CHRISTMAS ADVENT SPECTACULAR #12: 5 to 1 by Holly Bodger - GUEST POST + GIVEAWAY

5 to 1 by Holly Bodger 

GENRE: YA Dystopian

GOODREADS ~ AMAZON ~ AUTHOR ~ TWITTER

In the year 2054, after decades of gender selection, India now has a ratio of five boys for every girl, making women an incredibly valuable commodity. Tired of marrying off their daughters to the highest bidder and determined to finally make marriage fair, the women who form the country of Koyanagar have instituted a series of tests so that every boy has the chance to win a wife.Sudasa doesn’t want to be a wife, and Contestant Five, a boy forced to compete in the test to become her husband, has other plans as well. Sudasa’s family wants nothing more than for their daughter to do the right thing and pick a husband who will keep her comfortable—and caged. Five’s family wants him to escape by failing the tests. As the tests advance, Sudasa and Five thwart each other at every turn until they slowly realize that they just might want the same thing. 

HOLLY BODGER GUEST POST

Revi-mo?

Many people spent November participating in Nanowrimo—the challenge to write a 50,000 word book in a month. Although I did not participate this year, I have participated in past years, and if there is one thing I’ve learned from doing so it is that all writers wake up on the first of December with the same daunting task weighing them down: revisions.

No book is a masterpiece on first draft. Most take many rounds of revisions. Some writers like to do a few rounds of revisions, tackling all issues at once. I personally can only revise for one thing at a time so I do dozens and dozens of rounds. There is no right or wrong way. You have to do what works best for you.

If I can give one piece of advice to writers who participated in Nanowrimo (or who have recently finished a draft of a book) it is this: spend the next month or two tackling your macro revisions. Macro revisions are the big painful changes that may require moving or deleting entire scenes. You want to get them done before the micro, otherwise you might spend hours perfecting a paragraph only to delete it later.

When tackling revisions for my novels, I use a checklist for both the macro and micro. The macro section looks like this:

Macro Revisions
□	PLOTTING: Create cards for each scene in the novel noting length, occurrence, and purpose of scene. Organize chronologically on corkboard (separating by character for multiple POV). Check placement against Snyder’s beats. Are any scenes in the wrong place (for example, things going wrong before midpoint or things going right after)? Can any scenes be merged to serve two purposes? Can any be removed without affecting plot?
□	PACING: Check length and pacing of scenes. Pace and conflict should increase until Finale.
□	TURNING POINTS: Mark turning points on scene cards. Check that these are spaced out and do not all come at Black Moment. Check that turns in character arc are bigger as story progresses.

As you can see, I like to use Blake Snyder’s beats as a sort of “sanity check” on my major plot points. There are many other methodologies like Snyder’s; his is simply the one I prefer. Whichever you choose to use, I think you’ll find that creating scene cards will an invaluable use of your time. Scene cards help you look at the big picture items that you cannot easily see when you are staring at a single page. Plus, the great thing is that, after you have created your scene cards, you can use them for any future revisions you might need to do after you receive feedback from readers/agents/editors. You won’t regret it. Trust me!

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