Making a big change

One of the hard­est aspects of writ­ing occurs when your first impor­tant read­er, and/or your edi­tor, says, “Okay, but you need to make major changes.” Some­times, that admo­ni­tion comes with a spe­cif­ic sug­ges­tion, as in, “I think you need to show why ….” Or “Maybe you want to add anoth­er char­ac­ter.” If you agree—and that’s always a major stipulation—you can move along those lines.

How­ev­er, when the sug­ges­tion is to “Rethink your book,” or “You are going to need to refo­cus the cen­tral sto­ry,” or even “Your premise is okay, but you need to go anoth­er direc­tion,” things get much harder.

Over the years I have heard all of these sug­ges­tions. Before you do any­thing, let me repeat, you must agree with such dras­tic shifts. Trust me, if there is mon­ey on the line, you will be tempt­ed to plunge right in. Don’t.

Assum­ing how­ev­er, that you agree that you must go in a rad­i­cal­ly dif­fer­ent direc­tion, I don’t think you start by writ­ing. I think you can only do so with a lot of hard think­ing. Try, if you will, to think like a good chess play­er (which I am not) by con­tem­plat­ing the log­ic of mak­ing a move, a change. “If I do this, than this will hap­pen, which means that will hap­pen, which means ….”

My point is, once you start a big change, that change will rever­ber­ate through­out the text, and you must be aware of that. Every­thing must change. Oth­er­wise the text will become lop­sided, your log­ic will go, and so too, will your story.

Change is hard. Big change is harder.