REVISIONS: Your Story's Emotional Roller Coaster & Intellectual Balance

This is really a post about how to plan a REVISION to a manuscript once the first draft is complete. 

Successful storytelling requires that you keep your audience emotionally involved in the story.  Designing an emotional roller coaster and intellectual balance into your story's structure is critical.

Here is an example from a recent first draft novel effort  and what I did to help the author know how to approach the revision. The revision's goal was to ensure that the manuscript reflects a solid emotional roller coaster effect, and an intellectual balance of story elements.

Here are some of the story fundamentals:

Genre/Era: Historial Novel - 1790s

Settings: Maryland, New Orleans, Sailing Barque 

Themes: Persistence, Pride, Supernatural

First Draft Length: 186,000 words / 388 pages / 26 Chapters / 136 Scenes

Storylines: 2 Protagonists (Character A and B) 

Conflict of Values/Moral Premise Value Dipoles: Pride and Arrogance vs. Humility and Meekness (where Meekness is the quiet strength and persistence to do what is morally valid in correspondence with natural law). 

 

Questions for the Author:

1. Where can the draft be shortened?

2. Is there a regular emotional up and down to the story?

3. Is there a reasonable balance between the five elements that the author believes will make the novel interesting, educational, and entertaining? (i.e.) 

(P) Philosophical reasoning

(H) Historical description

(S) Story connections and plot

(A) Action

(D) Disasters

4. Of the four main character groups (A, B, C, D) how many words are given to each storyline?  (There are four storylines that converge at the end.) 

5. Where are the IDEAL turning points (pretending there is only one protagonist) and where are the ACUTAL turning points? Since this story has two major storylines and two significant protagonists, the ACTUAL turning points for each of the two story lines will not likely sit next to the IDEAL.  Which turning points or setups (to the turning points) need to be sharped with respect to the Conflict of Values and the Moral Premise Value Dipoles?

The Process:

There was no attempt for the analysis to be precise (e.g. paragraph by paragraph), but to give the author a general overview of the draft's flow (e.g. page by page). 

1. The draft was printed out without gaps for chapter gaps. (Scrivener thinks this is a 550 page paperback novel. To make the process more manageable for analysis, fonts, page size, and columns were manipulated to get manuscript down to 388 pages. 

2. In a few hours, the pages were manually scanned and the category of content for each page was approximated: (a) Philosophical Reasoning, (b) Historical Description, (c) Story or Plot, (d) Action, or (e) Disaster. A letter (P, H, S, A, D) was written in the margin of each corresponding page for reference in step 4.

3. In Excel a column was numbered from 1-388. (The chart at right has been turned sideways from the original excel plot. The YELLOW row contains the page numbers from 1 on the left to 388 on the far right.)

4. In the adjacent column the letters corresponding to P, H, S, A, or D were manually inserted. (See TAN row at right)

4. Using Excel's formula for "IF (logical test, true, false)" a number was inserted in the next adjacent column whereby P=1, H=2, S=3, A=4, and D=5. The numbers arbitrarily assign emotional levels to the different content, where Philosophical Reasoning pages might be the more boring (=1), and Disaster Descriptions are probably the more exciting (=5). (See GREEN row at right.)

5. Using Excel's "Insert Chart" function a bar chart was generated, and sized to line up with the three columns. (See the BLUE bar columns at right. The shortest blue columns represent pages deemed Philosophical in content. The tallest blue columns represent pages deemed descriptive of a Disaster.) The "Emotional Roller Coaster" we are after is superimposed as a red line atop the blue columns. 

6. In Excel using the "IFCOUNT" function, the number of pages principally deemed portraying each of the five content were summed:

Philosophical (P) = 27

Historical (H) = 43

Story/Plot (S) = 145

Action (A) = 102

Disaster (D) = 71

7. Using Scrivener, in which the novel was drafted, the total number of words in all scenes principally relating to the four principal character groups and storylines are:

Character A = 103,121

Character B = 65,086

Character C = 26,300

Character D = 5,493

8. Identify in the rows of the chart the IDEAL major turning points as if there is only one protagonist for the 388 pages: Inciting Incident: 12.5% = Page 48 // Act 1-2 Break: 25% = Page 97  // Moment of Grace (Mid Point) 50%  = Page 194 // Act 2-3 Break: 75% = Page 291 // Final Incident: 87.5% = Page 339.  (It may be helpful to also identify the ancillary beats between these major turning points.)

9. Label the major events (peaks and valleys of roller coaster) with specific descriptions of the Disaster, Significant Actions, and Internal Decisions by the main characters on the bar chart.

10. For each storyline, identify and label the ACTUAL turning points and ancillary beats IF they exist. (If they don't exist, you're going to have to create them in Item F below.) Hand note on the chart the turning points that need to be sharpened or added.

Action Items for Author to Consider:

A. Where multiple adjacent pages are the same emotional level, break up the flatness with pages that have a different emotional level, e.g. There is one section where Philosophical Reasoning and Historical Descriptions continue for 10 pages. This can be shortened (by deleting pages), or be made more interesting by Action or a Disaster pages. Exception: There is no need to lessen the emotional content of a major disaster that continues for 9 pages (one place), nor the ending which Action and Disaster pages dominate for 19 pages. ACTION REQUIRED. MARK IT IN THE CHART MARGIN.

B. There is one sequence of 30 pages where there are only 6 Action pages, 0 disaster pages, and 9 Philosophy or Historical pages.  P or H pages in this section need to be deleted or A or D pages need to be added. ACTION REQUIRED. MARK IT IN THE CHART MARGIN.

C. Review Story pages and see if many of them can be time compacted to shorten the timeline. ACTION MAYBE REQUIRED. MARK IT IN THE CHART MARGIN.

D. The ratio of PHSAD to each other is not bothersome. It's good that the slower elements (P & H) are by far the fewest. NO ACTION NECESSARY

E. The Character Groups and Storyline lengths (Items 7 above) are appropriate since the word counts depict the relative importance of each character and group, i.e. Character A is the close knit group that is or supports the Protagonist. NO ACTION NECESSARY

F. After the above actions are taken, examine the manuscript at the ACTUAL TURNING POINTS (see Item 10 above). 

(1) If the Actual Turning Points exist, wordsmith the manuscript to reflect the conflict of values with the characters struggle. Remember, all stories must logically follow a natural cause and effect. The causes in a story are the values that motivate the characters; in this story's case those values are PRICE/ARROGANCE vs. HUMILITY/MEEKNESS. The actions are what the characters do physically to fulfill their closely held values.

(2) If the Actual Turning Points DO NOT exist...create them...which will require your story plot to be manipulated. Do not fret about hitting the IDEAL turning points. Follow the organic nature of your storylines and put the actual turning points in the vicinity of the Ideal. 

Here's the chart after doing all the above. 

Next step: Revise the Manuscript accordingly.