In a new post, Janice Hardy offers advice for reviving a manuscript that isn’t working out. “Last year, I had three manuscripts for novels that didn’t work,” she says. “But I wasn’t willing to give up on those stories, because I believed in them, even while they tried to kill me and my muse.”
Hardy threw out the first manuscript and started from scratch. The second needed major revisions, and the third is still being worked out. In working out these issues, Hardy discovered that sometimes your idea needs to be stripped down to its essentials so you can start over. “In most cases, it’s the idea that matters, and the trouble comes from the incorrect execution of that idea,” she writes. “I stepped back, ignored what I’d written, and focused on the story I’d fallen in love with in the first place. ”
She started with a three-step process:
- Remember why you love your idea.
- Strip away everything that doesn’t support that idea
- Figure out why it’s giving you trouble.
Of course, that last one is the kicker; if you knew what wasn’t working, you’d fix it. “But that’s why you go through the soul-searching in Step One, and the paring down in Step Two,” Hardy explains. “You needed to separate the beloved idea from the unsuccessful drafts so you can look at the manuscript objectively.”
Once you’ve stripped down your story to its essentials, it’s time to brainstorm a new direction. “This exercise is both super easy and terribly difficult,” Hardy notes. “It’s easy if you turn your creativity loose and don’t say no to any idea. It’s super hard if you try to force your brainstorming to fit what you already tried (especially if that already failed).”
She suggests considering the following approaches:
- What if You Changed the Core Conflict? “It’s possible the story’s problem isn’t right for the story,” Hardy says. “Maybe it’s not a problem the protagonist truly needs to solve, or it’s not big enough to drive an entire novel. It might not be personal enough, so there’s no reason for the protagonist to even try to fix it.”
- What if You Changed the Character Arc? Maybe the character change you hope to show doesn’t align with your story goal.
- What if You Changed the Point of View Style? “What would change if you told this story from a different POV style?” Hardy asks. “Does this story need more points of view? Fewer points of view?”
- What if You Changed the Setting? While this sounds easy, a change in setting may require a change in conflict, tone, or both. “It might be that the story just doesn’t have the right location to layer on thematic elements to make the other aspects of the idea pop,” Hardy writes. “It’s too peaceful, when the story needs to feel tense. It’s too tense if the story needs quiet reflection.”
- What if You Changed the Point of View Character/Protagonist? This is a major change and probably a last resort. “Maybe the best friend is a better option for the story, or it’s really all about the antagonist,” Hardy says. “Maybe you need to tell the story from another character’s POV, because the hero of the story would give too much away.”
