While working on
The Rising Gold revisions, as you all know I am doing, I decided to try something a little different. I was going to do my revising in passes method, as I usually do, but I wanted something a little more concrete than my usual Evernote list to help guide me through the different issues I had to focus on.
So I pulled out my flashcards.
On each flashcard, I wrote down the main issue I needed to fix, then the way(s) I intended to fix it. So, for example, one flashcard might say:
THIS IS A PLOT HOLE
- Fix scene A by xyz
- Add scene B where abc
- Cut mentions of THIS DOESN'T MAKE SENSE
Except, you know, with specifics to the manuscript and what, exactly, I'm fixing.
Once I had a stack, I organized them by difficulty. So the most difficult issues I needed to fix—the ones that required multiple steps to fix—I put up top to tackle first, and the easy issues I put at the bottom. How you prioritize is up to you—sometimes I like to put easy ones first to ease myself into the revisions—but this time I wanted to get the more difficult things over with so they weren't hanging over my head as I worked.
As I made adjustments, I'd check off each bullet point, and eventually when I'm completely done tackling the issue I'll check off the whole card and start a done pile. Then I'll get to watch my issues pile shrink while my progress pile grows, which I think will be nicely gratifying.
I haven't used flashcards like this before, but I like it so far. It was the extra little something I needed to visualize my revisions and feel prepared enough to dive into the work.
Have you ever used flashcards for revisions in a similar way?
Twitter-sized bites:
Not sure where to start with revisions? @Ava_Jae suggests planning with flashcards. (Click to tweet)
