Reviews for The last draft : a novelist's guide to revision
Kirkus
Copyright © Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
An award-winning fiction writer and teacher shares hard-won advice.Novelist and memoirist Scofield (Creative Writing/Pine Manor Coll.; Swim: Stories of the Sixties, 2017, etc.) brings her experience as a writer and teacher to a practical, encouraging manual focused on revision. Although addressing novices as well as advanced writers, the author assumes that her audience is fairly sophisticated and well-read: she includes examples from canonical fiction (The Scarlet Letter, The Great Gatsby, Madame Bovary) as well as lesser-known works, such as Maisie Dobbs' Leaving Everything Most Loved and Rebecca Rasmussen's Evergreen. Often, Scofield reflects on the challenges of writing and revision that she faces in her own work. She distinguishes between revising a first draft and rewriting, which is a process of "total immersion." She advises working from two printed copies of the draft"a real object with weight and a smell, a size and a color"along with pens and index cards in several colors, which come in handy for several exercises, including creating a storyboard, an illustrative analysis of a novel's chapters and scenes as they unfold. "Be very wary of cut-and-paste," she cautions; retyping, even if only a few words have been changed, "will help you to maintain coherence and flow." Scofield also suggests keeping a revision journal to record questions, reflections, and self-evaluation; as revision progresses, she suggests writing "a document that describes your love of your story." The book is filled with exercises that focus intensely on reading as well as writing. These include making a stack of admired novels "to identify qualities you might aspire to," writing taglines for a recently read novel, and choosing six "noncontiguous" scenes from the manuscript under revision to assess how they connect across the plot. Appendices offer a list of recommended books on craft, lessons from model novels, and examples of scenarios, storyboarding, and scene templates. Patience and commitment, this useful guide reveals, are a writer's strongest assets. Copyright Kirkus Reviews, used with permission.
Publishers Weekly
(c) Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved
As Scofield (A Chance to See Egypt) cheerfully points out in this thorough and detailed writing guide, a novel is not finished until it has undergone a careful and thorough revision. Drawing deeply on her own teaching and writing and using a multitude of examples from classic and contemporary fiction, she offers a meticulous guide to revising a novel. Scofield suggests first thinking about "what kind of book you want to write" and being ambitious while doing so. She then moves to process, providing clear and thoughtful exercises for blocking out scenes, writing a capsule summary, identifying elements from the first draft to retain, and finding the novel's "vision." Scofield includes a helpful section of resources that includes an annotated list of books on the craft of writing, examples from "model novels," and tips on storyboarding. Some of her best advice to would-be novelists is simply to read other novels and analyze them, so as to learn the craft of fiction from those who have come before you. The lasting messages of this inspiring book are "read, read, read," "write the best prose you can," and "love the process and what you learn." (Dec.) © Copyright PWxyz, LLC. All rights reserved.
Library Journal
(c) Copyright Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
Novelist Scofield (Beyond Deserving) invites writers to take a step back, slow down, and look at their manuscript in all its messy, first-draft glory. Opening with a review of the novel form, the author provides a summary of narrative structure and a series of exercises to engage writers in a deep reading of their work, alongside the titles of their favorite authors. Literature is presented as a tool for the development of the craft. Scofield provides a roadmap that includes how to read and deconstruct a finished manuscript critically, how to get to the heart of the story, and how to develop a plan and process for revision. This is not so much a handbook as a primer on writing and literary engagement that invites the writer to delve into their creation with pen in hand. This book is meant to be dissected and reviewed as needed throughout the revision process; the only requirement is a finished manuscript or a book to explore. VERDICT This title stands out from the crowd of others on the subject. For readers who are thinking about publishing their writing.-Gricel Dominguez, Florida International Univ. Lib. © Copyright 2017. Library Journals LLC, a wholly owned subsidiary of Media Source, Inc. No redistribution permitted.
