"Should I rewrite this book...or trash it?"

It's not actually about whether the story is salvageable.

Awhile back, I put out a newsletter about rewriting and how it wasn’t actually all that scary. A reader named Nichole reached out with an interesting message:

I am definitely struggling after a realization that a side character is actually my main character (they change the most, definitely influence the plot the most, readers like them the most/root for them, they are most effected etc)leading to a major rewrite being necessary. It’s fine and doable but can be discouraging at times.

I guess a question I have is how to know when to rewrite or move on to a new book.

So this is a journey I have gone on several times. My novel Olive and the Backstage Ghost took me seven years to get published - but it would have been more like two if I’d heeded my agent’s advice to stop revising it and actually rewrite it.

The short answer to the question “how do you know when to rewrite or move on to a new book?” is: listen to your gut.

But I also know that when you’re first starting out, you might not have that writer gut quite developed yet. And it’s easy—no matter how much experience you have—to confuse “my writer gut is telling me this book isn’t working” with “my writer brain is tired of working on this so it’s tricking me into thinking it sucks so I’ll quit.” 

It is completely normal to question everything about your book when you’re in the middle of drafting it. I’ve never met an author who said the entire process of writing a novel, from conceptualizing to drafting to revising, was nothing less than a joyful, doubt-free experience. 

But Nichole pointed out something very specific: that halfway through her draft, her side character is starting to seem more interesting and even hero-worthy than her main character. This has happened to me. It’s happened to a lot of writers I know. I bet it’s happened to you!

And it’s entirely possible that you’re right, and the best thing to do for your story is to rewrite it from the POV of this character. And please, don’t be discouraged—actually, I think that’s really encouraging! I mean, you figured it out before you finished a draft. You’ve done all this work with the plot, the world-building, and that’s still valid. Yes, some of it might change, but writing this new draft is still going to go a lot faster—not just because you’ve done so much story development already, but because now you’re telling it from the right POV. 

If you’re reading this and you’re having similar doubts about the novel you’re currently working on, here’s what I want you to do. Open a new document or get a pen and piece of paper, and answer the following questions as honestly and thoroughly as possible. 

• What excites you most about your protagonist?

• What are your biggest concerns about your protagonist?

• What excites you most about your plot?

• What are your biggest concerns about your plot?

• What excites you most about your world-building?

• What are your biggest concerns about your world-building?

When you’re mid-project, I think very often what seems like a giant problem, or even multiple problems, is actually a pretty manageable issue. And when you look at your character arcs, your plot, and your world-building individually, things don’t seem so dire.

For example, let’s say your biggest concern is that your plot seems to drag at the halfway point. But you don’t have any big concerns about your world or your protagonist, and you’re excited about the twists you have planned for the ending. When you’re trying to write through that muddy middle and the frustration is building, that’s when your writer brain starts throwing out snide comments with every sentence you write. This main character is a bore. This magic system is nonsense. This entire book is garbage. But no! Your only real problem is you need a little bit more structure to your second act. And the great news is that this is a very common problem, and one you can solve in revisions. No rewriting. No abandoning this book and moving on. Just keep going. 

Now, let’s take Nichole’s example and say there are no world-building or plot concerns, but some serious protagonist doubts. Your hero isn’t really having a hero’s journey...but this side character over here is. In fact, you get the most excited when you’re writing scenes with this character. You think about this character a lot. They’re kinda stealing the show. When you think about what this book might look like with this character in the spotlight, you get goosebumps. Your gut says YES. But then your writer brain jumps in and says, ohhh my god, but that would change the whole plot. I’d have to start ALL OVER. 

First of all, you wouldn’t be starting over. Yes, technically you’d have to rewrite the book—but like I said before, the words you’ve written so far, whether it’s five thousand or twenty thousand or fifty thousand, they are not suddenly useless. I wrote and revised three drafts of Olive and the Backstage Ghost over the course of two years because I couldn’t bear the thought of all that work going to waste. When I finally took my agent’s advice and rewrote it, I had a new draft in eight weeks—and a deal with Random House Kids. Some books, many books, just take a few drafts before you get it right. 

Last example. Let’s say you write down some issues your plot, your world, and/or your protagonist. Maybe they’re big, maybe they’re fixable. But your answers to the what excites you questions that’s the problem. Because you’re not excited. You don’t feel the same way about your protagonist as you used to. The twists and turns of your plot just seem boring. But! Your world. You still love that world.

If you find yourself really excited about one element of your story but you’re feeling pretty blah about everything else...that, to me, points to moving on. Finding a new cast of characters with a new plot that’s right for this world that you created. And that was just one example—maybe the only thing you love is your plot, and your characters and world are meh. Hey, maybe that plot would work great in another genre! Maybe you were trying to force yourself to write urban fantasy, but your plot would make a great mystery thriller!

The point of those six questions is not just to figure out how big your story’s problems actually are, but to figure out what the spark of this story is for you. Find that spark. Find what gets you excited, what gets your imagination going. That might mean falling in love with your story all over again and just getting through that first draft. It might mean accepting that you need to rewrite it but embracing that because this new point of entry is going to be so good. Or it might mean thanking this half-finished story for how it’s helped you grow as an author, putting it away, and getting to work on that scary but exciting brand new idea.

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And now, an announcement!

The posts I publish here will remain free. But I’m launching a new series called Ask the Editor, which will publish every Friday. The short pitch: Dear Abby for writers.

The longer pitch: paid subscribers ($5/month or $50/year, cancel anytime) will receive a link to a form where they can submit pretty much anything within a two page limit. Things like…

• Queries

• Synopses

• Pages from their novel

• Questions about writing or traditional publishing

• A current problem or situation in their writing journey (ie: trying to decide if an agent is a schmagent, disagreeing with beta feedback, etc)

• A rant about this whole “trying to get published” endeavor to a sympathetic ear

Every Friday, I’ll respond to/critique as many submissions as I can and publish them together in one post. Because they’ll be behind a paywall, there’s some privacy—your query, pages, or rant about that one really horrible rejection won’t be online for editors to discover when they Google you.

That’s it! I hope to see you over there. :)

Michelle