Meredith Mansfield, Author

That went faster than I expected. I finished the read-through of BECOME: TO RIDE THE STORM yesterday.

This is just my process, but in a read-through, I’m looking for several things–some of which I can fix as I go.

1. Inconsistencies. It took about five to six months to write this first draft, with two major breaks in which I worked on revisions to BECOME: TO CATCH THE LIGHTNING. Sometimes, I described the same thing slightly differently in different places, written at different times. I need to reconcile those descriptions. Some places that was easy and I’ve already fixed it. Others will take a little more thought–and maybe some deletions.
2. Things I need to reduce or delete. This can be as simple as discovering that, over the months it took to write the first draft, I’ve put some detail in more than once, especially too close together–and one of them will have to go. Or as complex that discovering a scene–rarely a whole chapter–is just not necessary and it messes with the pacing. Fortunately, I don’t think I have anything major this time, but there are a couple of instances of the former I’ll need to deal with.
3. Things I need to add. My first drafts tend to be pretty spare of description. And sometimes when writing dialog I don’t stop even to put in dialog tags, let alone some interaction with the setting to keep the scene from becoming two disembodied heads talking in a white space. So, in the read-through I mark those. There are other, subtler, things too. Places where I have one tiny action that could–and should–have a tiny reaction in the next scene. Or places where it would be really easy to have a character find an answer to a question–even if it’s not a very important question. Or only important to them.
4. Places where I need to add a lot more reaction, more emotional depth for one of the characters. Yeah, I have a few of those I need to go back to. Also, places where the POV character’s emotions in the first draft might not be quite right–or not complex enough.
5. Sometimes even places where I may want to adjust the plot a bit. I don’t think I have any of those in this story, though. On the other hand, I don’t always find all the things that need to be adjusted in the first read-through. Sometimes I don’t even find them until after I get the critiques back.
6. Smaller details, like showing a particular aspect of the story in a minor way earlier on so it doesn’t come as a complete surprise when it turns out to be important later on. Sometimes just reminding myself that there are other characters in the scene and I shouldn’t allow them just to fade into wallpaper.
7. Probably other things I’m not remembering right now, too.

So, now I’ve got those things–at least the ones I found on the first read-through–marked up. The next thing to do is to go through and try to deal with as many of those as I can. That can take multiple passes because some things are a little more complex to work out than others. Then another read-through and I think it will be ready for my critique partners to take a look at so they can find the things I didn’t even see because I’m too close to it.