So you’ve finished your novel. Worst, it’s your first novel. That lovely, lovely unicorn.
If your novel isn’t your first…. that’s different, and I’ll tell you in the end.
But your first novel has some special challenges, bigger if it’s a book/world/characters (any or all of the three) you’ve been pondering for a long time.
So let’s start there. Why would a long-thought out and planned novel need extra steps? Doesn’t it mean it’s better built, etc.
Yes. But there is a HUGE issue. If you have lived in the world and are fully at home with these people? You’ll forget to put things in. They will seem obvious to you. Your subconsciously will edit some stuff without telling you. You’re sure everything is in there…. but it isn’t.
Note this can happen with any world you’ve thought about very, very long. It happened to me with the book I finished in October. I’ll tell my experience with that later and why I am violating one of my long standing rules. And don’t want to. And am afraid of ruining it. And….
So — first step you finished your novel. Put that shiny unicorn in a drawer.
Resist the urge to even THINK about the world for the next month. Just stick it in the drawer and go do the mountain of laundry that’s waiting. Then clean the bathroom. No, clean it again.
Once you run out of cleaning, read a book or ten, go for a walk, and if you can’t avoid picking at the book, write something else, as different as possible. Not in the same world. If you’re slow, write a short story or a novella or a short novel, something you can finish in three weeks or a month. If you’re fast write another novel.
By preference, write as different from your just finished novel as possible.
If you think you can’t possibly write another novel, or in another world, or just yet, it’s okay. It doesn’t need to be saleable. Can be fanfic. Heck, make it fanfic that you can file the serial numbers off of, though… just in case, you know? It would be a pity if you finish it and it’s great and you can’t see a way to selling it.
OTOH if you just want to write a wanker piece do so. If something else can keep you from picking at it, do it. An embroidery project, a kilt, painting your house. Whatever.
When you come back in a month, read it. Is it all there? I will bet you money it’s not. I bet you that you missed entire scenes or chapters, needed to either make the world or the characters hit others the way you want.
Add with a sparing hand if you can. You don’t want to weigh things too heavy at the front, too light in the back, etc. But make sure it’s all in there.
If you’re one of the rare people who pours everything in without filter you might have the opposite problem. you might need to remove things that don’t need to be there, repeated scenes and information (be aware that your reader does need important information several times, but they should be in wildly different ways.)
Once you’ve done that, set it in your drawer and go do something else for a week. Learn to cook. Rotate the cat. Choose violence on twitter.
Okay, are you back? Okay, read it again. Fix characters’ names, locations, etc. where you were inconsistent. A good liar remembers his lie.
Fix whatever bothers you. Awkward wording, strange bits that seemed needed at the time.
Now send it to your beta readers. Yes, I do understand these can be very hard to find for beginners. Heck, they can be hard for me. I might have recommendations for pay that won’t break the bank soon, but not yet. Try to find betas. Remember the best betas read the genre.
After that’s done, do your typo and wording revision.
And then? And then you’re done. I STERNLY advise you get a copyeditor, and I DO have recommendations for that. So you can hit me up. I won’t put it in public because well… I don’t have their permission. But I do know people.
Yes, I do advise a copy editor because you might be wonderful and good at editing yourself, but dear LORD those typos creep in after you’ve done your last pass. If you pay someone at least you have someone else to blame. (Grin.)
And then? And then I’d recommend putting your book up. And then another one up no more than 3 months later. By book five, unless you’re me and prone to changing genres/styles/series every time, you should be making some money.
Now, my long standing rule and how I found myself violating it.
My normal rule is do three passes and you’re done, or you’ll rip it apart.
And while that looks like the thing above…..
Let’s start with: if this is not your first novel, is, put it aside for a couple of weeks, then go back to it.
Do a quick go over pass to make sure it reads “okay”.
Then go over wording. And then do a proof-reading pass. And that’s it.
Now yeah, the above is just 3 steps as well. Sure. Except…. the first step is way more thorough and I’m telling you to take more time.
Thing is, I finished this book, I did my three steps. It’s about to go to betas and …. it’s not right. It’s nagging me in the night.
So I went back to the beginning. So far I’ve done 20k words (of 225k) and added 10k words.
See, the world has been with me since I was 14. That’s… 48 years. And it’s the world I go back to under stress, and–
The only way I could write it at all was to go 500 years forward from the time and people I knew, and add an outsider.
But I still forgot/didn’t put in things. There were relationships so obvious to me I didn’t realize I was hitting people with interventions and things wholly out of the blue ten chapters later.
Until I’d done the three passes.
And then I needed to revise.
Now if I can get over this unbelievably persistent cold/sinus thing, I can actually finish and send it to betas.
As for you and your own little unicorn?
Good luck. Go rotate the cat for a while.
Mad Genius Club 
24 responses to “The Grooming of Your Unicorn”
The current abomination is completely *new* to me. Only about two years writing it, with a bunch of interruptions from that boorish interruption known as Real Life. There have been months between chapters of late. Going back over it was like rediscovering something I experienced in childhood, now I’m tow feet taller and near sighted.
LOTS of things to take out. Gah. I forgot what I called things, and had to go back and find them, then found things I *know* I fixed that weren’t, and suddenly there’s three hours gone from the day and I’ve an idea that won’t come to fruition until the third big arc (or fourth). Stupid story brain.
Definitely support the “let the thing REST then come back to it later.” It works. You will find dust bunnies. Hell, you’ll find whole dust goblin armies in there. Distract that writer brain with something shiny. Make it a popcorn story that only lasts a short story in length, or see an old movie that doesn’t suck, or declaim at the cats “no, don’t eat that! You’ll get tinsel coming out your butt!”
That story will devour all your attention like a needy crush if you let it. Kick it to the curb for a while and maybe it will mature, like a good wine (to blatantly mix the metaphor).
worse than tinsel. Nylons. It causes the dreaded bell-clapper syndrome.
Yeah. Haven’t had nylons in the house since the ex-fiance and I split. Almost forgot about that one.
I made so many mistakes in my first novel … 1) Don’t change your suite of PoV characters halfway through the book. 2) Foreshadow. 3) If you have written short stories in the world, don’t assume that your readers have read them first. You will confuse the daylights out of people. 4) And more, and more, and more …
I did get a copy editor and style edit, which saved me from a few other problems.
took me till my FIFTH novels to figure out foreshadowing. And Dave Freer had to tell me about it first.
I did foreshadowing by complete accident. Then I had to figure out how to do it right. I still get it wrong a lot.
Novels don’t have works-cited chapters or footnotes*. I prefer novels.
*Although I may do as much research for a novel as for an academic article or short monograph, depending on the series.
I wrote a short story with footnotes and works cited. Too much Borges on the brain. Some of the citations were fake. Not all were. I learned better, though.
Ma’am, you’re the only author I know whose fiction series come with a bibliography. Pardon my skepticism…😇🤔😏
So, you’ve never read my Shakespeare series? Um…. most of that bibliography is outdated, I THINK.
No; I read all the Musketeer Mysteries. I have the Shakespeare Mysteries in my TBR queue…
not mysteries. They’re fantasy, but yeah
The ghosts of Michael Crichton and Terry Pratchett would beg to differ. 😛
Holy moly, is this ever me. Do you know my beta reader? He’s a retired English teacher near Atlanta. 😉 I could see him nodding. “Told you so.”
Also cannot second enough the whole “let it rest for a few weeks to a month. Don’t look at it.”
Because after that you have fresher eyes, and not only the “need fixes” will stand out, but bits of “wow, yes, that – note to build on in the next book!”
The funniest thing is that as the second book is writing itself in my head, I have notes “make sure to put this in first book.” Then I read, and it’s already there….
I immediately revised my first novel after rewriting the first draft. Twice.
It had snuck up on me disguised as a novelette, and I had to put in all the things I had left out trying to keep it short.
Backburner time came after that. I worked on other novels for years at a time to master the form.
Still A Diabolical Bargain was my first published novel.
(And here I thought my relevant work was The Maze, The Manor, And The Unicorn.)
How does one rotate a cat?
Carefully if it’s Circe. She claws your hands. Even more carefully if it’s Muse. She bites.
With Indy? Ask pretty please,and pet the belly when exposed.
I recommend using ‘feather on a stick’. Then cat rotates herself.
I’ve written three novels now and the novella first. It’s hard to tell if I’m getting any better at it. When you think you’ve done something well, or right, and someone who reads it keeps saying, “what about…” it stops you in your tracks. Did a cheap AI dev ed, and then paid a bit for a “live” dev ed, even though I’m not sure it’s “live” at all. It showed me all the holes, or what the reader said were holes, but it also seemed they didn’t notice some of their questions were answered earlier in the text.
This writing thing is hard. And without access – free access, that is – to professional writers, or editors, I’m not quite sure if there’s anything I’ve written that’s sellable. If it isn’t, how long do you continue until you quit trying? I’ve posted drafts on A Literary Horde, but so far, I don’t know how good, or bad, I am at this writing thing.
Try to sell it. It’s the only way to know. No, submitting to trad pub is NO indication.
I spent years sending short stories out. After the first sold, all SIXTY unsold ones suddenly sold in two years. That’s not “how good they are” that’s “I don’t want to jump first.”
You can also scribble up something and put it up for the free sites. The feedback is iffy, though. I haven’t updated Dr. Z in about a year, but that story *still* gets reads every damn day. And new followers and favorites every now and again. Still dunno how the fans haven’t murdered me in my sleep yet.
Anyway, it could be worth a shot. Find a site that has genres that match yours and give it a go. Or put it up for sale. Advertise a bit. Send it to Miss Hoyt- she does a promo post every week or so. Superchat it on a popular podcast maybe. I dunno. Marketing is hard.