#13weekrewrite

Congratulations! Take a moment and celebrate! Good. Now, back to work. #13WeekRewrite: The Round-Up | @MDellertDotCom #WritingLife

You’re done with your rewrite!

Now what?

Congratulations!! You’ve completed the rewrite of your book! That’s no small feat and you should be proud of yourself. Take a moment and celebrate!

Ok good. Now, time to get back to work.

Next Steps

As awesome as writing and rewriting a book successfully might be, unless you’re only going to share printed copies of the manuscript with your family, it’s…

Because the climax just isn't enough. #13WeekRewrite: Week 13 - The End | @MDellertDotCom #AskEditor

At last. The home stretch. This week, you’re rewriting the ending to your story. The story doesn’t conclude at the climactic battle-scene. It’s not over until your heroine returns home. This final section is sometimes called the falling action or the denouement. It’s not enough that your heroine makes a new choice in the climax. Once the story plight is resolved, the reader has to see how this…

Your hero makes a new, difficult choice. #13WeekRewrite: Week 12 - Battle Scene | @MDellertDotCom #AskEditor

This week, you’re rewriting up to the point where your hero makes a new choice. This is the climactic battle scene. Although it’s an internal battle for the hero, it may also present itself externally. It’s where your hero makes a choice between what he wants and what he needs. It’s a difficult choice and it’s through this choice that the plight is resolved.

Because this is a rewrite, this scene…

The plight is mightier than your hero. #13WeekRewrite: Week Eleven - Reality | @MDellertDotCom #askEditor

This week, you’re rewriting through approximately one-third of your Third Act. Many things are happening to your heroine at once by this point in the story. As a result of her surrender, she’s re-framed her relationship to the meaning she attached to her goal, and in doing so she’s becoming aware of the reality of her situation. The reality is the bedrock understanding of what she is actually…

This is the linchpin of the story. #13WeekRewrite: Week 10 - Surrender | @MDellertDotCom #AskEditor

This week, you’ll rewrite up to the end of Act Two, where your hero surrenders the possibility of ever achieving his goal. Through this surrender, he experiences a death of his old identity and reframes his relationship to his goal.

In the rewrite, it’s often helpful to not just recognize where this moment lives in your story but also to look closely into the meaning that your hero makes out of…

This moment of suffering is unique. 13 Week Rewrite: Week Nine - Suffering | @MDellertDotCom #AskEditor

This week, you’ll rewrite up to the point where your protagonist suffers. Certainly your hero struggles in a variety of ways throughout the story, but what makes this moment of suffering unique is that her suffering is due to an awakening sense of the underlying plight. She begins to see that what she set out to accomplish is far more difficult than she had imagined.

There’s a difference between…

The stakes are rising, the story turning in a new direction. #13WeekRewrite: Week 8 - Act 2, the Sequel #amediting

At this point in your story, the stakes are rising. The story may be turning in a new direction and the challenge in the rewrite is to allow this to happen. You may not have seen the most dynamic possibilities in your first draft, and now, as you glimpse new possibilities for the characters, you may fear that tackling them will collapse your story. This is likely not the case — however, if you’re…

"A crucial stage in the story..." 13 Week Rewrite: Week Seven - Temptation | @MDellertDotCom #amrewriting

This week, you’re rewriting up to the midpoint of your story. At this point, your protagonist experiences a temptation to retreat back to the familiar rather than going forward into the unknown.

This temptation is a crucial stage in the story because it often involves a turning point. It’s not important to figure out what the midpoint event is than it is to inquire into a moment somewhere in the…