Marg McAlister

When you finish your novel, resist the impulse to simply bundle the thing up and send it away with a kiss and a prayer.

First, you need some distance from the manuscript, so you can look at it objectively. Perhaps you need to recruit a few people to glance over it for you. You should check your novel from several different angles: first, the obvious things like spelling, typographical errors and grammar, then the not-so-obvious things like characterisation, motivation, style, transitions and flashbacks.

Yes, you've probably already fixed up a lot of those things as you've worked on your novel. What you haven't done is let it mature for a few weeks so you can come back and read it through as a finished novel. This is essential. Here are the steps you should be going through in the editing/rewriting stages:

1. Leave the novel for as long as possible before coming back to read it 'fresh'. Six months would be ideal, but most of you would faint at the very idea. A month is good. You get the general idea: the longer the time period, the more you'll be able to go through it from a reader's perspective. Leave it for at LEAST two weeks.
2. Read through the novel for immediate impact. Don't stop to make detailed notes or to rewrite. If you dictate your impressions on to a tape, you won't have to slow down much as you read. Scribble on the manuscript as you go-brief comments. You're trying to view it from a reader's perspective. Mark any sections that seem slow, boring, awkward or that simply 'don't sound right'. Write in the margins comments like: 'char. boring'; 'slow', 'use dialogue here', 'dramatise!' and so on.
3. Read through the manuscript more slowly a second time, stopping to analyse why the 'slow bits' are slow, what is wrong with the dialogue, and so on. Too much introspection? Does the story stop for a descriptive passage? Does a flashback slow the story down? Does a character behave illogically?
4. Do a line edit-that is, read through for spelling mistakes, typos, incorrect usage and grammatical errors. A computer can do a lot of this work for you, but it can't do it all.

• Is it tight? Have you eliminated all unnecessary words, phrases, sentences, flashbacks, descriptive passages etc.?
• Is it clear? Does the reader know what's going on at all times? Have you checked for ambiguity?

• Does it have emotional depth? Do we identify with the main characters' problems? Do we want to see them win? Do we want to see the villain behind bars? Do we worry with them, suffer with them, laugh with them and triumph with them?

By going through these checks, you will give your novel the best chance of achieving publication.

Occasionally, however, when an author reads through a novel, her or she realises that rewriting is not enough. The novel needs (at least in places) to be completely redrafted.

Part 2 of this article will look at the REDRAFTING process.