The Writer’s Digest Book “Troubleshooting Your Novel” by Steven James provides lists upon lists of questions to ask when revising your book. I love lists. I’m a list person all the way. Groceries, To-Do’s, How-To’s, and of course, both the outlining and editing process have their respective checklists. I’d only recently come across this book though, as I started the editing process for my new novel. I perused the shelves of my library for self-editing books, just to see what they had available. Though I already have my methods in place, I’m always down for learning something new so I figured, why not? Let’s see what Steven James has to say about editing.
In the craft book, the author breaks it down by section: Story Progression, Characterization, Narrative Techniques, Reader Engagement, and Style and Finesse. The process of editing in the Troubleshooting book, is to ask a series of questions for each piece within its section. This makes it easy to edit based on where you may need the most work. For example, if you’re struggling with the opening (or perhaps, your beta readers have all agreed the opening doesn’t work), skip to the chapter on Openings. At the end of each short chapter within the sections, you’ll find a subheading “Fine-Tuning My Manuscript” where there is a list of questions to answer about that issue. In Openings, the author asks questions such as “Does the first scene accurately promise what the book will be about? Does it lock in readers’ expectations about who the main character will be? Does this story need a prologue to introduce a subplot or to give essential backstory about the protagonist?” etc.…
I think the idea of asking questions (versus generic advice or “how-to’s”) is a genius solution for empowering writers to see their work objectively and go about fixing it by finding answers to the questions provided. One doesn’t need to read the whole book through. It’s very easy to search the table of contents or appendix and find the exact section of the book needed, depending on the edit(s) needed.
Overall Assessment: Highly recommended. If you choose not to add this to your go-to collection of craft books, see if your library has a copy or ask them if they would consider purchasing it! Yes, libraries buy books recommended by patrons. It’s not a guarantee, but it can’t hurt to ask.
James, Steven, and Steve Berry. Troubleshooting Your Novel: Essential Techniques for Identifying and Solving Manuscript Problems. Writer’s Digest Books, an Imprint of F+W Media, Inc., 2016.