I’m working on revisions now, and one thing I’m running into a lot is scenes where something has subtly changed in this revision. Maybe a character knows something earlier than they did in the previous draft, or their relationship with another character has changed, or the previous scene they just came from had a different feel to it, so the main character should be in a different headspace.
Technically, the current scene doesn’t need to change. There is no specific element in the scene that needs revision. But with the new, changed circumstances, it should probably unfold differently in subtle ways.
I’m definitely revising these scenes to account for the subtle changes — that’s not in question. But I often face a choice: should I just change a couple of words or lines to get the point across, or rewrite the scene completely?
Yeah… Another thing I’m noticing about revisions is that the answer that’s more work seems to always turn out to be the right one.
The method that seems to work best for me when revising these “something is subtly different” scenes is to open two docs next to each other. The one on the right is the draft I’m working in. The one on the left is blank. I then cut the entire scene (or at least the parts that should change) and paste it into the doc on the left. I write the new scene in my draft on the right, but I give myself permission to pull in as much as I want from the old version.
This keeps me from looking at the old scene and going “Eh, good enough!” I have a blank page to start from, and once I start typing new words, it’s easy to keep going. But I can just as easily refer to that first version and reuse the good bits that I can’t say any better this time around.
Writers, what do you do when you’re revising scenes like that?
Melissa Caruso 