The Stoplight Method for Revision, Part II: Yellow Light Issues
Photo by Joe Roberts on Unsplash
Last week I gave an overview of the Stoplight method for revision, focusing on the Red Light issues: the major issues you need to deal with before anything else. This is by far the hardest part of revision, since it involves looking at things like character arc and structure.
Once you’ve completed those revisions, it’s time to move on to Yellow Light issues. These are the issues of medium complexity that are still important – and there may be a lot of them. For these, you really need to go line-by-line, scene-by-scene, to make sure of the following:
The narrative pacing is strong – the reader is drawn from page to page
You have a clear point for each scene
You nail down subtext through dialogue and action
The character’s emotions and reactions are clear on the page
The point of view is consistent, with no head-hopping
Any info dumps have been integrated into scenes effectively
All scenes, and everything in those scenes, moves the story forward in some way, with strong inner and/or outer stakes
The dialogue shows character and subtext, and raises the tension or deepens relationships
Do any final research needed for telling details (those details that really bring the story to life)
Your worldbuilding or magical systems are clear and consistent over the novel
Details of setting, character description, history, etc. are consistent and add depth, foreshadowing, or highlight a motif or theme where possible (don’t force it, but be aware of possibilities)
The challenge is that many of these things are very subtle, and difficult to see for yourself as the author. You may think it’s clear on the page. You may want it to be clear so badly that your eyes and mind gloss right over any issues. It’s easy when you know the story backwards and forwards.
This is where another reader really comes in handy. A writing group, beta reader, book coach... someone who has a good eye and can articulate the issues they see. They shouldn’t tell you exactly how they think you should fix them; although they may give suggestions, it’s still your story.
I haven’t touched on Sensitivity Readers yet, but this is also a place where, if you have a character from a particular community and you are concerned about representing that community accurately but are not part of that group, you may want one. Hopefully you are aware enough that no Red Light issues will arise from this type of read.
Here are a few databases of Sensitivity Readers you may want to check out. Note that Sensitivity Reading can cover a variety of topics, from race, to gender, mental/physical illness and disability, culture, religion, immigration status, military service, social class, neurodivergence, etc.:
Quiethouse Editing (has Junior Beta readers too)
(I have not personally used any of the above services, so inclusion on this list does not constitute endorsement.)
How to go about flagging Yellow Light issues? You might have noted some as you went through the Red Light process. You may even have new Yellow Light issues from new scenes developed during Red Light editing. You can do this type of editing one of three ways:
Go back to the beginning, and identify and fix the issues in each scene as you go
Go back to the beginning, and fix one issue at a time, then repeat as often as needed
Try a combination of the above, choosing one area you’ve noticed as a problem throughout the manuscript and taking care of all instances first; then going back and reviewing the whole scene-by-scene.
Once again, this is a process. I urge you not to have any arbitrary deadlines for this, as in “I’ll review 10 pages per day.” Sometimes you’ll breeze through ten pages with few issues, but other days you’ll spend all your time on one or two pages. That’s okay! It takes the time it takes. This is where the magic happens, where you bring out all the really good, juicy stuff that makes your novel sing.
(Yes, even if it makes you sigh, grind your teeth, or bang your head against the table.)
The good news is, you’re almost there! Next week, we’ll discuss Green Light issues, and how to figure out what type of editor you may want at each stage of the process.
