On Revising, Part 5: Raising the stakes

Photo by Jungwoo Hong on Unsplash

I think I'm ready for the big "Deep Think" revision on my project, The American Nine, and I'm super excited about it.

Whenever I get to about the third (out of four minimum) revisions I like to consider it to be my "Big Idea" revision. That's when I take a look at everything about my story and see if there is anything structurally the matter with the piece. Are my characters (especially the MC) compelling? Does the story flow? Does my plot have any leaks or dead ends?

Thankfully, I had a chance to show my manuscript to some beta readers, and one in particular, a published author I've gotten to know well over the past couple of years. And she was nice enough to give me comments, the whole nine yards.

There's a type of critique that really puffs you up and there's a type of critique that pulls you down, pulls you down so hard it either breaks your will or you totally disregard it. The critique I got was a third kind - the kind that excites you with the poss…