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CMwww.chaptermuse.com › Guide › Revise a novel

How to revise a novel so the revision ends

It is an argument about what has to be true of those passes for the process to have an end.

• Four passes is not four drafts if they were all the same pass
• Structure, character, scene, line, proof, and the order is not a preference
• A pass needs a definition of done and a list of things you refuse to fix
• Reverse-outline the book you wrote, not the one you meant to write

CMwww.chaptermuse.com › Guide › Ai without losing authorship

Using AI for Fiction Without Losing Authorship

I have tried to write the version I would want to read before deciding, including the parts that argue against reaching for these tools at all.

CMwww.chaptermuse.com › Guide › Dialogue and subtext

How to fix on-the-nose dialogue

Go through it and look at what each change actually buys, because the point is not that the second version is more artful.

CMwww.chaptermuse.com › Guide › Exposition without the infodump

Exposition without the infodump

By Jo Walton, SF reading protocols The generic advice ("scatter it") is a flattened version of this, and it loses the part that matters.

CMwww.chaptermuse.com › Guide › Local first writing software

Local-First and Offline Writing Software

The price triples on renewal and the alternative is a migration you don't have time for. A feature you built a habit on gets retired.

CMwww.chaptermuse.com › Guide › How to write a novel

How to Write a Novel: The Whole Job, in Order

The working alternative is passes with named intentions and protected checkpoints: one problem per pass, the draft as it stood preserved before each, so cutting becomes reversible and therefore possible.

CMwww.chaptermuse.com › Guide › Novel writing software

How to Choose Novel Writing Software

If our Word file arrives with the chapter breaks in the wrong place, you want to find that out in week one of a trial, not the night before a submission.

CMwww.chaptermuse.com › Guide › Scrivener migration

Moving a novel out of Scrivener, safely

The alternative (discovering in eighteen months that chapter thirty-one has been missing since the move) is not.

CMwww.chaptermuse.com › Guide › Create a story bible

The story bible you'll actually use

It is worth knowing that this is how the professionals do it too, and that the professional version starts out looking just as unglamorous.

CMwww.chaptermuse.com › Guide › Plan a scene

How to write a scene that turns

The other common version is the mouthpiece scene, where one character explains the situation to another character who mostly asks clarifying questions.