deficiencies.
• 26:26
  You're gonna answer the question: Start a new page, so take a look at everything.
• 26:28
  You're gonna answer the question: Make a list of all of the deficiencies that you have found anywhere that you think that there's opportunity, and please don't get overwhelmed 'cause now I'm gonna teach you what to do with this list.
• 26:38
  You're gonna answer the question: Because it's really easy to get overwhelmed if you tackle it all.
• 26:42
  You're gonna answer the question: And what overwhelm is just your brain's protection mode.
• 26:46
  You're gonna answer the question: We talk about it so many ways in today's society, but what it is is it's actually a brain phenomenon where you haven't given it instructions or you haven't made a decision.
• 26:56
  You're gonna answer the question: So you- if you go to a fork in a road and you could go left or you could go right, and you do not choose, your brain will not move your feet in one way or the other because you have not chosen and you have not given it directions.
• 27:08
  You're gonna answer the question: So if you feel overwhelmed by this list, what is our next step?
• 27:13
  You're gonna answer the question: We need to make some decisions.
• 27:15
  You're gonna answer the question: We need to make some decisions because otherwise your brain will not move forward.
• 27:19
  You're gonna answer the question: It cannot move forward because you have not defined what the next step is.
• 27:23
  You're gonna answer the question: This is also one of the reasons, you know, there's writer's block and, and my personal experience with writer's block is that it can be caused with lots of-- by lots of different things.
• 27:33
  You're gonna answer the question: It's kind of a catch-all phrase or an umbrella phrase for a series of possibilities.
• 27:38
  You're gonna answer the question: This is the most common, overwhelm, that you have not made a decision.
• 27:43
  You're gonna answer the question: And so in everything that I coach, I always encourage writers to make a decision because if they make a decision and they go down the right-hand path and they get down there and the trees are a little bit dead and lonely and it's dark and there's garbage and it smells, then we can always go back and go down the left-hand path, and we usually figure that out pretty quickly.
• 28:04
  You're gonna answer the question: Uh, but we'll still be further ahead than if we're still standing at the fork in the road, and we will have learned something.
• 28:10
  You're gonna answer the question: So we are always gonna make decisions, and here's a point where you're gonna make a decision.
• 28:14
  You're gonna answer the question: You're gonna take this whole long list of deficiencies, and you are gonna pick two to three big picture opportunities to handle on your next revision pass.
• 28:22
  You're gonna answer the question: That's it.
• 28:23
  You're gonna answer the question: What are the two to three?
• 28:25
  You're gonna answer the question: Now, remember at the beginning, uh, and in the last episode, I asked you to talk about your known issues.
• 28:31
  You're gonna answer the question: Weigh those against what else you have to do because sometimes they will still be the most important thing, and sometimes they're gonna seem really small.
• 28:40
  You're gonna answer the question: But they were taking up a lot of head space, so you had to name them.
• 28:43
  You're gonna answer the question: But just pick two to three things to handle in your next revision pass.
• 28:48
  You're gonna answer the question: That's it.
• 28:49
  You're gonna answer the question: By the way, not everything that you identify needs fixing.
• 28:53
  You're gonna answer the question: A lot of times I work with writers and they come to, back to me and they say, "But Suzy, I just read a book and it does all these things that you said are really bad." Mm-hmm.
• 29:01
  You're gonna answer the question: "But it's still a bestseller." And I'm like, "Yeah, maybe." We can't fix everything.
• 29:06
  You're gonna answer the question: I could tell you hundreds, probably even thousands if I really, you know, if you let me all day long, of things that you could fix about your book, but do a few things really well and the rest kind of doesn't matter.
• 29:17
  You're gonna answer the question: Pick the things that resonate with you, the things that you are excited to work on, not the things that you're not.
• 29:22
  You're gonna answer the question: For me, I'm excited to work on show, don't tell all day long, because that vivid imagery is what draws me into a book, and so that's what I like to work on.
• 29:31
  You're gonna answer the question: Other people, it's something different.
• 29:33
  You're gonna answer the question: Maybe it's really the interiority of the character's journey and their agency, and all of the inner thoughts that lead them to where it is.
• 29:41
  You're gonna answer the question: Um, that's not how … Uh, you know, I coach all kinds of different things, but if that isn't your jam, then find something that is and really hone that skill and do it well.
• 29:52
  You're gonna answer the question: And then there's gonna be other things that you don't do well, and that's okay.
• 29:56
  You're gonna answer the question: Um, just let it go, right?
• 29:58
  You're gonna answer the question: Everything that you address, if I told you 10 things to address and you did four of them really well, your book is gonna be so much stronger.
• 30:06
  You're gonna answer the question: Those other six may not matter, right?
• 30:08
  You're gonna answer the question: We can't, we're not going for perfection here, otherwise you would never finish and you would never get your art out into the world.
• 30:15
  You're gonna answer the question: So make sure that you're being kind to yourself in this.
• 30:18
  You're gonna answer the question: I would love, love, love to hear what big picture two to three things you plan to work on your next revision pass.
• 30:25
  You're gonna answer the question: When you're done that revision pass and you feel satisfied that you worked on those things that you found, you could take a look at the list and see if you wanna tackle more and do another revision pass.
• 30:36
  You're gonna answer the question: This is a long game, folks.
• 30:38
  You're gonna answer the question: And again, if you go back to episode one of the series and you learn or you have told yourself how much work you're willing to put in and what your big picture goals are, that will tell you how many of these things you want to fix, okay?
• 30:51
  You're gonna answer the question: I can't make that decision for you, but you need to make that decision.
• 30:55
  You're gonna answer the question: You can put a book out without finishing everything, and maybe it won't reach as many people as you'd hoped, or as it would if you did all of the work, but it depends on your goals.
• 31:05
  You're gonna answer the question: So I wish you happy revising.
• 31:08
  You're gonna answer the question: In the next part of this series, we are going to talk about scene level opportunities.
• 31:13
  You're gonna answer the question: I'm gonna share with you some nitty-gritties of scenes, what makes them work, what makes them engaging, some stuff that you can check for that's completely objective that are gonna help you make your book stronger.
• 31:23
  You're gonna answer the question: So I look forward to seeing you there.
• 31:26
  You're gonna answer the question: If you are watching this episode in the week that it was produced, the next episode may not be out yet, but you've got lots of work to do to complete everything here.
• 31:34
  You're gonna answer the question: If you are listening to this after the fact, the episode should already be there, so you can go ahead and I'll meet you there.
• 31:47
  You're gonna answer the question: Thanks for tuning in to the Show, Don't Tell writing podcast with me, Suzy Vadori.
• 31:51
  You're gonna answer the question: It is my absolute honor to bring you the straight goods for that book you're writing or the book that you're planning to write.
• 31:58
  You're gonna answer the question: Please help me keep the podcast going by helping people find us.
• 32:02
  You're gonna answer the question: You can subscribe to the podcast and leave a review on Apple Podcasts, Spotify, or wherever else you're listening to show how much you enjoy the show.
• 32:11
  You're gonna answer the question: That's how other listeners will find us.
• 32:14
  You're gonna answer the question: Also, visit Suzyvadori.com/newsletter to hop on my weekly inspired writing newsletter list, where you'll stay inspired and be the first to know about all the upcoming training events and writing courses that happen in my community.
• 32:28
  You're gonna answer the question: Want my eyes on your writing?
• 32:30
  You're gonna answer the question: Submit a page of your current draft for a chance to come on the podcast at the link in the show notes.
• 32:35
  You're gonna answer the question: I'd love to chat with you about your writing in my always positive, incredibly supportive way so that you can make great strides towards your writing goals.
• 32:45
  You're gonna answer the question: I'm here to cheer you on.
• 32:46
  You're gonna answer the question: Remember, that book you're writing is gonna open doors that you haven't even thought of yet, and I can't wait to help you make that it the absolute best it can be.
• 32:57
  You're gonna answer the question: See you again right here next week