Progress Report: The Shrunken Manuscript

In spite of the today's title, Dear Reader, I have no exotic jungle exploits with cannibals to share. For the second editing pass of my still unnamed mannerpunk fantasy, I decided to use Darcy Pattison's Shrunken Manuscript method.

The short explanation: by shrinking my novel down to nigh-unreadable sized type, I get a big-picture view of the strengths and weaknesses of my pacing, characterization, and pretty much anything else I want to track. If you're interested, keep reading to hear about the process in agonizing detail.

Step One: Fit the manuscript on 30 or so pages. No mean feat, with a 140,000-word fantasy novel. I eliminated all white space, like chapter breaks, and made the type tiny. 5-point font did the trick, bringing me in at 47 pages.

Step Two: Scan the tiny, tiny print and mark sections I want to take note of. I made a legend and used crayons (hey, I have two small children and the crayons were on-hand). For instance, I marked each point-of-view change. I highlighted major plot points in red, major character interactions in yellow, and backstory in brown. And finally, I stuck stickers on bits I really liked because ooh! stickers! (again with the preschoolers)

Orange Cat doesn't approve of these rainbow-colored shenanigans.

I didn't really need a computer for this step; it only supplied mood music.

This process took several hours. I was very detailed, marking ten or so elements on the manuscript. No rushing this step; the more time spent here, the more benefit gained in the last steps.

Orange Cat threw in the towel long before I did. 
Just looking at my colored legend wore him out.

Step Three: Lay out the shrunken manuscript, end-to-end. Unfortunately my house can't accommodate 47 pages end-to-end, so I made five columns to get a bird's eye view of my work and the crayoned bits. I had to stand on the stairs to get all of them in the picture. Crazy, isn't it?

This view freaks me out, Dear Reader. Writing all of those words took a lot of time and energy.

Step Four: Analyze patterns in the manuscript. This is where all that detailed work in Step Two comes into play. By standing back and examining where all the major plot points are, I can ensure I don't have any glaring lulls in my story. Or if I have a chapter with too much backstory marked, I know I need to shake up that particular section.

Several revelations were readily apparent. I'll highlight a few of the biggies:

My female main character's intro (left) vs. my male main character's intro (right). Yep, he's still boring -- all that brown is backstory, backstory, backstory. Sure he has baggage, and I want the reader to know all about said baggage, but the baggage is more attractive if it's carried by a muscled man of action (back me up here, ladies!).

The section on the left has a healthy mix of backstory and major plot points. The section on the right is tellingly blank -- too much writerly blathering instead of story-driving events. Time to dig into that section and make it more dynamic, or get out the machete and chop words.

A rainbow exploded on this section of my manuscript. It's a pivotal scene, a culmination of many different story elements. Also, it earned a blue pawprint sticker because reading this bit makes me squee in delight. (There's a little Blue's Clues shout out to you fellow preschool moms! w00t!)

This process helped me identify the weakest points in my manuscript, whether they be lulls in story development or erratic pacing. I'm a visual learner, so seeing it laid out in such a stark manner (instead of wading through pages and pages of text on my computer screen) was very instructive.

For the third editing pass, I've printed out a hard copy of my manuscript to read aloud -- to myself. (Geez, I'm having visions of me as Dustin Hoffman in Rain Man: "Definitely, definitely not my novel. Judge Judy is on. Have to watch Judge Judy. Definitely, definitely not my novel." HM is going to think I've lost my marbles once and for all.) I'll post my progress next Monday, and a few random things in between now and then, because that's how I roll. Randomly.