Read-Through Happiness

Yesterday in my remote corner of Ireland there was a 'planned power outage' from 9:30 to 16:00. It was bliss. I'd planned to program a website during my three work hours. Instead, guilt-free, I was able to curl up in front of the wood stove with a flask of tea and my MS. I finished my current read-through and to my delight, I still like my book. I think it's quite good.

I approached the last third of the story with some trepidation. One of my reviewers recently sent me some reservations about the villain, the list of suspects and the structure of the denouement.

As reviewers usually are, he's right about a lot of it. But with some edits, additions and tweaking I think I can clarify the parts that created confusion.


Some writing experts recommend concentrating on only one thing during each revision. For example, focus only on consistency. Do your characters remain the same age throughout? Does their hair-colour change according to your mood when writing the scene?

It would be fantastic to have that kind of time, but the novel is complete now and takes four hours to read. With no guarantee of publication and only three hours a day to work, I can't justify doing that very often. In my leisure time it's important to keep reading other writers and trying to learn from them. I am wary of navel-gazing.

So with each reading I try to catch errors in every area. Over my next few posts, I'll describe the kinds of things I look for. I'll post about dialogue, action, plot structure, and whatever else occurs to me. But I'll probably start with reviewers - when to listen, and when to stick your fingers in your ears.