Tag: Novel Writing

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How to create a sense of verisimilitude in your novel | Novel revision tips

Mandy Webster

Verisimilitude is the appearance of truth or reality in a work of fiction. It is the quality of a story that makes it seem believable, even if it is not actually true. Verisimilitude is created by the writer’s use of details, language, and characterization. There are two main types of verisimilitude: internal and external.

Even though unicorns may not exist in real life, your treatment of them in your story world must still be realistic to maintain the reader’s interest.

Internal verisimilitude is the believability of the story within its own fictional world. This means that the events and characters of the story must be consistent with the rules and logic of that world. For example, if a story is set in a medieval castle, the characters would not be driving cars or using cell phones.

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How to fix plot holes in your novel draft | Novel revision tips

Mandy Webster

When you revise your novel manuscript, you will want to start by addressing the biggest issues first. For example, you might begin by addressing any major structural issues you may have found during the evaluation stage of the novel writing process, such as plot holes.

Plot holes, at best, can make your novel difficult to comprehend. At worst, they can make your writing impossible to read.

A plot hole is a gap or inconsistency in the storyline of a novel, movie, or other narrative work that contradicts the established rules or logic of the story. It’s a flaw in the plot that can make the story confusing, illogical, or unrealistic. For example, a plot hole could occur when a character suddenly acquires a new ability or skill that was not previously established, or when an important detail or event is omitted without explanation. Another common type of plot hole is when a character acts in a way that is inconsistent with their established personality or motivations.

Here are some tips on how to fix a plot hole in a novel draft:

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Top tips for revising your novel manuscript

Mandy Webster

Once you have gathered enough outside feedback on your work to guide your novel revisions, it’s time to get down to the dirty business of revising your manuscript. Starting the revision process with a developmental edit report in hand will first help you get started and then will begin to illuminate the gaps that you were previously oblivious to in your own work.

It often helps to read your work aloud during the revising and refining stage of the novel writing process.

Here’s a general process you can follow to help you through your first round of revisions:

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What to focus on when revising your novel draft

Mandy Webster

Up to this point, your novel manuscript is still in what we call the “rough draft” stage, which means that if you feel like your manuscript is still crap, you’re probably right (and that’s ok!) Once you have conducted a thorough evaluation of your first draft, it is time to get down to the work of revising it to address the issues you discovered during the evaluation stage of the writing process.

Revising and refining a novel manuscript often requires a great deal of paper– and coffee!

Revising a novel manuscript often requires the author to make significant changes to the content, structure, and style of the story to improve its overall quality and effectiveness. This stage of the writing process typically comes after the first draft of the novel has been completed and may involve multiple rounds of revisions.

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Why is it so hard to revise your own writing?

Mandy Webster

Sometimes the hardest part of revising a novel is getting started. There will always be gaps between what you think you have written and what you have actually put on the page, but it is often difficult to see those gaps until you have found a way to make space for alternative perspectives besides your own. There are a few reasons why it can be hard to see what edits you need to make in your own writing, including confirmation bias, expertise, and top-down cognitive processing.

How do you close the gap between what you think you’ve written and the actual words that you have put on the page?

Confirmation bias is the tendency to search for, interpret, favor, and recall information in a way that confirms one’s preexisting beliefs or hypotheses. People display this bias when they select information that supports their views, ignoring contrary information, or when they interpret ambiguous evidence as supporting their existing attitudes. The effect is stronger for desired outcomes, for emotionally charged issues, and for deeply entrenched beliefs. When we read our own writing, we tend to see what we want to see. We focus on the parts that we think are good and we overlook the parts that need improvement.

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The fourth step in the novel writing process: Revise and Refine

Mandy Webster

Now that you have evaluated your manuscript draft and have taken a plethora of notes to help you improve your story, it’s time to enter the next phase of the novel writing process. “Revise and refine” is an umbrella phrase that encompasses a handful of tasks that could be – and often are – divided into their own individual steps of the writing process. However, concepts like “revise, edit, and proofread” (among others) are commonly confused or conflated and are sometimes even used interchangeably as if they are all the same task. Because of this, I prefer to present these concepts together in one step so I can compare these tasks which, while all individual and important steps in the writing process, serve different purposes and involve different techniques.

In this series, we’ve reviewed the planning, writing, and evaluating steps of the novel writing process. Now it’s time to revise that first draft you wrote!

Here are a few key differences between these three central concepts that I have included in the “Revise and Refine” step of the novel writing process:

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Conducting Effective Novel Research: Top Tips

Mandy Webster

Once you have written the first draft of your novel manuscript, you may find during the evaluation stage that there are elements of your story that could use some fact-checking.

Novel research may be conducted in a library, from your home computer, or even on your smart phone. (On a side note, why does Microsoft Designer keep giving me images of thin people, even when I ask for an image of an average-sized — size 12 — woman? Artificial Intelligence has some diversity and inclusion issues to solve!

While I advise against conducting any detailed research during the drafting stage of the novel writing process, I heartily encourage it during the evaluation stage. Research is an important part of writing a novel, as it can provide the necessary information and inspiration to create a rich and believable world for your story.

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Evaluation: Believability in fiction

Mandy Webster

Mark Twain once wrote that, “Truth is stranger than fiction, but it is because Fiction is obliged to stick to possibilities; Truth isn’t” (Twain, 1897). When writing fiction, you may wonder why you have to worry about making your work believable. Since it’s fiction, everyone knows it’s fake, right? So why worry about making it “believable?”

No matter how unreal your story world may be, the events within your story must still be believable within the framework of the story world you have created.

It is true that fiction doesn’t necessarily need to be believable in the sense that it aligns with reality or factual accuracy. In fact, fiction often explores imaginative and fantastical elements that are deliberately implausible or impossible in the real world. However, believability does play an important role in fiction, particularly in terms of engaging the audience and creating a sense of immersion.

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Author Interview

Author interview with thriller/suspense author, Mandy Webster

Mandy Webster

As I’m promoting my latest novel, It Had To Happen, it occurs to me that it might be fun to answer some of my own author interview questions so my readers can get to know me a bit better. The list of questions is quite long, but I typically ask authors to choose their favorite ones. I’ve probably gone a bit beyond what the average author would provide, but hey– it’s my blog!

Q: When did you first catch the writing bug? What drove you to persist?

A: As far as I can remember, I’ve been writing stories since I learned to write. The stories themselves are often what drive me to persist. Most of my story ideas that have become novels have been ideas that got stuck in my head and wouldn’t leave me alone until I wrote them. At times, it seems I might be a hostage to my own muse! It’s okay though because we get along well—most of the time!

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Novel Workshop: How to evaluate a writing partner’s work

Mandy Webster

While we’re discussing the developmental edit, let’s also touch for a moment on the process of providing a developmental edit to another writer. Not only can offering your services to other writers in your writing community help them save money (and then save you money later when they return the favor,) but it can also help you improve your own writing skills. You may see issues in a writing partner’s work that you hadn’t previously considered in your own. This in turn will lead you to spot similar issues in your own work.

I don’t know about you, but my novels wouldn’t be anywhere near as good as they are without the input of my writing workshop group!

Here are the steps to take when conducting a developmental edit on another writer’s novel manuscript:

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