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If you have a draft of your novel and know it can be improved, but just don't know where to start, this article is for you. The revising process can be the toughest part of writing a novel, so I want to give some tactical direction on how you can revisit your manuscript with fresh eyes.

I'm going to walk through five things you can almost always improve in your manuscript, especially if you are working on an early draft. Learning how to improve your novel writing will only strengthen your storytelling skills for this book and future ones!

1. Properly Introduce Characters

The first tip for improving your novel is ensuring that every character has a proper introduction. It can be quite disorienting to a reader if a character name is thrown into a scene out of left field. Instead of focusing on the action of the scene, the reader then wonders who that character is and how they are related to the other characters. They might flip back through the pages to see if they were introduced earlier, completely taking them out of the flow of the plot.

Any time you introduce a character for the first time, make sure you call proper attention to them. Signal their relationship to the other main characters and any of their distinguishing traits so the character sticks in the reader's head.

Another tip I have is to only name characters that are actually going to become significant in the story. If a character is just popping in, such as if they're a waiter at a restaurant, you don't have to include their name. If you do, the reader will take note and assume the waiter has some sort of plot significance.

So try to write character introduction scenes in such a way that you're not giving any extraneous names, because any time a reader sees a name they're going to log it in their memory, and introducing people who just appear for one quick second is going to muddle that.

2. Clarify the Passage of Time

The next tip is to clarify the passage of time between scenes. I recommend physically going back through your manuscript to see where you end a scene or chapter and where you start the next one.

Sometimes there is a scene transition that you, as the author, understand. However, the jump in time is unclear to the reader. They can’t immediately tell if it’s been just a couple hours, a week, or months from one scene to the next.

The reader needs to be able to bridge those temporal gaps so the narrative feels smooth and continuous to read, so add some kind of transitory language to help. It could be something as simple as “The next day…” Language like this will trigger to the reader how much time has passed.

If a significant amount of time has passed, then you want to catch the reader up on what the character has been doing since we last saw them. That will make it clear there has been a lag in time.

Another tip: if you have clearly delineated chapters, add a date or a year marker underneath. For instance, it could look something like “Chapter 1: 2020” and “Chapter 2: 1821” That will automatically signal to the reader the passage of time. However, if you use that tactic, I still recommend embedding the passage of time in the narrative itself, just to ensure the narrative aligns with what is being designated at the chapter marker.

3. Reconsider Outlier Passages

The next simple way to improve your novel writing is to revisit any outlier passages. Do you have a single passage or chapter that takes place much further in the future or much further in the past than the present narrative? Or do you have a chapter from a different character's perspective that doesn't appear anywhere else?

These are considered outliers because they do not match what we are following in the rest of the narrative. They are not in the time frame the main narrative is in or they're not following the main characters we follow in the rest of the story.

These outlier passages are often used if you are trying to convey some kind of information that the main characters, for some reason, cannot obtain on their own. Maybe they're not aware of something that happened in the past and so you want to quickly show it before getting back to their narrative, or you know they're not aware of what another character is thinking and so you want to show that character's perspective quickly.

This doesn't mean you necessarily need to omit these outlier passages. I say “revisit” because sometimes these outliers can be effective. I still challenge you to see if there is another way to convey the information they contain within the main storyline, such as through a prologue or epilogue. You could also utilize a flashback scene or an extended moment of dialogue that illustrates this information. However, sometimes having an outlier passage is the only way for you to get that information across.

In general, I would recommend looking through your novel to see if you have any outlier chapters or passages and decide if it needs to stick out or if it could be integrated. Remember, your reader is definitely going to pick up on that outlier passage, so it has to be purposeful.

4. Remember the Setting

When learning how to improve your novel writing, another tip is to remember the setting. Every novel has a setting, whether it's a real place or a fictionalized world you have created. It's important that you don't establish the setting just in the very beginning of the story and then forget to reference it in the middle and the end. It should be an integral part of the reader's experience and we should be reminded of the setting throughout all the parts of the narrative.

Sometimes, when you get into the action of the plot and character conflicts, it can be easy to forget about setting. But, ideally your novel should not feel like it could take place in any time period and location. The story and the characters should feel rooted in the place that you established at the beginning, because the setting is integral to how we visualize the story.

As the reader reads, they are trying to picture the scene unfolding in front of them like actors in a theater acting out a play. So try to weave in some subtle references to the setting. Of course, you also don't want to overdo it. Excessively long passages about scene description are also distracting to the reader, and they will likely skim over them. But, weaving in references to the setting here and there will give the reader a full picture of your story.

This is going to enrich your story, especially if you have a distinctive setting like New York City or a fantastical, fictional country. You want the reader to experience the feelings, sights, and sounds of that place, so remember not to neglect your setting and make sure it is integrated throughout all the parts of your story.

5. Keep Point of View Consistent

My final tip for improving your novel is to maintain a consistent point of view. I very strongly recommend choosing either first person, omniscient third person, or close third person and sticking with one of those three points of view for the entirety of your novel.

That does not mean you can't have multiple characters’ perspectives within one of those points of views. You definitely can have multiple first-person narrators, an omniscient narrator that goes between different characters, or even a close third-person narrator that follows different characters.

However, I wouldn't recommend mixing first person with third person. Switching perspectives can be disorienting to the reader. In some stories it does work, but I would say those are exceptions. A much more streamlined and smooth reading experience is created when you stick to one point of view consistently.

The area where this is the most tricky is to distinguish between omniscient third person narration and close third person narration. I often see writers weaving in and out of close and omniscient third person narration.

Omniscient third person narration is when the narrator is able to see everything at all times. Think of them as having a bird's eye view into the scene. They know everything that is going on at any given moment with any of the characters.

Close third person means your narrator only has access to one character's experience at any time, so it's similar to a first person narrative in that you're only following that one character. However, you're not using “I” statements. There is a separate narrator that has access to the protagonist’s inner thoughts and feelings and are limited to what they see and where they are. When using close third person, the narrator should not move around the other characters’ thoughts, actions, and perspectives.

So, try to watch for situations where you might be accidentally migrating between using close third person and omniscient third person.

There are also instances where you are not being consistent with your close third person. Maybe within one chapter you get into the head of one character and then you also get into the head of another character. To resolve the inconsistency, I recommend breaking the section up into different passages, with one passage focused on one character's point of view and another passage focused on the other’s point of view.

You want to keep your points of view clean and streamlined and consistent because you want the reader to feel as grounded as possible. Point of view is a quick and easy way to give them that consistency.

I hope these tips help you on your quest to learn how to improve your novel writing! The goal of editing your first draft is to make your book better, stronger, and more engaging, so try to approach it with that positive outcome in mind.

Thanks so much for reading and happy writing!