A Writer Afoot

Writing conference possiblities to consider 2008

For the past few days, I've been hammering out the details of my travels this year.   I'll be teaching at The Santa Barbara Writer's Conference again in June, and Australia in August, and San Diego in October.   I'm also going to play in New Zealand with CR's brother & family, and in NYC with my boy who is (seriously, I'm so not as old as this makes me sound) graduating from law school.   

I promised to post great conference links for you and never got to it, but here are some to think about for this year.  It's not cheap to attend conferences, but once in awhile, it's worth it to splurge.

First up, the Magazine Conference in Boulder, which I attended last fall and enjoyed very much.  This is the least expensive of the lot, and they're going to offer several focused versions this year, from travel writing to the nuts and bolts of magazines.  At $350 and in the stunningly beautiful city of Boulder, it's hard to go wrong with this. 

I love the Santa Barbara Writer's Conference, June 21-26 this year.  I'll be teaching a lot of voice and creativity along with the usual Iowa-style readings that feature so prominently at this conference.  This one is pricier, but it is set right on the beach in a stunning hotel, and Ray Bradbury will be speaking Saturday night.  Enormous variety in faculty and speakers.

The Women's Fiction Festival in Matera, Italy.  One of the most delightful experiences I've had.  The conference is intriguing, the parties delightful (Romeo and Juliet's balcony scene acted out on the square while we drank wine in the soft evening breeze), and the company varied and intriguing.  You will never be sorry you went to this one.  But yes, the price tag is...a teeny bit painful.

And of course, there is the big Romance Writers of America bash in San Francisco this year.  I'm quite torn over whether to attend this year, and doubt very much I can squeeze it in, but I am mourning the possibilities (French Laundry!  Chez Panisse!).  This is one of the most complete, most intense, most vivid writing conference experiences out there, so if you have never attended, even if you are not strictly a romance writer, I guarantee you will learn a lot. 

There are hundreds of others, of course.  I've heard the Surrey Conference is a treat.  There are some retreats in Barcelona I wouldn't mind attending someday, and really, I just think I must find one in Ireland one of these days.  I could visit my friends Tom and Emer and explore Ireland for real.   

What are some of the conferences you know about that we should consider? What's the best conference you've ever attended and why?

Practical writing tips

The holiday crush is beginning (or might be in full force for some).   Some ideas to keep you on track with writing goals through the crazy season:

1. Get your pages in early.  Do it before you check email.  Before you watch the morning news. Before anything, if you can.  Try it for a week, and you'll be amazed, I promise.

2. Limit email and Internet access.  I've been reading The Four Hour Work Week, and he's narrowed email to Monday mornings.  Since a good portion of my email is social outlet and relaxing, this wouldn't be realistic or even appealing to me, but I am making changes.  For quite some time, I've made myself do my pages before I let the world in, as Ray Bradbury says.  No email at all until I'm finished for the morning.  I notice when I travel that brief checks of email every few days is enough to keep up.  That's illuminating because I check a LOT more than that at home.  Like four or five times a day.  It's easy, right? Why not?

Because I'm using it to waste a lot of time.   I'm sure you have more discipline than I do, so you don't need to cut back, but I'm thowing it out there for what it's worth.  I'm checking only twice a day for one week, to see how it feels.  What I notice: I check and READ a lot, but responding takes a lot of time, so I end up only reading, filing emails into various files to be answered, then feeling guilty about how much I'm neglecting my correspondence, even with people I genuinely like and want to talk to.   

I'd like to get back to email-as-tool, rather than email-as-time-sucking-monster.

3. Set goals and reward yourself for meeting them.   Whether the goal is one page or ten pages per day, when you actually meet that goal each day, REWARD yourself.   Set aside some half-hour episodes of television you like to watch and use those.  Give yourself some time to read entirely for pleasure.  Have a truffle or a glass of wine.  (If you can keep it to one or two--otherwise, then you're on another goals-reward loop, right? )

4.  One of my favorite tools:  erasable whiteboards and calendars to mark your progress.  I use markers in many colors, as I've posted before, and recently, I found I love the reward jolt in seeing rows of post its in bright colors and shapes, like orange stars and neon green circles.

I had to start over on my hundred days, by the way, since I let outside events get in the way of writing 1000 words per day, every day (as per Carolyn See).   

Which is also a good lesson.  If at first you don't succeed, try 100 more times.

Anyone else have a good writing tip for this very busy time?   

Digging through the basket of scene and detail

I am not a natural synopsis writer.  That's just not how my process works--laying out the bones and then working from there to add muscle and flesh and clothing.    It always seems to me that the girls in the basement collect a basket of intriguing bits and pieces and leave it to me to sort out.  What is this telescope doing in here?  And what about this article on dahlias?  And what are all these pine needles for?

The Ways of Publishing, however, require me to write a synopsis.  I am capable, of course.  One doesn't write more than 30 books of commercial fiction without figuring out how to write a synopsis.   I just don't particularly like it and it made me grumpy yesterday.   There are way too many pages, too many loose ends, and I'm not sure what goes where yet---

And then I remembered that my agent and editor know me.  Some writers put together a fantastically beautiful and polished snapshot of the book they're going to write.  I hand over a very rough sketch, with blurry faces in the corners and some swirling action and a few strong, bold lines.  The book is the thing.

Back to the mines.....

Layering in Lusciousness Worksheet

As promised, here is the worksheet from the 5 Senses workshop

TRAINING YOURSELF TO WRITE A RICHER BOOK, EVERY TIME

Layering in Lusciousness by Barbara Samuel

1. Take time to do things that feed your senses, all of them. Go to beautiful gardens and museums, fabric stores and restaurants. Smell roses, perfumes, other people.

2. Make a habit of eavesdropping and buy sunglasses so you can stare more easily.

3. Carry a notebook and make sketches of things. They don’t have to be skilled or even competent, they’ll just help remind you to really SEE things. A good second is to use your cell phone camera, a LOT. If you see something that jolts your senses, take a picture of it. 

4. Travel. Wherever you can. Go to new neighborhoods. Go to faraway places. Pay attention to your surroundings, but also pay attention to how you feel exploring them. Are you excited, standoffish, worried about looking foolish or intruding where you should not go? 

5. Find music you love and play it often. Go to concerts or out to listen to music in whatever venue you can enjoy. Go to the symphony. Go to plays. Watch movies.

6. Develop hobbies that excite your senses. Visual people might enjoy things like making stained glass or quilts or learning to use watercolors. Auditory people might like learning to play an intrustrument or collecting the music of a certain form or era. (I like the blues and baroque.) Texture people might like models or sewing. 

I think a lot of writers are magpies, and that’s good. If you get a yen to learn to cook Indian food, or learn to speak Arabic, or play the cello, go for it. I promise that far from taking away from your writing, it will add to it. 

7. Read poetry. Aloud. This is something we’ve moved away from in our society, but writers are the natural audience for poets. Read it and feel it. There is a poet for everyone out there. Find one you love. 

8. Be alert to the themes and ideas you love to use in your work. How do you use them? What interests you? How can you keep coming up with fresh ways to illustrate them? 

9. Spend the extra two weeks to make a manuscript really sparkle. To layer in those colors, the details of smell and touch and song, to tweak a scarf from blue to orange. 

10. PLAY. ENJOY YOURSELF! Remember, this is about making something beautiful, not a big, impossible challenge. 

Playing with the girls in the basement

A new book is brewing.   Rather dramatically at times, as will sometimes happen.  My office is scattered with magazines and new CDs and paintbrushes.  I've scotch-taped a bunch of photos to the closet door while I'm letting it all brew.   To the outside view, this doesn't much look like work, honestly, and I can fall prey to the "just get busy" syndrome that can be so devastating to an idea that's winding its way through my imagination, sending out runners of silk to anchor itself here, there, all sorts of odd places.  This makes me think of the first trimester of pregnancy, when you're so tired and when you close your eyes for three minutes, you fall into that other world, the dreamer world, and it's hard to tell which is the real world.  There's a lot going on below the surface.  Hidden.  Quiet.  Gossamer.

This very morning, I was thinking, "I guess I should make a chart or something. So I have a plot. So I know what I'm doing."

 

And the Girls in the Basement, who've been playing Keb Mo really loud, and cutting things out to glue on the walls, and ordering CDs like Sonny and Terry  and Marc Broussard and getting SO excited about the storm map on the wall and practicing their accents, looked up and said, "Plan? We don't need a plan.  WE know what we're doing.  If you know, you'll fuck it up, so just mind your own business."

 

So I went for a walk with the dogs and listened to Lucinda Williams and smelled biscuits baking and remembered a really cool bit of woman-magic that always has intrigued me, and figured out the hero's name, and there is a big southern thread to this book, which has been missing from my books over the past few years.  Suddenly, it's just there again.   Maybe I am pining for my grandmother, or for my late mother-in-law.  They both passed in the autumn, two years and three years ago, and I wish I could have a chat with them.   Or maybe, the girls want to play with other material, taste new things.  Maybe I have no idea where books come from or why, but my job is to say, "Oooh, this one seems like it will be fun."

And I remind myself to play.  Just play.

Building great characters

I've been talking with an aspiring writer who is very, very smart and driven, who confessed she didn't really understand how to develop character beyond what she was already doing. She's had some revision requests and wants to understand more about how to write great characters.   

This is one of my favorite subjects, so I thought I'd offer a few ideas this sunny Saturday afternoon, and a few exercises for you to try.  Most of these are taken from a talk I quite like to give, so some of you might have heard me talk about this before. 

Women's fiction and romance novels are character-driven plots.  The only thing that makes a romance interesting, no matter what style or subgenre you might be writing, is the particularity of THESE particular characters and our feeling that these two people really must be together.   To believe that, especially in our cynical world, we have to know and understand what makes each character tick, what motivates them, how they get through each day. 

I've talked before about Tony Soprano, and will say again, if you want to study character, The Sopranos has a lot to teach, especially about layering and the various influences that combine to create a character.  I'm slowly, slowly finishing the series, and last night watched one in which Carmella went to Paris with her friend Roz.  As always, the layering of character is quiet and you have to be paying attention to see what's there.  Carmela is stunned by Paris.  By the beauty and the art and the weight of time and history.  This is a woman who was born into a time and place where her considerable brains and hungers have no real chance of finding expression through her own efforts, so she's directed those energies into her husband, her children, her standing in the community.  She's a tortured, loving, hungry soul, and watching in her Paris made me cry.  I wanted to know what would have happened to her if she'd had the chance to go there at seventeen, after taking three years of French.  Her reaction to the city was profound, and she tried to reach out to her friend, but Roz simply doesn't speak Carmella's language, and Tony won't understand either. She returns home, and in the last scene of the episode, she carries her laundry downstairs, and nothing in her external world is changed, but we know something huge has happened within Carmella. 

The lesson is, great characters are complex.  They are a mix of good and bad characteristics, just as every human being on the planet is a mix.   I am. You are.  Your husband, your children, your parents.   

How do you get that on the page? How do you find out the layers of your own characters and bring them to life? 

We all start with the simple stuff.   Sex, age, career, cultural background, family history.   I think of these as the things that would show up in a police report: "White male, age 34, accountant."  The family history comes in the next level. Stuff a psychologist might want to know:  birth order, class, education, etc.

Next comes the passions:  He loves fly fishing, watching reality television, drinking iced tea with big chunks of lemon, a juicy steak on a hot summer day, his ex-girlfriend whom he hasn't spoken to in five years but secretly believes he will never get over.   What does he hate?  What would he banish from the world if he could?  What does he believe about God? 

What one thing does he believe in absolutely? What is he most afraid of?   What would he do if he could do anything at all? 

In voice class, we do exercises that begin:  "The house I lived in when I was seven years old....."   "I am twelve and....."   and "I am eighteen and....."   Doing those exercises in first person from the POV of the character can take you a lot deeper into their psyche.

One thing that powerfully brings a character alive is the inconsistencies.  Tony Soprano the mafia boss who can be so tender.  The socially conscious queen of the mob who is slain by the beauty of Paris.  Think of some of your favorite characters--can you pinpoint those inconsistencies?   

Where is that tension?  Think of your mother. Right now.  Where are the inconsistencies of her character? What maddening, endearing tics and attitudes does she carry? 

 

A few little tricks that are fun to try:  write the starbuck's order of your character.  For example, I used to be a triple vente latte with skim milk and seven raw sugars.  I always had to make a little joke about how much sugar was in the coffee because it was embarrassing, but I wanted it my way.   What does the dichotomy of skim milk vs seven raw sugars and TRIPLE coffee say?  (Babe, you are so in denial.)  I've since downsized considerably because the more I run, the less I can tolerate large amounts of coffee.  A modest grande, regular, skim milk, two (or three if I'm feeling indulgent) raw sugars.

What does your character order? Or would she skip Starbucks for the local coffee shop down the street? 

Another great trick I learned from great romance author Jennifer Greene many years ago: look inside the purse of a woman, the glove box or pockets of a man.  What are they carrying with them? What does it say?

It is also true that each one of us is the star of our own movie.  With a secondary character, imagine that person is the start of the movie and see how the layers begin to appear. 

There is always something brilliant about every human. Every human.  There is something disgusting or reprehensible about every human.   Find the two, and you'll be well on your way.

Can you think of other examples of the tension in a great character?   Name some.  Scarlet O'Hara, of course.   Who else?

Polishing

So, COOKING FOR THE DEAD (not sure we'll keep that title, though I love it), the book I've been working on all winter, is in the final polishing stage.  My editor had a few suggestions to brighten things here and there,  and bring out two characters a little more.   My own need was to let the manuscript become cold enough that I could spot those pesky repetitive words and images. 

This is the fifth time through the entire manuscript, and the pickiest.  I'm sitting down with the book every day for a few hours to read carefully, sometimes aloud, marking the manuscript as I go, and making notes on a legal pad about what is still required.   I think I need to switch the order of a couple of scenes to give more sense of narrative drive.  Pare down the narrative to a leaner point in a couple of other places.  Backstory is very important to this tale, and figuring out how and where to layer that into the story without slowing it down is challenging.  I always put in more than I need at first, then cut back.   

Come to that, I don't know why I write characters with such histories, either.  Maybe we all have that much history?

Anyway, slow going.  Careful, persnickety going a the moment.  I did stumble over one lovely alliterative, internal rhyme in a paragraph that was sweet, and I'm keeping it.  On the other hand, I'm slashing entire paragraphs in places.   Smoothing, smoothing. 

We have had a great time this year, Elena and I.  This is like the last day of camp.   

A writing exercise.....I believe in----

In the Girls in the Basement class, one of the students wrote a beautiful paragraph based in the Bull Durham, "I believe in long, slow, kisses that last three days."  It was so delicious and empowering for all of us to read it that I turned it into an exercise, adding it to the week on Passion (which we are currently exploring).   The original quote from Bull Durham:

Annie Savoy: I believe in the Church of Baseball. I've tried all the major religions, and most of the minor ones. I've worshipped Buddha, Allah, Brahma, Vishnu, Siva, trees, mushrooms, and Isadora Duncan. I know things. For instance, there are 108 beads in a Catholic rosary and there are 108 stitches in a baseball. When I heard that, I gave Jesus a chance. But it just didn't work out between us. The Lord laid too much guilt on me. I prefer metaphysics to theology. You see, there's no guilt in baseball, and it's never boring... which makes it like sex. There's never been a ballplayer slept with me who didn't have the best year of his career. Making love is like hitting a baseball: you just gotta relax and concentrate. Besides, I'd never sleep with a player hitting under .250... not unless he had a lot of RBIs and was a great glove man up the middle. You see, there's a certain amount of life wisdom I give these boys. I can expand their minds. Sometimes when I've got a ballplayer alone, I'll just read Emily Dickinson or Walt Whitman to him, and the guys are so sweet, they always stay and listen. 'Course, a guy'll listen to anything if he thinks it's foreplay. I make them feel confident, and they make me feel safe, and pretty. 'Course, what I give them lasts a lifetime; what they give me lasts 142 games. Sometimes it seems like a bad trade. But bad trades are part of baseball - now who can forget Frank Robinson for Milt Pappas, for God's sake? It's a long season and you gotta trust. I've tried 'em all, I really have, and the only church that truly feeds the soul, day in, day out, is the Church of Baseball.    --Ron Shelton, scriptwriter

Here's mine:

I believe in travel, in wandering far shores to discover all my bullshit and
my earnestness and honor.  I believe in earnestness.

I believe in beauty.  Beautiful songs and beautiful skies and beautiful days
and beautiful pears and beautiful pillows.

I believe words can change the world, truly, and the right sentence at the
right moment can turn a life from despair to progress.  I believe I was born
to write stories, and that's the main reason I'm on the earth this time
around.

I believe God loves me and everybody else, even the people I'd personally
leave out of the Love Everybody Commandment, like Hitler and Idi Amin and my
ex-lover, and She wants me to succeed and help others to succeed and She
uses my hands to do Her work, so when I'm being pitiful and awful, I'm not
really doing Her work.

I believe in good work and good thoughts and plenty of wine and long runs
and hikes in the silence of mountains and good friends and long lazy sex
with the right man or even the wrong one who makes you feel good for awhile.
I believe in sex, come to that, that everyone should have as much as they
want, because it helps headaches and heartaches and probably even diseases.
I believe in great meals and deep belly laughing, which could probably cure
anything, even cancer.  I believe in my sister, the cancer nurse, who scares
the heck out of me and makes me proud.  I believe that sometimes getting
drunk is probably the right answer, and other times, it's a long run.

I believe in balance.

I believe in meditation and reading and good cups of coffee and long airline
flights and in listening.   I believe in dogs and good movies and doing your
best.

I really, really believe in dogs.
------------------

I'd love to hear yours.  Post then in the comments.  Anonymously if that makes you feel braver.  Or not anonymously.   It's a big amazing world to be in love with.

Layering in Lusciousness worksheet

As promised in my workshop on Saturday afternoon.  I didn't print enough of them.

HOW TO GO THROUGH YOUR MANUSCRIPT

First, a warning: THIS IS NOT A FAST PROCESS.

It can be, once you get the hang of it, but at first, as with any skill, you’ll need to practice it and take some time to figure out how all the tools work for YOU.

And the tools you use, the way you use them are not going to be the same for everyone. Remember that exercise we did at the beginning to help you find your primary senses? That’s a good place to start. Visual people, go with the colors, for example, and work on one other sense that you might not use as vividly. One thing that gets neglected a lot in our culture is scent. Americans are weird about smell. We deodorize absolutely everything. Add some smell to your manuscript and you’re a long way ahead of the game.

TAKE YOUR TIME. 

Purely practical details on how to enrich that manuscript.

1. When you’ve finished a rough draft, more or less, let it sit for a week or two. (I realize that is not always possible, but give it as much time as you can.) Let it get cold, so you’ll be able to give it a fresh read.

2. Sit down with the book and read through it. Keep a notebook at your elbow to write down any repetitive images. Note which scenes feel soft and which are pedestrian. Just make a little star on those scenes. I use D.I.B. which means, very simply, Do It Better.

It’s important to remember that everybody’s rough drafts kind of suck. It’s meant to be a sketch of what the book is going to look like. You get to erase and rearrange and make it gorgeous in later drafts.

This is actually more of a problem for working, published writers than it is for those still working on earlier manuscripts. Both time problems and the feeling that the rough draft should be somehow kind of polished. You can get trapped by the feeling that your current work in progress is supposed to be as good at the book you just turned in.

3. Make a note of the themes that are showing up and the images your subconscious has coughed up. Trust me you’ll have both of these things. They might be a little soft at this point, but try to find some images you can work with.

4. Once you’ve done that read through, go through each scene. One scene at a time to layer in the things the book needs. If it feels slow or soft or dull, try some things on to see what might make it better. Again, go back to your primary senses. What are the colors in this book? What is the setting and how are you putting that on the page—are you using all five senses? Where can you add imagery to underline your theme? (For example, in a book about ghosts, I used images of the Day of the Dead—marigolds and skeletons).

5. Do one more read through—read the book aloud. This will reveal more flaws than almost any other technique, seriously. You’ll hear clunky language, catch repetitive works, notice that you have used the word “luminous” 16 times. It’ll help you catch plodding language and places where you’ve just missed making a paragraph sing.

6. Then, roll up your sleeves and layer it all into the rough draft. It might take you a few weeks of daily work to go through this process start to finish, but I guarantee the results will be worth your time.

HANDOUT #2

FINALLY, TO BE ABLE TO USE THESE DETAILS, YOU HAVE TO KEEP ADDING THEM TO YOUR COLLECTION.

Make yourself a spectacular detail collector. Be curious about absolutely everything. Eavesdrop. Learn how to stare without being obvious. At certain points of your day, take a one minute break to really be in the moment. You don’t have to always write it down, but it doesn’t hurt.

Carry notebooks in your purse. 

 

1. Take time to do things that feed your senses, all of them. Go to beautiful gardens and museums, fabric stores and restaurants. Smell roses, perfumes, other people.

2. Make a habit of eavesdropping and buy sunglasses so you can stare more easily.

3. Carry a notebook and make sketches of things. They don’t have to be skilled or even competent, they’ll just help remind you to really SEE things. A good second is to use your cell phone camera, a LOT. If you see something that jolts your senses, take a picture of it.

4. Travel. Wherever you can. Go to new neighborhoods. Go to faraway places. Pay attention to your surroundings, but also pay attention to how you feel exploring them. Are you excited, standoffish, worried about looking foolish or intruding where you should not go?

5. Find music you love and play it often. Go to concerts or out to listen to music in whatever venue you can enjoy. Go to the symphony. Go to plays. Watch movies.

6. Develop hobbies that excite your senses. Visual people might enjoy things like making stained glass or quilts or learning to use watercolors. Auditory people might like learning to play an intrustrument or collecting the music of a certain form or era. (I like the blues and baroque.) Texture people might like models or sewing.

I think a lot of writers are magpies, and that’s good. If you get a yen to learn to cook Indian food, or learn to speak Arabic, or play the cello, go for it. I promise that far from taking away from your writing, it will add to it.

7. Read poetry. Aloud. This is something we’ve moved away from in our society, but writers are the natural audience for poets. Read it and feel it. There is a poet for everyone out there. Find one you love.

8. Be alert to the themes and ideas you love to use in your work. How do you use them? What interests you? How can you keep coming up with fresh ways to illustrate them?

9. Spend the extra two weeks to make a manuscript really sparkle. To layer in those colors, the details of smell and touch and song, to tweak a scarf from blue to orange.

10. PLAY. ENJOY YOURSELF! Remember, this is about making something beautiful, not a big, impossible challenge.   

From: LAYERING IN LUSCIOUSNESS, by Barbara Samuel, www.awriterafoot.com

Seeking the grace note

The rewrite is finished.  Almost.   I've layered and polished and cut and rewritten.  I could have loaded it up and emailed it back to my agent by now, but I still haven't quite nailed the grace note.   For me, this is an essential part of feeling really finished with a book.  Even if I end up going through the manuscript a few more times (as I will, in line edits and copy edits and galley, at the very least), when I get this particular draft done, the book is finished. 

But I need that grace note.

According to Wikipedia, grace notes in music are ornaments, musical flourishes that are not necessary to the overall melodic (or harmonic) line, but serve to decorate or "ornament" that line."

A grace note in writing is much the same.  It isn't necessary, but adds to the enjoyment of the reader.  A little embellishment that brings an extra feeling of oomph to the end.  It's usually very small, but not always.  Properly orchestrated, it can be the thing that brings a reader to tears, that makes a difference between a satisfying ending and a memorable one.  I keep thinking I have an image for this book, and then it's not quite right.  It's not something that can be forced, either--I have to just keep going back through, touching the pages, not looking, but letting it bubble up.  The right note will ring back through the whole book, lighting up it all up in just the right way. 

This afternoon, I'm meeting my sister for lunch, and I'm serving the Girls in the Basement notice:  you want a grace note here, better get busy.  One way or another, it goes back out today.   I'm flying to Philly in the morning and don't want it hanging over my head all weekend.  There are other projects restlessly pacing backstage, waiting their turn.

Scene construction

Julie posted a link to a writer blog I hadn't read: http://www.joshilynjackson.com/mt/ and the writer had a MEME I found intriguing.  Google your first name and NEEDS together to see what comes up.  I Googled Barbara Needs and the first thing was "Barbara needs to blog more," so I'll take that as a nudge from the universe. 

For two days, I've been hunched over my desk taking scenes apart.   I've had four reads on the MIP from various sources and have compiled a list of revision notes, and now it's time to tug up my sleeves, pull back my hair, and see where the construction is wonky.  (The photo to the left is a "solar system map" of the MIP, more below.)

I tend to like this stage, honestly.  The free flight of a rought draft is exhilarating, a process of discovery, but it's also very demanding emotionally and creatively.  It's tiring to continually be wide open to that flow of image and bubbling spice. At this nit-picky construction stage, it's like taking out a level to make sure the wall is exactly square--very clinical, hands-on, clear steps.   Often, readers can pinpoint a problem.  It's my job as a craftswoman to figure out how to correct it. 

I use the techniques in Robert McKee's Story almost exclusively at this point.  I would not recommend this book at the draft stages or even for a newish writer---it's quite laborious reading and very, very detailed, and might cause frustration until you've got a handle on the the basics of scene and character and flow.  (At this point, every writer I've ever met is going to be running for the book....:) ) Story is a very geeky examination of craft (my friend Christie and I can talk for an hour on the negation of the negation, probably mostly to burn time, but also because it's just really exciting to think about).   

The book is FULL of geeky tools to play with.  One thing I tried this time was to make a solar system map, with the protagonist as the sun and all of her traits listed. Each secondary character reveals a subset of traits.  Illuminating.  I discovered my very nurturing chef is also unforgiving.  Nice juxtaposition there

At this stage of construction Story offers a solid set of tools to analyze why a scene is soft or not quite working.  What is the desire of the character driving the scene? What is opposing that desire? What beats are missing? What beats are going on too long?   Often it's only a single sentence that needs polishing/adding/subtracting for an entire scene to work more cleanly.

I numbered the scenes (97, if you're wondering) and have created a form taken from McKee's scene analysis chapter tha I can use to examine each one--opening, antagonist, closing value.  Many scenes are fine and don't need a lot of analysis.   I notice that the ones that have bugged me all along are usually lacking focus, either because the character involved is not clear about her goals or because the opposing force is missing.  Thes weak scenes also reveal the spots where the characterization has gone wimpy, too. 

If I get through twenty scenes this morning, I can go downtown to the local art movie theater and see The Namesake, the new Mira Nair movie.  Good reward.