Rewriting: The Key to a Remarkable Manuscript
A remarkable manuscript is not a well-written one.
Shocked? It’s true.
A remarkable manuscript is a well-rewritten one. That’s what makes all the difference.
Numerous demands and requests for rewrites will occur throughout the publishing or production process. The demands will initially come from you as you pursue that all-important “final draft” that we know will not be final.
Following that, we will get polite requests (which might translate into a demand if they refuse to consider your manuscript further if you do not comply) to improve things about your manuscript.
Sometimes, and this is the crazy kicker, not all demands and requests help a manuscript.
I have known instances where a writer has self-directedly rewritten a manuscript repeatedly, killing the very essence of what made it great to begin with.
I have also known agents and editors who have requested changes from complying authors who ruin the manuscript so that either a publisher does not buy it or is no longer interested in it, or when the book comes out, it doesn’t sell, both again because the gem that was the initial idea for writing the book has been so changed, altered, and even removed that the manuscript no longer has the charm it once had.
Yet, rewriting is essential.
But too much rewriting kills the manuscript.
The trick is somehow intuitively or knowledgeably knowing when a rewrite is in order.
When a rewrite isn’t needed, please don’t do it.
But how does one know?
That’s undoubtedly a subjective question, but an experienced writer knows either intuitively or by learning enough about their craft to verbalize logically why a change needs to be made and even give precedence to why those changes are necessary by citing other works in the worldwide literary canon. Intuition can lead one astray as it is tied up in emotions, but education and experience usually put the writer ahead of all others (the salespeople that follow: agent, editor, publisher, film producer) or the self-interested (actors, directors, producers). The burden, then, falls on the writer. The writer must educate himself relentlessly to have a mental encyclopedia from which to draw recommendations and tricks of the trade. Why? So he knows how and when a rewrite is in order.
I understand what I’m saying seems a little lost in the mist, but if you trust me, education will always win out. Education will help you analyze the manuscript thoroughly, determine the problems that are not working based on experience, and define the elements (not the whole manuscript) that need to be reworked and how. Your guiding principles are these four steps: analyzing, determining problems, defining what needs to be revised, and determining how to fix them. The rest will only be as good as how well you have prepared yourself for the job. This latter element is the product of a lifetime of diligent and deliberate study—self-study—because this final finesse is something you’ve groomed within yourself; it can’t be taught.
Sometimes, you just know.
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