Revisions with Kate Hardy

We have author Kate Hardy talking about Revisions.


Kate Hardy lives in Norwich with her husband, two grown-up children, two spaniels and too many books to count. 
She’s won three Romantic Novelists’ Association awards for her romantic fiction – and is thoroughly enjoying her new life of crime! When she’s not writing or researching, she’ll be out at a gig or the theatre, at ballet class, doing cross-stitch, taking photographs of the sunrise while persuading the spaniels to stay still for one second, fossicking around on a beach or in archives, or exploring ancient buildings. 
She loves learning new things, which is why you’ll always discover something different in a Kate Hardy book…

Kate Hardy on the web:

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Like most authors, I hate revisions. Even if my editor sends me a letter telling me she loves the book, I know there’s going to be a ‘but’ – and often what she thinks is a ‘little tweak’ means unravelling rather more of the book than she thinks it does!

However, as a planner, I’ve learned a quick way to take the pain out of it; it’s known among my writer mates as ‘Kate’s Nerdy Table’, and quite a few of the Norfolk branch of the Romantic Novelists’ Association have started using it, too!

Basically, it’s a simple way of showing what happens in the book now, and what needs to change. And it’s really, really easy to do. It doesn’t matter whether you do it by hand or on computer.

You need three columns.

And how you do it is to work through your book, giving the bare bones only. The idea is that you can see at a glance what happens in your book (and possibly pick up plot holes/timing changes), and also see at a glance what needs to change. Each ‘row’ is one chapter.

Chapter/time in book
Number your chapters. When does the action happen in ‘book’ terms?

So, for example, Rookery Barn takes place over the course of eight days. My first column says when the book starts; because there are academic terms involved, I’ve also made a note of when the murder victim would be expected at work.



What happens currently

I’m not going to fill this in completely because… spoilers! What you need here is ACTION. Ignore feelings (though you might put a note in column 3 about that, if your editor says you haven’t dug deeply enough, telling yourself to layer in more emotion). Don’t put in huge amounts of detail: just show what happens and when. Work through the book (I find it easier to write mine as I go along), and keep it as concise as possible. For example, I don’t need to say exactly where Georgina discovers the body or how, just that she finds the body and calls the police. 


What needs to change 

This really depends on your revision letter. My editor might have asked for more background before the body’s found. Or, if I’d waffled on for pages, not giving any new information, she might have asked me to cut the background and start with finding the body. 

Actually, my editor did ask for a big change in the overall plot, which I agreed with. There’s a cold case in the book as well as a modern case; she suggested that, rather than solve the cold case over the course of one book, I should solve it over the course of the first three books. That meant laying the clues slightly differently, so I noted for that whole thread what needed to move (and what needed to be saved for books 2 and 3).

If I’d just printed out the manuscript and scribbled over it, I would’ve ended up in a muddle. Doing the ‘nerdy table’ helped to show me who knows what and when.



Clues

I then discovered that writing crime is rather different from writing romance, in that we have clues – and people know different things at different times. That taught me to make a second table, ie the clues, to make sure I’d set things up properly. 

In my book, there’s a cold case and a modern case. I need to make sure that they’re balanced, so this is a quick way of seeing at a glance whether I’ve concentrated for one or the other for three chapters in a row and need to move things to even it out. 

Again, there are three columns: the ‘book’ time, the cold case clues and the modern case clues.

The other thing here is that if I move something, it might change what someone knows at any given point of the story. (Cutting out two thirds of the cold case made a huge difference and I needed to be sure I hadn’t left any information in that Georgina couldn’t possibly have known.)

For clues, you need to know: 
What the clue is
Who finds the clue/when
Who that person tells and when

So, in chapter 1, Georgina discovers the body (modern case) and also looks up some information in the births, marriages and deaths records. Obviously I don’t want to spoil things for you by telling you anything more than you know from the back cover, so I apologise that this is a bit sketchy!



Using the revisions table and the clues table together will show me if there are any gaps that need filling, and make sure I’ve moved things to the right places. You might find it useful to use a highlighter pen for different characters, but this works for me.
The main thing is that you can see what needs to be done at a glance, and that makes it all more manageable. (And it also saves me scoffing my body weight in chocolate…)


The Body at Rookery Barn: A totally gripping cozy mystery (A Georgina Drake Mystery Book 1)

 

Outside, Rookery Barn glows in the mid-morning sunshine while fat bees flit lazily between the forget-me-nots. Inside, a body lies dead…

Widowed 
Georgina Drake has no regrets about moving to beautiful, sleepy Little Wenborough in rural Norfolk. Until she opens the door to her rental property and finds the dead body of her latest guest, irritable university professor Roland Garnett. And on top of that she’s suddenly hearing a woman’s voice through her hearing aids.




Completely shaken by the discovery, Georgina can hardly believe it when the police conclude that Professor Garnett was poisoned, with a dinner delivered by Georgina herself. Is she about to be accused of murder? Georgina needs to pull herself together, try to ignore the distracting voice, and clear her name!

Asking around, it seems Roland Garnett offended half the village during his three-week stay and made unwelcome advances to the rest. But who was provoked enough to poison him? Georgina’s best lead is the deadly oleander found in Roland’s system. Her gardener, Young Tom, had access to the plant, but before she can talk to him Tom becomes the killer’s next victim.

As the crimes mount up, so do the clues, but does Georgina have what it takes to follow them to their conclusion? Even when her amateur sleuthing puts her next in the killer’s sights…?

An addictive and completely gripping cosy crime novel. Perfect for fans of Agatha Christie, Faith Martin and Midsomer Murders.


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