When I was doing a first-pass of revision of my novel, I
realized that I had completely forgotten to include a secondary character,
named Jepp Marvel. He’s first in command of the army, but he’s a secondary
character. (Talk about a tricky situation!)
I was faced with the task of figuring out where to add him
into the story in such a way as to make it better and not break what I already
had. Thorny problem. I didn’t want
to make a bunch of changes and then realize later that they didn’t work and
have to take them out again. That way lies madness.
So I figured out a method to test-drive the changes before
adding them.
First, I used a print-out with a chapter-by-chapter synopsis
of the events in my story. I went through and highlighted all the places near
the end where the 2nd-in-command (one of the main characters, named
Trice) did something.
Then I went scene by scene through the ending section and
figured out what stuff Trice still HAD to do to keep maximum emotional impact
for the story. Trice is a villain,
so I had to keep him villainous.
Then I started a revision document, listing what-if
scenarios, scene-by-scene. What if
Jepp did this thing here? I wrote
that down in a revision document, and I wrote down what would change and how
that would affect the rest of the story.
If there was something later that contradicted or made that change
impossible, or if things got broken too much, then that what-if scenario was no
good and I crossed it out and tried a different one. If I found a what-if scenario that worked, then I labeled it
as a change that had to be made in that scene.
I had one place where it didn’t work for either Trice or
Jepp to be involved, but one of them had
to be there to do it. In that
case, I figured out which one it HAD to be, and figured what exactly the
limiting factor was and started brainstorming ways to alleviate it. Trice had to be injured in one scene,
but he couldn’t be too injured,
otherwise he couldn’t carry somebody later that he had to carry.
Once I finished, I had a documents listing all the revisions
that had to be made in each scene so that Jepp could be added. (It also lists why so I can remember my
brilliant reasoning. J)
The analysis I did ensures that I can make those changes with the confidence
that they will jive with the rest of the story and not break anything else.
I imagine that this method could be used for other types of
wide-rippling changes that a writer contemplates making during revisions.
