Revision checklist
Use the checklist on a finished draft of the first chapter, after reading the opening and then pages 30 to 40. Each item is a question to answer in a sentence.
The scene
- Who is trying to do what in these pages, and what is in the way?
- How many words pass before the first verb of intention or change?
- What small deviation tells the reader that today is not like the others?
The contracts
- Which words open each of the six contracts, and is each deferred contract deferred by choice?
- Is any information delivered that no character would say, to anyone, for any reason?
- Does the narration withhold anything the viewpoint character plainly knows, and is that gap in her or in the author?
The page
- Which detail carries the most contracts, and could the page be built outward from it?
- Read aloud, where does the breath fail, and which sentences are rests?
- Which details are placed in the first two pages, and which of them are redeemed later?
The book
- Do pages 30 to 40 belong to the same book as the opening, in tone, pace and stakes?
- If the book uses several viewpoints, timelines or documents, on what page does the reader first learn that it does?
- If read without its title, cover or blurb, does the opening still say what kind of book it is?
Exercises for your own draft
- The multiplicity audit. Print the first page double-spaced. Beside each sentence, write the initial of every contract it opens (V, G, C, W, S, F), and then read the pattern. Mostly single letters means the page spends its words one job at a time; mostly four or five means it needs rests; an empty column is a contract not opened; a sentence carrying most of the letters is the page’s spine and may belong earlier. The multiplicity audit takes about twenty minutes.
- Three gambits. Rewrite your first page as a small action, as a voice declaration and as a rupture of routine, using the same material. Judge only when all three exist, and look for what each version found that the original lacked.
- Delete three paragraphs. Cut the opening three paragraphs and read on. If the opening is no worse, repeat; stop at the first cut that loses something, and restore only that.
- The second-page test. Read your opening, then pages 30 to 40, and write one sentence on the kind of book each promises. If the sentences differ, rewrite the opening toward the book.
- The cold reader. Give the first two pages, without title or description, to a reader who knows nothing of the book, and ask four questions: who is this about, where and when is it, what kind of book is it, and what do you want to know? Each blank answer is a dependency to remove or to keep on purpose.