The Two Scenes in Your Novel That Will Need the Most Rewriting

23 Jul 2018 | Fiction

Novels are tricky. There’s so much to juggle that no-one gets it quite right the first time round … and most authors end up doing wholesale rewrites, rather than just making a few editorial tweaks.

I’ve come to accept that rewriting is just part of the process of creating a novel. Each time I start work on a new book, I want to be a more efficient writer – and while I have found some things easier, I still end up doing a lot of rewriting and reworking.

Maybe it’s the same way for you.

Whether you’re working on your first draft of your first novel, or you’ve completed a bunch of novels already, there are two scenes that you’re likely to spend a lot of time rewriting:

  • The opening of your novel
  • The climax of your novel

However hard you worked in the first draft, and however much you planned, these are just really difficult scenes to pull off well.

But the good news is – even if your first draft doesn’t quite hang together in these key areas, rewrites can fix anything!

Why Your Opening Scene (Probably) Needs Rewriting

The first scene of your novel needs to do a lot of heavy lifting. It has to get the story going – no mean feat! – and it has to establish your main character(s). At the same time, it needs to set the tone for what’s to come and it has to “hook” your reader.

Plus, unless you draft your book patchwork-quilt style, working on scenes here and there and stitching them all together at the end, the opening scene is probably the very first thing you wrote when you began your first draft. Chances are, your ideas have shifted a bit (or a lot!) since then.

The first scene of my novel Lycopolis went through about a dozen rewrites. I had several completely different versions of that scene – in the very first draft, for instance, I went with an omniscient perspective dipping in and out of all my different characters’ viewpoints. It soon became clear that this wasn’t going to mesh well with the limited close third-person perspective I ended up using for the rest of the novel.

If the current draft of your opening scene isn’t quite working, you might want to ask yourself:

  • Have I started this novel at the right moment? Would it be better to skip the preamble and jump straight into the action? Or, conversely, do you need to backtrack and start a little earlier?
  • Does this scene introduce my main character(s)? If not, is there a good reason – or would it be better to start with them?
  • Is there a “hook” in this scene … something that would capture readers’ interest and keep them turning the pages? It doesn’t need to be something huge and dramatic, unless your genre requires that.
  • Does this scene fit well with the rest of my novel? You could write a brilliant first three pages for a competition or a literary agent … but if they seem to belong to a different book altogether, they’re not going to get you far!
  • Does this scene get bogged down in describing your character(s)? Introducing your characters to the reader doesn’t mean detailing every aspect of their appearance. Too much description can stall your novel before it even gets going.

Why the Climax of Your Novel (Probably) Needs Rewriting

The climax of the novel is the high point of tension/action where everything comes together. Your protagonist, after the greatest trial yet, finally wins what they were after all along. (Or, in a less happier novel, your protagonist finally fails irrevocably.)

The climax, like the opening, needs to do a huge amount of work. It has to pull together lots of different threads from your novel, and potentially quite a few different characters. In many novels, your hero has to face what seem like insurmountable odds … and s/he needs to triumph regardless. But that triumph must be earned, and convincing.

Invariably, I find that the first time I draft this scene in my novels, it falls a little flat. The action isn’t dramatic enough. The very real possibility of danger isn’t potent enough. The characters don’t struggle enough. With each rewrite, the climax involves more tension, danger and drama.

Occasionally, after the first draft, I find I’ve changed my mind about how it should all end. This happened with my second novel, Oblivion, which took a long time (my kids were both born along the way!) and where I realised that I wanted the novel to end quite differently from how I’d originally planned.

If the climax of your novel isn’t quite coming together, you might want to ask yourself:

  • Is my protagonist struggling (and even suffering) as much as they should here? How could I make this harder for them?
  • What price does my protagonist pay for success? If they haven’t already sacrificed something to get to this point, maybe that should happen during the climax.
  • Have I tied up various loose ends from the novel? (It might well be fine to address some of these after the climax, in the final pages of the novel – but be careful it doesn’t end up dragging on too long.)
  • Does the victory come because of the protagonist’s actions? Does it fit with their character arc throughout the novel? If someone else steps in to save the day, or if the protagonist wins through a stroke of luck or an act of God, the climax might feel unsatisfying to your readers.

If you find yourself rewriting your opening scene and the climax of your novel multiple times, don’t be surprised or dismayed – it’s perfectly normal to end up reworking these a lot. Other scenes in your novel might need much less attention, because they’re neither so complex nor so crucial to your novel’s structure.

With my own novels, I’ve definitely had times when I felt like I would never get these scenes finished to my satisfaction. Eventually I did! If you’re at that stage right now, hang on in there – take a break or get someone else’s input if you can, and then get back to the rewrites. Good luck!


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About

I’m Ali Luke, and I live in Leeds in the UK with my husband and two children.

Aliventures is where I help you master the art, craft and business of writing.

My Novels

My contemporary fantasy trilogy is available from Amazon. The books follow on from one another, so read Lycopolis first.

You can buy them all from Amazon, or read them FREE in Kindle Unlimited.

9 Comments

  1. Claire

    You’re right, it’s very tricky to write the first part of the novel first. But in a way it’s freeing to know that it can all be rewritten and sorted out later – so long as there is something there to start things off. Otherwise I think I would agonise over it far too much. So many different ways to begin – how to choose, that sort of thing. But later on it becomes clearer. At least, I hope it will…
    Claire’s last blog post ..Hello world!

    • Ali

      Yep, I always find the idea of rewrites very reassuring. (I sometimes regret feeling that way when I actually get to the rewrites and have to fix all the plot holes / dodgy bits / very dialogue-heavy scenes that I put into the first draft.)

      And it does all become clearer eventually … even if it takes a bit of work to get there!

  2. Ingmar Albizu

    Another insightful post about all the stuff I mess up when writing.
    Thank God for rewriting and multiple draft revisions.
    Story openings are hard but paying attention to them will help grab readers.
    Love the questions to ask ourselves whenever the climax is not working.
    Thanks for posting this.
    Ingmar Albizu’s last blog post ..Are Comic Books Dying?

    • Ali

      Thanks Ingmar! I think most of my fiction writing is a process of messing up and gradually fixing it as I edit… 😉

  3. Minerva

    Wow! Thank you Ms. Ali for making me realized that I’m not the only one suffering in this. Well, I’ve read before that some writers tend to rewrite their first few chapters several times. And now, I found out that it’s so true to you too. But it’s my first time to know that the climax is just like that as well. So that’s why I’m having a hard time right now with my climax! It’s always changing! But since I’m still at Chapter 7, I think it’s fair to say that I’ll know what to do when I get there. Your post is such a great help. I already know what to do when I get to the climax. And if I forgot, I’ll just simply revisit this post.
    Wonderful post! 2 thumbs up!

    • Ali

      Thanks Minerva! Hope the rest of your chapters go well … and best of luck for the climax once you get there. 🙂

  4. Colonialist

    With the way I write rewrites are a major problem. My stories ‘happen’ after the first words. Then they often end by surprising me. I smile when I receive praise for how meticulously plotted they are! Perhaps the difference is that I vividly picture each scene as it happens, but not before, and these become the ‘memories’ on which the rest is built. I believe a number of writers do this rather than undertaking all the planning beforehand or (like Rowling) having the completed story in their heads before they even begin.
    Colonialist’s last blog post ..Needing Heads Examined.

    • Ali

      It sounds like your process works well for you! I’ve never been able to plan out a whole novel in detail (though I know some authors do) — while it probably would make for less rewriting for me, I feel that I discover a lot of the story while drafting it.

  5. Puspack India

    The climax of any story or novel has the importance. The novel me hit on the floor due to the exciting novel

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