Whether you wrote a 30-day NaNoWriMo novel or spent five years finishing your story, first draft was hard...but you made it!

Only now you're discovering revision is harder...MUCH harder... And...

"When Even The Pros Crash And Burn While Rewriting Their Books, How Are YOU
Supposed To Get Revision Right?"

On TV, in movies, in novels, and even on writer's weblogs, you see people who make a living from their writing laboring through their fifth or tenth draft of a novel, falling behind on their deadlines, struggling to figure out what went wrong, and more importantly, struggling with how to get it right.

And the funny things is, this is one place where popular fiction shows something the way it is.

Most writers, including most professional writers, do revisions like a cosmetic surgeon trapped in an ER.

They're doing their thing on a patient who isn't breathing, who has bled from everywhere, and whose heart has stopped...

...and they can't figure out why that nose job isn't bringing him back to life.

• Almost every writer does revision wrong, by starting on page one, line one, and "fixing" the story one sentence at a time.
  
  
• Almost every revision kills most of what's good in a novel without fixing what's bad.
  
  
• Almost every first draft never makes it to second draft.
  
  
• And almost every first novelist abandons that first novel forever, tucking it (and the opportunity to learn the most amazing part of writing fiction---how to turn first draft-dross into final-draft gold) in a box under the bed.
  
  Right along with his dreams of writing something worth publishing.

And honestly, when I got started, I flailed, too.

My name is Holly Lisle, and I'm a full-time, well-paid, well-reviewed, internationally published novelist. (18 years, 32 novels from major publishers, with more on the way.)

But I spent the seven years before I had a career (while I was an RN working mostly ER) trying to get a handle on revision, while I sent out short story after short story, and revised each draft and each project time and again, all the while garnering more than a hundred rejections and no acceptances.

Believe me, I KNOW how hard it is to get a revision right. I got it wrong so very many times.

It was when I switched from writing bad short stories to writing a bad first novel that I had a breakthrough.

Oh, not in sales. Everybody on the planet shot that first novel down.

But in revision, baby. I learned how to rock in revision.

I tore that first book apart, piece by piece, over and over and over, trying to figure out what was wrong with it, why it didn't work, how to make it work. In spite of the fact that it never sold, I learned an incredible amount from that particular brutal failure of fiction.

I learned so much, in fact that my next novel sold the first time out to the first place I sent it, one month after I mailed it out the door. (And the book won me an award for Best First Novel, too.)

I then had a steady run of about seven years where every single thing I wrote sold first time out. Runs like that don't last (unfortunately) but I have gone on to sell 32 novels to major publishers in the US and around the world, and I've never spent more than a few months on any revision.

It's not because I know how to write near-perfect first drafts, either. My first drafts are as mangled as everyone else's.

It's because I've learned the secrets of doing a good, clear, intentional revision, recognizing and saving what works, fixing what doesn't, and not screwing around for years on going back and doing it all over again and again.

What I do isn't magic.
It isn't magnificent raw talent.
It isn't genius.

It's a combination of:

• an intelligent, focused approach to the problem at hand,
  
• a series of techniques and skills I figured out,
  
• and a simple system that lets me apply skills and techniques logically, step by step.

None of what I do is hard.

None of it requires a college degree.

And everything I do,
I can teach you to do.

The way I revise requires only your desire to fix the book you wrote so that you can move on to the next one, and your willingness to put in the time and effort to THINK about what you've written, and what you want it to become...and then to use simple techniques to make the book you image become the book you wrote.

To revise a novel well the first time through, you need to learn the three stages of revision.

Think of these three stages in medical terms.

• Trauma Triage, where the objective is to FIND the big bad stuff before your patient croaks.
  
  
• Major Surgery, where the objective is to FIX the big bad stuff before your patient croaks.
  
  
• Cosmetic Surgery---all that fiddle-farting around you do to make your patient pretty once the big stuff is over.

Okay, making your ugly book beautiful is important. But if THAT's where you start your revision (as damn near every writer, amateur AND pro, does) your novel is gonna diiiiieee.

I want this course now.

You'll start with intensive
Novel Trauma Triage training.

Medical students don't start cutting on patients the first week of med school. First they have to learn what they have to cut, and what's healthy and needs to be left alone. They have to learn to recognize and diagnose problems before they can learn to fix them.

So tell me WHY the FIRST thing writers do with a manuscript they've just finished writing is to start cutting on it.

If you ever want do to a revision that's worth a damn, you must first learn to identify all the places in your book that you wrote right...and all the places you wrote wrong.

You, too, have to learn to DIAGNOSE before you can learn to FIX.

In How To Revise Your Novel,
you will spend eight full weeks
learning Novel Diagnosis and Triage.

You absolutely can learn by
trial and error. I sure did.

But I have to tell you, if there had been anything that could have given me a shortcut through that agonizing, frustrating, years-long process when I was starting out, I would have been after it like a drowning woman for air.

Diagnosis and Triage are the MOST CRITICAL revision skills you can learn.

You need them.

And here's how you'll get them.

IN WEEK ONE:
You'll Learn How to Create Your Target.

This is the most important (and frequently the most difficult) part of revision...and the majority of novelists never do it. Ever.

You cannot hit a target you cannot see. Which is why even big names in fiction waste years slogging through multiple revisions. They never bother to create the target they want to hit...so they don't hit it. It really is that simple.

You, however, are going to discover:

• What you wanted to write, and WHY
  
• What you actually did write, and WHY
  
• And what you want the story to be when you're done, and WHY

"Why" is the most important question you can as as a writer...and as a human being. You'll be asking this question a lot in this course, and you'll be learning to answer it, too.

IN WEEK TWO:
You'll Discover Your Promises

There are three kinds. Most writers are familiar with the second kind, but have no clue about the first and the third kinds. You'll learn to find, identify, and USE:

• The promises ALL writers MUST make,
• The promises you intended to make, and
• The promises you made by accident.

Your promises are the heart and soul of your book---why you wrote it, why it matters, why anyone else should care. Get this right, understand THIS, and not just everything you revise now, but everything you write in the future, will start making sense and falling into place.

Get this right, and you can make every book you write better than the one before.

IN WEEK THREE:
You'll Learn How to Triage Your Scenes

Some writers never get the hang of scenes, or learn the easy rhythm of conflict, twist, and the interplay of characters.

But you'll learn how to break down what you've written to diagnose where your story starts going wrong:

You learn to diagnose:

• If you've written scenes at all (some bits of fiction masquerade as scenes, screwing up your story until you learn how to dissect them and find out what they're missing.
  
  
• What happens in each one (you'd be amazed at how simple this is...and how many writers don't even check).
  
  
• What is each scene doing in your story (This is "Why?" again. Writing is all about the "why.")
  

IN WEEK FOUR:
You'll Discover How To Triage Your Plot

Plot moves your characters through your story in an entertaining, surprising, and comprehensible fashion. Or at least is does when everything goes right.

In first drafts, "everything" never goes right.

So you'll learn to identify and diagnose:

• Your primary plot, where it hangs together, where it blows apart...and WHY.
  
  
• Any secondary plots you've written, what they contribute (or don't)...and WHY.
  
  
• And any evil NotPlots you've put into your story that are sucking the life out of it...and WHY.
  

IN WEEK FIVE:
You'll Learn How To Triage Your Conflict

Writers frequently mistake conflict for argument (which, unless you have a spectacular "reason why" for it, is the least interesting kind of conflict it's humanly possible to write). Writers also frequently forget to include any sort of conflict whatsoever in their scenes.

You're going to to learn how to determine:

• What kind of conflict you've created in every scene...and whether it's the right or the wrong kind.
  
  
• If you've developed it through the story.
  
  
• If you've resolved it well, badly, or not at all.
  
  
• Whether it adds to or subtracts from your story.
  
  
• And most importantly, whether it matters.
  

IN WEEK SIX:
You'll Move On To How To Triage Your Characters

Writers don't have the constraints of movie-makers---mostly this is good, but when you get to character creation, the unlimited writing budget allows the writer to hire every out-of-work character who comes traipsing across the transom of his mind. This is not good fiction.

So you're going to learn to dissect the following:

• Who is this character?
  
  
• Why is he in your book?
  
  
• Is he Main, Secondary, Stand-in, or Redundant?
  
  
• Should you keep him, make him work harder...or shoot him? (We don't mess around with characters in HTRYN. Buggers will eat you out of house and home if you let them.)
  
  
• How does he matter?
  
  
• How can you get readers to relate to him... the way you WANT them to?
  

IN WEEK SEVEN:
You'll Learn How To Triage Your World

This drives me nuts. REALLY nuts. SF and fantasy writers get it. Historical novelists get it. But everybody else seems to think that any little scraps of world you find lying around are good enough to toss into your world as background.

The story's world matters, whether your main character never gets off his front porch during the entire novel, or whether he spends the book leaping from galaxy to galaxy, and whether you're writing mainstream, literary, romance, mystery...or anything else.

And this week you're going to learn how to diagnose:

• A world that does or doesn't fit its characters.
• A world that enhances the plot...and one that drags it down.
• A world that adds deep, meaningful conflict to a story, as well as one that couldn't drop a conflict rock and hit the floor.
• A world that adds complications...and one that doesn't.

No matter what you might have thought, worlds in fiction don't just lie around doing nothing. Done well, they're active participants in making your story work.

FINALLY, IN WEEK EIGHT:
You'll Discover Your Story and Theme

While you were writing, you may have considered Story and Theme. You may not have. Most writers, after all, give them only cursory attention.

But Story and Theme are what pull everything else together. They refine your target, illuminate the priorities in your promises, and spotlight every Scene, Plot, Conflict, Character and World issue your story has.

You're going to learn how to diagnose what you have:

• Broken and abandoned themes, and how they're broken
• Weak themes, and WHY they're weak
• Missing themes (oops!)
• And stories that hold together, as well as stories that don't...and WHY they're either cohesive or scattered.

By the end of eight weeks, you'll know how to Diagnose and Triage a novel. Now you're ready to learn how to cut.

I definitely need to know this. Sign me up.

Welcome to Major Novel Surgery

IN WEEK NINE,
You Will Discover How Manuscript Surgery Works

If you're thinking, "Ah, now we get to page one, line one, and we start editing," think again.

You're going to find out:

• Editing VS. Revision VS. The Complete Rewrite, WHY they're not the same, and when and WHY you use each.
  
  
• How to change "what is" to "what needs to be."
  
  
• And how to refine your revision needs and musts into usable form...what I call The Block Revision process.
  

IN WEEK TEN:
You'll tackle Story and Theme, Take Two

This is where you'll learn to take the broken, mangled, or even nonexistent story and theme you discovered back in Week Eight and turn them into something whole and good. Here's where you give yourself what you want, building it from pieces of what you currently have.

You will write:

• The theme you want.
• The story you need.
• And the plan you must have to create them.
  

IN WEEK ELEVEN:
You Will Commit to Your Keeper Characters

Earlier, you identified which characters were weak and which were strong, which were cast well and which had the wrong roles. But as you worked through later lessons and learned more about what your story could be, your ideas will have changed and improved.

This week, you will decide:

• Who stays, WHY they stay, and what they'll contribute.
• Who goes, WHY they go, and who gets the good stuff they leave behind.
• And exactly how each character who remains will connect with your ideal reader
  

IN WEEK TWELVE:
You Will Rework Your Plots and Subplots

Here's where you'll take every flawed scene and every misconceived plot and subplot...and you fix them.

You're going to learn (then put into action) the following:

• What to do about story length if you have more or less book than you need.
  
  
• How to NEVER Pad, and exactly what to do instead.
  
  
• How to rewrite your main plot to your target, from start to finish.
  
  
• How to add and seamlessly work in subplots, and when and why you want to do this.
  
  
• How to cleanly subtract subplots, and when and why you need to do this.
  
  
• How to turn NotPlots into subplots that matter.
  
  
• And how to cut fat, not meat, in a long book.
  

IN WEEK THIRTEEN:
You will Track and Complete All Your Conflicts

This is where you make sure you don't leave any threads hanging, but it's also where you make sure that every thread you're running belongs in the story and matters on several different levels.

You will:

• Fix the places where you committed action rather than conflict
  
  
• Build real, meaningful conflict in "ordinary people, ordinary world" stories
  
  
• Keep only the conflicts that improve your story---and you'll understand and be able to explain in clear, objective terms WHY the other conflicts don't make your cut.
  
  
• Track the impact in the parts that have to go, and fix any fallout.
  
  
• Raise your stakes for your characters and your story.
  
  
• Bring it all in to The End and the BIG Conflict Resolution.
  

Then in...

WEEK FOURTEEN:
You Will Work With SIMPLE Time

This week, you'll learn and master the basics of controlling the timeline of your story events.

You will:

• Set up your events timeline.
  
  
• Evaluate your use of story time and how it applies to and affects your plot and outcomes.
  
  
• Test alternate story and time orders to find improved conflict possibilities, and learn when and WHY you may want to alter the presentation order of story events.
  
  
• And adapt the time of your story events to create your most compelling direction for revision.
  

Next, in...

WEEK FIFTEEN:
You Will Work with COMPLEX Time

Complex time moves beyond the range of when events happen in the story, focusing instead on playing with the reader's comprehension of time out of story.

You will learn and put into practice the How, When, and WHY of:

• Foreshadowing, where it belongs, and where it doesn't.
  
  
• Backstory---when it helps, when it makes the story drag, and when it needs to go away completely...and how to make it work WHEN you use it.
  
  
• Flashbacks and Flashforwards, and revising through and around them.
  
  
• Past Lives, Alternate Realities, And Other Paranormal Time Treatments, and how to make sure your work...as well as how to know when they don't, and what to do with problems.
  
  
• And you'll make sure your book begins at the REAL beginning of the story.
  

Moving on, in...

WEEK SIXTEEN:
You'll Learn To Become Consistent

Ralph Waldo Emerson once said: "A foolish consistency is the hobgoblin of little minds, adored by little statesmen and philosophers and divines."

Beg pardon, but the dude did not write novels.

If you are inconsistent anywhere in your story, your readers will feed you to the lions and cheer while you scream.

So this week, you are going to skip the lions AND the screaming, and make your novel consistent in your development and presentation of:

• Characters---not just eye and hair color, but personality, direction, needs, wants, and importance.
  
  
• World---"If it's ten miles from here to Bobtown, how did your character walk there in eight minutes?"
  
  
• Description---Is she carrying a bag, a purse, or a backpack? Is he riding a horse or a pony? Is the carpet ruby-red or blood-red? (Only seen a few rubies, but I've seen a whole lotta blood, and they ain't the same color.)
  
  
• Voice---Not your characters' voices. Yours. You will design your prose to FIT the story you're telling, and to blend with your characters, your world and your descriptions to create one smooth, rich experience for your reader.
  

And then...

WEEK SEVENTEEN:
Hands ON! You'll Do Your Block Revision

All your work, effort, diagnosis, planning and rethinking culminates at last in the moment you've been waiting for.

• First you learn the pro techniques for Block Marking your manuscript.
  
  
• Then you go through a step-by-step walkthrough of the Rough Cut that utilizes all the preliminary work you've done in an orderly, sane fashion.
  
  
• And then you will take pen in hand, and...

You Will Cut Your Book.

Yes. Definitely going to need to know this. I'm ready to sign up.

Even if you've never made it through a revision before, you'll have every tool you need to make it through this one. AND get out the other end with a better book than you started with---one where all the stuff you love is still there, and all the stuff you hated now works.

And once you've finished your Rough Cut, you'll move on to the third stage of revision.

It's Finally Time To Learn
Cosmetic Surgery Revision

Consider...THIS is the place where almost every writer begins almost every revision. Can you see why things don't work out for them?

This is how writers can do five or ten or twenty revisions on their novels, or spend YEARS, not months, struggling with the details, and still end up with a books they hate!

Scary thought, isn't it? But nice to know theirs is a fate you can avoid.

But even when it's time to line-edit, not all line-editing is created equal.

And in...

WEEK EIGHTEEN:
You Will Learn Line Editing
With Style and Grace

This is where writers suddenly start obsessing about commas. Wrong focus. Commas do matter, but not as much as you think.

So you'll learn commas...but you'll also learn the much more important subjects:

• Style and Grace in writing: What it is and what it ain't.
  
  
• How to shape YOUR voice and weed out what doesn't sound like you.
  
  
• How do identify the difference between Writing Rich and Writing Self-Indulgent...and how to fix the latter.
  
  
• And how to use the professional novelist's techniques of line-editing (these are not the same as a professional editor's editing techniques).
  

Next, you'll move on to...

WEEK NINETEEN:
How To Improve Dialogue, Description, Action, and Flow

This week, you'll dig into:

• Revising Dialogue: Fixing talking heads, stage managing, trivial dialogue, inane chatter, and clumsiness.
  
  
• Revising Description: Killing infodumps, making description matter, improving your clarity, and eliminating clutter.
  
  
• Revising Action: Writing action conflict vs. FCS (Friggin' Chase Scenes), big action, small action, and action in stillness.
  
  
• And making it all flow like you wrote it that way the first time.
  

With that behind you, you'll get into...

WEEK TWENTY:
You'll Do Your Final Write-In With Scenes and Chapters

You're nearing the finish line, and doing your final handwritten changes.

This week, you will work your way through testing and strengthening:

• Your beginnings, to make sure every scene has a compelling open.
  
  
• Your endings, to make sure each one will make your reader NEED to read what comes next.
  
  
• Your transitions, to be sure that each one gets your story from logical plot point to logical plot point without including a lot of clutter.
  
  
• Your pacing, so that where you want speed and tension, you have it, and where you want the reader to catch his breath, he will.
  
  
• And finally, you will do one final run through the Step-By-Step Problem, to make sure you have eliminated it entirely.

And with that, your write-in is done.

Now all that remains for this revision is...

WEEK TWENTY-ONE:
You'll Do Your Type-In

This is the last step before you send out query letters to editors and agents. And it's a big step, with plenty of its own surprises still in store. (Simple typing rarely enters into the equation, actually.)

So what you'll learn this week is:

• How to prepare your manuscript and yourself for type-in.
  
  
• How to deal with spontaneous live revision, and how to know when it's a good idea, and when it's a bad one.
  
  
• Handling Type-In Problem #1---Fixing stuff you missed.
  
  
• Handling Type-In Problem #2---Missing stuff you fixed.
  
  
• And, of course, you'll DO the type-in.
  
  
• BONUS: Plus you'll learn how to pull your query letter from your revision materials. (No, it isn't technically a part of revision. But you have the book done, dammit. You might as well know how to send it out.)
  

And officially, that should be the whole course. But once you know how to do a revision well, your life will be better if you learn how to do "well" faster.

So in...

WEEK TWENTY-TWO:
You'll Learn How To Modify This Course Into A One-Pass Revision.

I don't spend twenty-one weeks revising an average novel.

I can revise a 100,000 word novel to publishable quality in about a month...and I only do ONE revision.

I still do EVERYTHING you've learned in this course. But I've learned over the years how to streamline the process.

So now that you have the skills, in this final lesson you'll learn:

• How to never revise a book the hard way again.
  
  
• How to carry what you learned about your writing from this revision into your next FIRST DRAFT.
  
  
• How to do the "Mental Checklist" on paper until it fits in your head.
  
  
• And how to use the course worksheets into your writing and revising future.
  

I had no idea there was so much involved. Sign me up.

So What Does This Course Include?

You'll get one written lesson in PDF format delivered to your classroom every week.

But you'll also receive worksheets, and demos in which I show you how to use the worksheets while I revise a first novel written by a new writer.

In these demos, I'll SHOW you what various mistakes look like on the page, because it's easier to see someone else's mistakes than your own.

Along with the lessons, worksheets, and demos, you'll have access to both topical lesson discussions and free-ranging student discussions in the HTRYN Writers' Bootcamp. (Our private, members-only community.)

And if you want, you can join a small private workgroup in which you'll be able to brainstorm your way through your revision with other students who are working their way through this same course, and facing all the same problems you are.

There are some other neat little extras, but I'll leave those for you to discover as you go through the course.

What If I Can't Revise That Fast?

Relax. You don't have to do a lesson a week. The course is entirely self-paced.

You can take as long as you'd like to finish each lesson---every lesson you pay for will be permanently available to you, even if you drop the course partway through.

And once you complete payment, you'll have permanent access to the course, ALL course updates, and the community. Stay as long as you like. I have a wonderful bunch of writers in Boot Camp.

So Who Shouldn't Buy This Course?

Expecting me to say it's for everyone? It isn't.

Don't take this course if:

• You haven't finished a novel yet. THIS IS THE BIGGEST REASON NOT TO GET THIS COURSE.
  
  How To Revise Your Novel starts on day one, minute one with you working with your completed manuscript. If you don't have a completed manuscript, you're looking for my How To Think Sideways course instead.
  
  
• You think that you can just read the lessons and your novel will magically revise itself. There's work involved in revision. A lot of it.
  
  
• You expect the novel you're revising to sell right away...or even at all. I absolutely guarantee that if you do the work, the novel you revise will be worlds better than it started out...but I can't guarantee that all of MY novels will interest publishers.
  
  Publishing is not a business that offers ANY guarantees.
  
  
• You're arguing, "It only took me thirty days to write the book! Why should I take five months to revise it?"
  
  If you've seen everything you need to know to do a publishable revision... and you're STILL thinking that, I can't help you.

I'm determined to finish the revision. Sign me up.

But If You're Serious About Writing,
I'll Make This Course Worth Your Time

And I'll guarantee that.

There may not be any guarantees in publishing, after all...

But I'm not publishing.

I just a writer who figured out how to beat the odds.

I'm where you want to be, doing what you want to do, making a living at it for eighteen years now---and I'm happy to show you how I got here, and what you have to do to get here, too.

So Here's My Guarantee

• Every single lesson of this course will be worth your time, will help you reach your writing goals, and will get you closer to writing the books you want to write, rather than the books you just end up with.
  
  
• You will have every resource you need to understand what's going on, and to understand what you need to do each step of the way.
  
  
• If at any point during the first four months of the course, you are dissatisfied with what you're learning, e-mail me and let me know you want to quit, and tell me you want a refund on your last lesson. If you had more lessons due that month, I'll include a pro rata refund for the lessons you didn't receive that month as well.
  
  (Don't worry. Every student has direct e-mail access to me. No intermediaries. No run-around.)
  
  
• I'll give you your lesson refund, no questions asked, and cancel your course immediately so you won't be charged again.
  
  
• You'll have one full week to decide on any lesson you receive, right up to the day and time your next lesson appears in your classroom.
  
  
• If you start the fifth month, we both agree that you have committed to the course, and that you will not ask for or be entitled to any refunds beyond that point.
  
  

So How Much Does All This Cost?

Universities charge thousands of dollars for MFAs---but I have students who have MFAs. I teach what universities don't. (I also have students who have published novels, and who are professional journalists, and professional screenwriters, and have all sort of other writing-related jobs).

This isn't a rehash of everything you've already read about revision.

This is MY process. I figured it out on my own, over years of trial and error---this is the system I've used to revise 32 of my novels (and counting) to the point that they sold to major US publishers, as well as other publishers around the world, to be translated into a multitude of languages.

By the way, I don't have an MFA, or any other writing degree. And you don't need one, either.

You also don't need thousands of dollars.

You just need $49.95 a month for five months. That breaks down to $11.35 a lesson.

You're kidding. That's an incredible price. I'm in.

This Course Will Give You
The Tools You Need To Make
Every Novel You Write Better

So now you simply have to decide.

Do you want to be like that cosmetic surgeon who's trying to save a dying guy by doing a nose job?

Or are you going to take on the challenge of becoming the writer who KNOWS HOW TO REVISE?

You Can Successfully Revise
Your Novel
I Guarantee It

You can be like all those writers out there floundering around on their dozenth revision.

Or you can learn to do it once, and learn to do it right. Be the skilled ER trauma doc for your novel.

You can do this.

Holly Lisle

P.S. The course sells as a five-month subscription for $49.95/mon. and I guarantee your satisfaction. You'll be able to quit at any time. If you quit at any time before the end of the fourth month, I'll refund you for the lesson that made you decide to quit, plus the pro rata remainder for any lessons for the month that you have not yet received.

You CAN create the book you want from the book you have. Start today.