No matter how advanced you are as a writer, it never hurts to take one last look at your manuscript before sending it off to an agent or editor. And
Manuscript Makeover, by Elizabeth Lyon, is just the book to help you do it.
Lyon spent the last twenty years teaching writing and mentoring writers in classes, critique groups, and through her editing services.
Manuscript Makeover is a distillation of what she has learned in the process.
The parts of this book that will benefit you most will depend on the areas of craft you most want or need to work on. The idea is to customize the techniques to meet your individual needs.
Chapter One (
Inside-Out: The Voice of Style) has a section on
riff-writing meant expressively for the revision process.
You already have your story ready to go, and riff writing can help you expand your imagination around a particular problem or need, such as adding images and developing more characterization.
Chapter Five (
Whole Book: Five-Stage Structure) lists the most common traps writers fall into when crafting story problems. I especially like the chapter's sidebars and
Makeover Revision Checklist for what can go wrong and how to fix it.
Chapter Eleven (
Character-Driven Beginnings) helps you define your story goals (outer and inner) in concrete terms so that the reader always knows how close or far the hero is from reaching them. It also urges you to make clear what of value and importance will be lost or gained should the hero fail or succeed.
Chapter Twelve (
Character-Driven Scenes and Suspense) gives one of the best explanations of
subtext I've come across to date. It also goes into detail about showing character feelings as expressed by the body, using sensory reactions.
As you can see from the short summaries above, the chapters in this book are jam-packed with ways to
improve your novel, but my personal favorites are
Chapters S
even, Thirteen, and Fourteen.
Chapter S
even (Movement and Suspense Techniques) deals with action and change--the heart of successful fiction. It explains the form of movement that comes from
reactions in response to action, which include:
- actions in response
- thoughts/quandaries
- narration/informing
- actions within thoughts/decisions
- visceral emotions expressed by the body.
Lyon presents story problems and solutions. If your story happens to have too much action and too little reaction, for example, she suggests integrating body-generated (visceral) emotions, showing outward reactions (body language), and adding narrated emotion and thought to reveal reactions.
Chapter Thirteen (Character Personality and Voice) deals with distinctive descriptions and traits of characters. It offers suggestions on how to give your characters "attitude" and "passion," make each of them distinct in vocabulary, idioms, phrases and sayings, etc. It offers ways to draw your characters in distinguishing detail (physical appearance and emotional/intellectual disposition). This chapter alone is worth the cost of the book.
Chapter Fourteen (
Character-Driven Narration). We're always being told, "Show, don't tell." However, story needs narration. Good narration. And here, Lyon shows you how to tell well.
At the end of each chapter is a makeover revision checklist covering that chapter's revision tasks. I plan to choose one task, make the changes, and then choose another task until I've made it through my entire novel.
How good is that?
