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This weekend, I spent a fair amount of time on my novel revisions. I’m about two-thirds of the way through this first pass, and I have to say it was brutal. All of the plot holes that I left unfilled in my first draft are causing me to stumble along painfully in this revision run.
I won’t lie; there have been multiple times where I’ve thought about just junking the whole endeavor. Some of the plot holes have seemed enormous. This reread had also had me questioning the entire storyline at multiple points. What was making the story compelling? Why would a reader want to read it? Sure, there were many compelling individual scenes (I found myself reading and rereading some of them—how had I written that particular passage and made it so exciting?). But there was a major plot element that just wasn’t singing true to me.
I was ready to throw my hands up in defeat.
But then I stumbled on a Neil Gaiman interview snippet on TikTok. In it, he talks about how his first and second drafts are nearly identical (my heart sank) except for all of the important parts (I let out a deep sigh of relief). The second draft, according to Gaiman, is where you make it seem like you knew what you were doing all along.
Instead of feeling down because some of my plotlines were nonsensical, I needed to roll up my sleeves and get to work. There was the small shadow of a great idea in my plot. I just needed to wipe away all of the elements that were obscuring that shadow and then make connections between other elements so that the shadow was much more distinct and easier to see.
And this is where the part of writing that isn’t actually sitting down typing (or writing with a fountain pen, as Gaiman does) comes into play. I was dreaming about the plot holes and woke up with multiple ideas that I jotted down in a notebook that I keep by my bed for just that purpose.
And then, on my daily run/walk, I ruminated on those plot solutions, and I now have a great idea for how to fix those gaping plot holes.
Everyone’s writing process is different, of course (and there is a raging Threads discoursing right now about what is or is not good writing advice and whether anybody should be dispensing said advice). For me, I’m so glad that writers are so free with their own writing process. I can stumble upon their own struggles with writing and realize that I am not alone. And that I can indeed get this novel over the finish line.
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