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"You race across the desert drinking beer and singing on the top of your lungs so you don’t have to think about the very gross thing you just did. (But you had to do it. What else could you have done?) You blare country western music until you realize it isn’t country, it’s Christian radio and you pound the dashboard until the radio shuts off. Then the silence rushes in and you realize you’re out of beer."

How did we end up here? In Heather McElhatton's choose-your-own adventure book for adults, Pretty Little Mistakes you can make all sorts of terrible decisions and watch your life spiral out of control from the safety of your living room.

McElhatton is our special guest this week, and today she delivers some unconventional revision advice. Test drive her novel here, and then read her advice for developing the lives of your own characters. 

Welcome to my deceptively simple feature, Five Easy Questions. In the spirit of Jack Nicholson's mad piano player, I run a weekly set of quality interviews with writing pioneers—delivering some practical, unexpected advice about web writing. 

Jason Boog:

On your website, you discuss how you outlined the book on a chunk of linoleum and filled 30+ notebooks with text. In the most practical, hands-on sense, how did you revise and outline your sprawling manuscript once this creative burst was finished? Any advice for a first-time writer trying to revise a first draft?

Heather McElhatton:
I took the sprawl and made a numerical skeleton that I then followed. Continue reading...

I know it seems complicated, but it isn't, or maybe it's that I have dyslexia and synesthesia and I'm so backwards that I'm set right again.
 
For a first time writer revising their book, I'd say you have to get away from the book. You have to "see it" differently, from new angles, to see if it works right. I can't do this on the computer, I need it printed out.

Then I throw it on the floor, I pin it on the wall. I take it to another city. I rearrange the chapters and slash things I don't like with a big mean red pen.
 
My best advice is to get into a hot bath with all the chapters of your book printed on paper and float them around in the water. (Test to make sure ink is waterproof first.) Pull up what you want to read and then pull up what you want to read next. Now you know what the good stuff is and what order you really want it in. This works very  well for me.

Click here to read the whole Heather McElhatton interview.

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