From Rambling to Captivating: A Case Study in Transformative Editing and Coaching

Have you even picked up a book that sounded like your grandfather rambling about his younger wild days? This was the case for one of my clients, whose first draft was of a historical figure’s life story. The story delved into his entire life. The story is mostly narration and very few scenes. Info dumps were everywhere.  Plus, the narrator keeps interrupting to drop spoilers on you!

Identifying the Problems

The manuscript did have strengths. For example, the scenes that were written were gold! The story has a forbidden romance that was the whole reason I kept wanting to read. However, the lack of a clear focus and excessive narration were major drawbacks. The story felt disjointed and I felt like I wanted to strangled the narrator every time he interrupted.

What do you tackle first?

To transform this manuscript, my author needed to identify the core of her story. You can’t just tell someone’s entire life story in fiction. There needs to be a thread that connects the story that is told. I got my author to nail down the theme or message she wanted to convey. By narrowing down the focus, she was able to see the story more clearly.

Adding Structure

We then discussed how the theme was going to express itself in the protagonist’s character arc. Once we had a clear understanding of the basic character arc, we could begin to structure the story.  We created a bare-bones outline of the current story. It became clear what plot events were essential to the story and what was extra fluff.

Revamping the Narrative

To bring the story to life we needed a shift in perspective. We knocked out the old man interrupting narrator and made the POV third person limited and switched to present tense. This allowed readers to experience the historical figure's life firsthand, rather than simply listening to his recollections.

Balancing Narration and Scenes

After this we slowly started making our way through the chapters replacing info dumps with action and engaging dialogue and balancing narration with scenes.

The Transformation

The story came to life! The once-rambling narrative became a captivating tale that drew me into the historical figure's world. The characters became more relatable, and the plot felt more cohesive with no distracting random elements.

This is the power of a manuscript evaluation and one month of coaching. In two months, we identified the key issues and made targeted changes. She rewrote four chapters with me and has continued without me. She has had amazing momentum to finish her second draft because she can now see her blind spots and corrected them. She sees the strengths in her writing. She has a clear vision. The creative ideas keep flowing. She is getting ideas she hadn’t even though of before. Rewriting the second draft is still like wrestling a bear but now she feels like she is up to the task.

If you're struggling with your own manuscript, e-mail me at elyse.j.seal@gmail.com or DM me on Instagram @else.j.seal. Send the words Manuscript Eval to book a free discovery call to see how I can help you.

Follow me on Instagram for more tips about editing your story.