Episode Thirteen: You’re Making Promises to Readers, Are You Keeping Them?
This week’s episode is all about promises. The promises you make to readers, specifically. I’m covering four promises that we make to our readers - whether we’re consciously aware of it or not. Your genre is a promise, the places you direct your readers’ attention is a promise, your marketing makes a promise, and your beginning is a promise. Listen in and make sure you’re making promises intentionally, not accidentally, and setting yourself up for success by giving readers exactly what they want from your book!
You can listen to the full epsiode here. Or, watch here.
You’ll Hear:
The four promises you’re making to readers
Strategies for ensuring you keep those promises
Why genre matters so much
Why pushing people away with your marketing is just as important as drawing them in
Want to hear more from me? Subscribe to the Better Writer Weekly newsletter here: https://olivia-helps-writers.kit.com/better-writer-newsletter
Transcript
Please Note: This is an automatically generated transcript that has not been edited.
Olivia Bedford (00:00)
Welcome to episode number 13 of the Better Writer podcast. Today, I'm talking all about promises. And timing-wise, I'm recording this just one day after Valentine's Day, so it was the perfect time to talk about promises and why they're important.
We all know that keeping promises is important in relationships, at work, etc. But it is also important to keep promises to your readers. And the tricky thing about writing fiction is that not all of those promises are ones that you made consciously. Some of those promises are implicit, they are there in your writing and you don't even know. So today I want to talk about four promises that you are making to your readers and how to make sure that you actually keep them so that you don't lose readers, get one-star reviews and all the other horrible things that we try to avoid as writers.
Alright, and let's start with number one, your genre is a promise. We all know that genre is key. Genre is how you market your book, it's how you find your readers, but your genre also comes with a certain set of expectations that you need to meet in order to actually satisfy those readers. So once you pick a genre label for your book, you are making a promise about the content, about what readers are going to find in that story, and it is so important that you actually meet it throughout your story.
So, what do I mean by that?
Every genre comes with a certain set of expectations. Not all of those genres are going to have the same intensity of expectations though, so we do need to be careful. For example, fantasy is super broad. Anything with magic or supernatural elements or an alternate world or an alternate history, all of those things can be categorized as fantasy. It is super broad. When you say that your book is just fantasy by itself, you are making zero promises about the plot, about the content, about the type of characters that we're going to see, you are making no promises besides there will be something in this book that could not exist in the real world. That's it. That is super broad and super easy to hit. Of course, if you are writing a certain sub-genre of fantasy, then we start to get into more specific promise territory.
For example, if you tell me that something is epic fantasy, I'm going to be expecting an epic scope. And that could be a conflict that touches many parts of the world. It could be a multi-point of view story or any combination of those things. And there are obviously other ways to make a story epic as well.
Instead, if you tell me urban fantasy, I'm no longer expecting a broad worldwide conflict. Now I'm expecting a setting that is close to our real world. And usually I'm going to be expecting a more limited scope where we're following one character and their experiences. Obviously, that is not 100 % true. But again, just by adding one word, epic fantasy versus urban fantasy, my expectations have completely changed. The promise that that writer is making has completely changed, So that, again, is an example of a category where fantasy, super broad, the expectations are pretty much non-existent as long as there is some type of magic you have written fantasy. In contrast, I think romance is probably the genre that is most known for its expectations and for fans who are going to be super, super angry if you break them.
Most notably, if you are writing capital R romance, you have to have a happy ending. It doesn't have to be a happy forever ending, but it definitely needs to be at least a happy for now. We need some evidence that this relationship is going to carry on long past the final page of your story. If there is no happy ending, you have not written romance. Now, of course, you could try to subvert the genre, but in this case,
You cannot subvert romance to the extent that there is no happy ending. If you do, you've written something else. And I honestly will get so angry when people want to talk down to readers or shame readers for wanting a certain type of story, and they decide that they are going to write some tragic masterpiece call it a romance. And for what? Why ruin something that people love? If you don't want to write a happy ending, don't. Then it's not romance. Go play in a different sandbox. Don't mess up ours.
Again, when you label your book in a certain way, you are making a promise. If you break that promise, it's going to be a problem. And just because you thought you were writing a certain type of book at the beginning doesn't mean that that needs to be your genre forever. You might discover in the revision process or in the drafting process that what you thought was a romance is actually something else because you don't want the characters to end up together, and that is totally fine. Then we just change the genre, we find something else, we find a different way to talk about your book without breaking our promise to readers.
And the other thing that you need to do as a writer is make sure that you are deeply, deeply knowledgeable about your genre, that you know how it works, what's expected, and how to make sure you're meeting readers' expectations every step of the way. If you only take one action step from this podcast, from this episode, this is the one. Go research your genre. Go get to know your genre so super well that you know exactly what readers are expecting of you when you choose that genre, subgenre label for your book.
I think it is essential and is one of the most important steps if you are currently revising to check in on your genre on its expectations and that is why it is one of the first things that I have people do in my revision course because it really is that important. Your genre should be guiding every decision you make when you are drafting and revising your book.
That brings us to promise number two. Attention is a promise. And this one is so hard because especially if you are a pantser or someone who makes up a lot of content as you're drafting, you probably slipped in things that weren't actually important but felt important at the time. Maybe you describe a walk-on character in a lot of detail, maybe you describe a place setting in a lot of detail. Maybe you include a scene that is setting up a certain sequence of events that never actually ends up happening. And all of those things made sense to you when you were first drafting. All of those things seem to have a place in your story at the beginning, and then all of a sudden they no longer have a place in the story by the end because things have shifted and, you know, this subplot that you introduced at the beginning is no longer important, no longer there on the page, you've essentially planted a seed that is never going to grow into anything. The problem here is that when a reader comes to your book, if you are drawing their attention to something or someone or some plot event, they are going to expect that thing to pay off in some way by the end. So anything that you are drawing our attention to needs to be purposeful. It needs to have some impact on the story, whether that impact is going to be felt in that scene or later on in the story.
Fiction is held to a higher bar than real life. Fiction doesn't get to be random. You don't get to have you know things magically drop from the sky, and you don't get to have random coincidental things occur, at least not to the same extent that you do in real life, because readers are going to hold you to a higher standard of plausibility, and you don't want to lose them by incorporating something that feels totally random, totally unsupported.
Or you don't want to direct their attention to something that is just going to drop off the page because they're going to be wondering what happened to that thing. We spent a whole chapter focusing on this minor walk-on character. Where did they go? I will say you can purposefully misdirect people. You could have a MacGuffin or a Distractor keeping readers from seeing the real twist coming. But again, it needs to be purposeful. And generally speaking, I see a lot of people doing this accidentally.
They over-describe something, they introduce something that never gets picked up later on, and it's an accident. It's a matter of pantsing a draft and not paying attention to what you were planting along the way. That is totally fine. But that's why we revise. We need to find those things in revision, and then we have options. We can either remove those things from the story so that we are never planting the seed, we have nothing to grow, or we need to take that seed, nourish it, figure out how to incorporate it into the rest of the story so it feels purposeful.
So if you are currently revising, go back to your story. Where are you spending time drawing attention to an aspect of your story that doesn't actually have a purpose later on? And then are you going to keep those things or are you going to cut them? Either option is fine as long as you are being purposeful and intentional and directing your reader's attention exactly where you want it to go.
Alright, and then promise number three, your marketing is a promise. And this one may sound strange for a podcast by a developmental editor. Marketing is definitely outside my scope, but I often have writers come to me who are in the process of revising, they're preparing for publication, and they're already thinking about how they're going to market their book. And I, as an add-on to my developmental editing services, I will look at your blurb or your query letter, whichever one you want me to take a look at. And I often see a pretty significant mismatch between the blurb and the actual book. And again, this is not something that people are doing intentionally. It is not something that they are trying to mislead readers with, but it just happens because we had an idea of our story in our heads and then something else basically ended up on the page. But we just need to be careful and make sure that we are bringing those things into alignment by the time we go to press or by the time you actually start querying your manuscript because you don't want to promise one type of story and then end up, you know, totally shifting the focus and giving readers something different that they didn't actually want. And, you know, I have seen this happen in pretty extreme ways where the blurb is promising a love story that never happens on the page or the blurb is promising an adventure story. And then we end up in a small town setting that feels actually pretty cozy.
These are real things that I have seen in manuscripts and these aren't bad writers.
These are just writers who started drafting, got pulled into a subplot along the way, and basically ended up forgetting what the main thing was supposed to be. And it is so easy to do. ⁓ Again, I'm a pantser. I love pantsers. I love working with pantsers. This is just one of those things that we need to be on the lookout for. And again, it is what we tackle in revision, where maybe draft one went down a rabbit hole. In draft two, we can correct it.
And again, you have options here. You might decide that you're actually more interested in the rabbit hole. That's really fine. Keep going down the rabbit hole. Make that your whole story. Or you might decide that you actually need to get things back on track and that is going to require a rewrite. Again, it's okay. It doesn't matter. That's why we revise. I am a big fan of robust revisions. I really think that anything is on the table when we revise and it just depends on who you are as a writer. Do you do more of that planning thinking ahead of time before the raw material is created or are you a writer who does more of that thinking and creative work on the back end after you have a draft to play with? I am the latter and that is who I love to work with as well. The key thing here is that you just want to make sure that however you are marketing your book, whatever your blurb says, whatever you are promising to readers is actually there on the page and is actually the focus of what's on the page.
The other thing that I think is very important to mention here is content warnings. I prefer the term content warnings over trigger warnings. I feel like the term trigger warning has become triggering. So content warnings, very simply. Give people a heads up of what is in your book. Let them opt in or opt out based on their own comfort level, things like that. I do want to be clear. When I'm talking about content warnings, I think violence requires content warnings. I think if you are going to have explicit scenes, you should probably give people a heads up either in the way you label your book by calling it a spicy romance or whatever. I think if there's anything non-consensual, dubious consent, that should absolutely be in a content warning. You know, on the flip side of that, people's identities never need to be content warnings. You do not need to warn people that there is LGBTQ content because that's just life. Those things exist in real life. Those are not things that we should be trying to avoid in real life.
Hopefully you're not the type of person who avoids people based on their identity. And if you are, then this show probably isn't for you because that's just not how we roll here. But the key thing is we are being honest with people about content that could be harmful to them. And...
Some people get really angry when you talk about content warnings, but I think that they are actually something that works in your favor when done right because for every person who is pushed away by your content warning, there is someone else who is being called like it is a siren song. ⁓ You know, there are those readers out there who see the list of content warnings and that is a signal that this book has everything that they want and more. So yes, you are going to push away readers, but you want to because anyone who does not like the things in your content warning is not your reader. That is the person who's going to DNF your book, as in they're going to not finish. That is the person who's going to leave you a one-star review. That is a person who's going to hate your books and will never come back and read another one. So you're really not losing anything by pushing those people away. What you're gaining instead is A, the readers who are drawn in and you're also preserving your ratings. You are not going to have a bunch of one-star reviews from people who didn't know what they were giving themselves into. You are going to call in the people who want that. You are going to find your readers because you have that content warning. And you're not going to lose anything because the people who are pushed away by that content warning were never your readers to begin with. So I am all about being as honest as possible in marketing because the purpose of marketing is not just to pull people in, it is also to push people away. We want to repel the people who are not for us.
So be honest in your marketing because then you are making a promise. And I also say here, some people have tried to pad their content warnings with things that are not actually really present on the page. Again, we don't want to do that. If your book is not spicy and violent, don't lie and say it is. Find your readers who want that tamer story because they're out there. And there are people who want the wildest version you can imagine. so you will find your people because there is such a range of what people are looking for, what people want, what people are expecting, what people are looking for when they pick up a book to read. So focus on finding your people. Don't try to camouflage what you're doing because you're just going find the wrong people and that's not what we want.
All right, and finally, promise number four, your beginning is a promise. I think there is a bit of overlap here with the attention promise, but your beginning is even more important in that regard. And it's not just about where you're directing readers' attention. The beginning sets the stage for everything that's going to come next. So the conflicts you introduce in the beginning, the characters you introduce in the beginning, the settings you introduce in the beginning, all of those things should be important and they should all be really intentional because when you introduce a question at the beginning of your story, you are making an implicit promise to readers that you are going to answer it by the end. So for example, if a body drops on page one and you introduce the question, who killed this person, we are going to expect that question to be answered by the end of the story.
So like I said earlier, the things you're drawing attention to have to be important. And the questions that you're introducing in the beginning have to have answers by the end of the story
If you think about the way that plot structures are often set up, we have a main conflict introduced in the beginning and then the whole story is about how that conflict is addressed and resolved by the end. So whatever you are introducing in your beginning is setting that plot structure into motion. That is then determining where the rest of the story is going to go. If your story goes in a completely different direction, then that needs to be either set up in the beginning or you need to go back and make a different promise in the beginning. So there are definitely ways for a story to take a left turn and go in a completely different direction. We just want to make sure that it still feels like it is rooted in the world that we've created. It's rooted in the conflict that we've set up initially. That there is some little element that is going to carry us through from beginning to end. And that could be the character's arc. It could be a character goal. There are many ways to do it. ⁓ The unfortunate thing about writing a novel is that there are so many ways to do it, and there are so many ways to do it wrong.
So there is room for creativity. Your beginning does not need to lock you into one very simple, very linear plot. There are ways for things to go wrong from there or go left from there or whatever it may be. But we just want to make sure that we are setting the right expectations for the type of story that you're going to get. That you are introducing conflicts and characters in the beginning that allow for that branching or twist to happen later in a way that feels logical and inevitable. It should feel logical, inevitable, and surprising all at the same time, which is a tall order, but it is possible. So we just want to make sure that whatever you're doing in the beginning, it feels like it is setting up what comes next, and that might not be something that happens in your first draft. In fact, it is unlikely to happen in your first draft. So those beginning chapters are definitely going to need to be revised once you get to the end and you actually know where you're going.
And it could be the smallest of hints, the smallest moments of foreshadowing, but those need to be there to set up whatever is going to happen later. And again, you don't need to do that in your first draft. You don't need to have all that planned in advance. But in revision, we need to go back and make sure that those seeds are there so that it makes sense when we get to the end and we see where we've ended up. All right, to recap, in your book you are making four promises to readers, whether explicitly or implicitly, your genre is a promise, where you direct readers' attention is a promise, your marketing is a promise, and your beginning is a promise. We want to keep our promises. We want to make readers happy because ultimately we don't get to write and publish books without readers who are going to buy them and enjoy them. So we want to satisfy those expectations. We want to exceed expectations and that all starts with knowing what you want to do and being really intentional about how you market, label, and write your books so that they are compelling and engaging and make readers want to follow you on the next journey when you publish another book. All right, that was episode number 13 of the Better Writer podcast. Thank you so much for listening and sticking around to hear me rant about writing. If you found this episode helpful, please consider leaving a review or sharing it with a friend. I would love to reach as many writers as possible, and you can help me do that just by sharing this show. All right, thank you again for listening. Have a wonderful week. Keep writing and keep getting better one word at a time. See ya.
Episode Twelve: You’re Thinking About Story Structure the Wrong Way
This week, I’m talking about mistakes writers make when it comes to story structure. Story structure is vital. It gives our stories shape and ensures we are keeping readers hooked and entertained throughout.
Given that reality, you might be expecting me to talk about structural issues, and yes, those definitely happen, but there’s a deeper issue holding writers back: misusing or misunderstanding story structure from the start.
Too often, writers try to turn story structure systems into something they aren’t. In this episode, I’m offering a new way to think about structure while avoiding the biggest structure/mindset mistakes.
You can listen to the full epsiode here. Or, watch here.
You’ll Hear:
The three mistakes writers make when thinking about structure
Why sticking to strict percentages could be holding you back
The myth that there is one universal structure that applies to all stories
A new framework for thinking of story structure holistically, not rigidly
And more!
Resources Mentioned:
Save the Cat Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody
The Heroine’s Journey by Gail Carriger
Anatomy of Story by John Truby
The Writer’s Journey (hero’s journey) by Christopher Vogler
The Virgin’s Promise by Kim Hudson
Subscribe to the Better Writer Weekly newsletter here: https://olivia-helps-writers.kit.com/better-writer-newsletter
Transcript
Please Note: This is an automatically generated transcript that has not been edited.
Olivia Bedford (00:19)
Welcome to episode number 12 of the Better Writer podcast. Today's topic is one that is very near and dear to my heart because I think it is one of those things that trips writers up so much. Not because they're not trying, not because they aren't smart or intelligent or creative, but because there's just so much misinformation out there about this particular topic. And that topic is story structure.
I want to be clear, story structure is key. you do need to have some kind of internal logic holding your story together. However, I think the problem comes in when writers use those systems ineffectively. And I think there are three mistakes that I see people making when they think about structure, that I want to talk about today.
Before I dive into the actual mistakes, I do want to note that right now I'm really focusing on the defined story structure systems that get packaged and sold to writers. So I'm thinking of things like Save the Cat right now, where Save the Cat has a very specific structure system that is being taught and sold to writers. And please know, I am not hating on Save the Cat. I think it can be really, really helpful for writers if you are thinking about it and using it the right way. Unfortunately, I think that people misuse it or they misunderstand how they're supposed to use systems like that.
So let's dive into the three mistakes that I am seeing writers make with those structure systems. First off, the big mistake that I see is people thinking that it's all they need. As long as you check off the 15 steps of the Save the Cat beat structure, as long as you check off every beat of the hero's journey or the heroine's journey or whatever you're using, you have a story and that's all you need. And unfortunately, I think there is a lot that often gets missed within that structural framework. Any structure system is really only pointing out key plot moments. It is not giving you a comprehensive guide to every single scene or sentence or moment of your story. There are going to be subplots. There are going to be small moments where maybe there isn't something big happening action-wise, but your character's having a moment of realization or a moment that changes them internally, or a moment in which they are simply building a relationship with another character. So maybe it's not one of those big plot moments, but something important is happening internally for your character, and therefore something important is happening for your reader. And I think that can sometimes get missed in those structure systems. I think a really great example of that is in the Save the Cat system. We have three beats out of the 15 that cover 50% of the story. So Fun and Games and the bad guys close in. Those two beats take up pretty much 50% of the story and then in between those two you have the midpoint. And of course in Save the Cat, as they explain, those are multi-scene beats.
So I do want to be clear, within that structure system, they're not saying that this one scene is fifty percent of your novel. There are supposed to be multiple scenes within that. But I think for a lot of people, when they look at a system like Save the Cat, or even when they look at something like The Hero's Journey, where they're seeing these individual moments in the beat structure, but those moments are supposed to happen over multiple scenes, or there's going to be multiple scenes involved in making that moment happen, it can be really confusing. And then the question becomes, what the heck do we actually do in those multi-beat scenes that aren't giving us this clear guidance, even though this was supposed to be the only thing we needed? And oftentimes what's happening in that middle section is, you are developing a character arc, are developing conflict, and think a lot of writers struggle with middles because they've been told that all they need is a great structure, all they need is to save the cat beat sheet, all they need is the hero's journey, and then that's not actually true. There's a lot more that goes into it, and most novels are going to have subplots.
And think if you're going into it with a mindset, that structure is all-encompassing. It is going to be very disappointing when that ends up being untrue. And then you're scrambling to figure out, what do I do in the middle of my book? What do I do with the subplot? What do I do with my secondary characters? And I see that causing a lot of frustration and getting people into trouble.
The second mistake that I see people making is that they stick way too rigidly to the percentages, to a specific number. And I think that it's kind of built into the way that we are taught to think of these structure systems. We're taught that every successful novel follows this pattern. Every successful novel follows a series of steps in this order at these percentage points. And that's just not true. And I think even in Save the Cat, there is a moment in Save the Cat Writes a Novel, which is a book by Jessica Brody, that says, you know, I believe it was The Hunger Games, and she says, you know, this book was the closest to hitting these percentages dead on, and maybe that's why this book is so successful. And that might be true, that's great, but what I really noticed there is that, underneath that statement is the fact that all of the other books that are cited in Save the Cat, weren't as close to those percentages. They weren't exactly hitting those numbers, but they were still successful. And even the book that is closest to hitting those percentages exactly isn't exact either.
So we have to understand that those numbers are never exact. Even for the books that we are being shown as examples of what to do, the numbers are not perfect and we don't need to be perfect either. And I think that people sometimes forget is that every single book that was used as an example in Save the Cat Writes a Novel existed before that book was published. So this is a framework for analysis being turned into a planning system. So I'm not saying that you can't use Save the Cat to plan your story, but you need to remember that the authors who being cited as examples of how to use this system weren't actually using this system because it is being used retroactively to analyze their books post publication.
So the Stephen King novel, Misery, which is used in Save the Cat Writes a Novel as an example, was written before that framework existed, So he was not using this system, And Stephen King is a pantser actually. So he definitely was not using Save the Cat to plan out his novels, So we need to remember that it is not exact.
The authors who are being held up as examples did not use Save the Cat to plan. Someone else came along afterwards, looked at their stories, analyzed them, and then applied this framework after. So I want to be really clear. I think Save the Cat is helpful. I think it can be helpful as a way to check in on your structure, check in to make sure that things are happening in a consistent and clear way. But it is not the be-all end-all. It is not going to make or break your story whether your catalyst moment happens at exactly the 10 % mark or whether you are breaking into act two at exactly the 25 % mark of your book, it doesn't matter. is a framework, it is a guideline, but it is not a mandate and it is not going to make or break your story.
And then the third mistake that I see people making, and I think this one is very closely aligned, is trying to force their story to serve the structure instead of using structure to serve their story. Ultimately, your job is to give readers a great experience. And where you place your plot beats, the way that you organize your story is all in service of readers. You want to create a fast pace for your story, and maybe that means your inciting incident happens on page one and that you don't slow down and shows the normal world first. Maybe your climax is going to happen right before the end and then you are just going to end with an ambiguous ending, end with a bang and that's it. It really depends on the story you're trying to tell. It really depends on your audience, what they are looking for, what type of story you're trying to tell. And if you try to force your story to fit a structure system because you think you need to be using one or because you think you need to be using a particular system that all of your other writer friends are using, you could end up creating a weaker version of your story because of that structure, even though that's supposed to be the thing that is helping you. Which brings me to another point that I think sometimes gets missed in the way we talk about structure. There is no universal story structure. I don't care what anyone says, no story structure system is universal because genres are so different, stories are so different. And if you are trying to shoehorn your story into a framework that doesn't actually fit your genre,
Again, it is just a recipe for disaster. So I think one of the biggest culprits in this area is the hero's journey. I remember being told growing up that the hero's journey applies to all stories. False. That is not true. The hero's journey applies to a lot of Western stories. It applies to a particular type of Western story and Western framework of the lone hero who rises up to save the day on their own. But that is not the only story that exists out there. That is not the only mythic framework that has been handed down through the generations. And if we keep pretending that it is, we are doing a disservice to our stories, to other writers, to people who don't write in that narrow box of what the hero's journey actually applies to. So if you haven't already, I highly recommend checking out Gail Carriger's book, The Heroine's Journey. Check out the Virgin's Promise is another mythic structure that, again, is not the hero's journey. It's totally different.
And also consider looking at some other structure systems that you maybe have not considered yet. For example, if you are a romance writer and you have not yet heard of Romancing the Beat, first of all, what are you waiting for? Second of all, that is a really great example of a structure system that is appropriate for a very specific genre. And, you know, obviously you're not going to use Romancing the Beat if you are writing a mystery novel. But if you are writing romance, don't worry about the hero's journey. It doesn't apply to you.
There is something else that is specific to your genre that is going to help you tell the story that your readers want to hear. But again, it is not about hitting a rigid set of numbers. It is not about having a certain story event happen exactly on a certain page. And if we get hung up on those numbers, we end up serving the structure, not our story. And I understand the impulse to want to check off all the boxes and follow all the rules. I would consider myself to be a bit of a rule follower. I am definitely the kind of person who if I'm given clear guidelines, I want to do the work right. I want to get that A+. I was that student where I always was chasing the 4.0. If you gave me a rubric, I was going to be highlighting the rubric, underlining it, creating a little checklist for myself so I could hit all the boxes and do it right. So I get it. I get that impulse.
That we want to be excellent, whatever excellence is for a particular assignment or task or whatever. And I think that is what gets people in trouble when they start writing creatively, because there isn't a rubric anymore, at least not in the way that we're used to. You're no longer writing for an arbitrary task. There is no longer an audience-less, purposeless assignment that you're trying to complete. Your number one.
One and only job is to create a story that delights your future readers. And structure is a tool that can help you get there. Structure is one thing we have in our arsenal as fiction writers to help us create a story that resonates with someone else. But structure is the tool. It is not the goal. It is not the end game. And if we treat structure as more than it is, we're going to run into problems, especially because structure typically focuses on the plot. It doesn't focus on the character arc.
it doesn't focus on all of the other things that make a novel rich and complete and compelling. So if you are one of those people who's been sticking too close to your structure, you have been really beating yourself up trying to fit into this narrow box of what you think your story should look like or what it should flow like, I just want to give you a different perspective.
And this is something that I'm talking about in the revision course that I'm currently teaching. But instead of thinking of structure as this rigid framework and there's a rigid set of rules that you need to comply with. I like to think of structure instead as jobs to be done. Jobs that each part of your story needs to fulfill in order to create a great experience for your readers. And I think using structure in that more flexible way is really helpful, especially when we get to the revision process. I think trying to force your story into a certain structure after the fact can be really difficult, it can be really hard, it is definitely possible and you know if you are a pantser you are definitely going to want to go back to see if your story is structured appropriately but that doesn't necessarily mean rewriting your entire story just so you can get to a certain percentage point or make sure that you you know hit x thing in a certain number of words. Instead you just want to go back and make sure that each part of your story is doing its job.
Your beginning has to hook readers. has to introduce the main conflicts. It has to introduce your characters and their world in an active and engaging way. Your middle has another job. Your middle has to keep people hooked. And that means continuing to escalate the conflicts, continuing to build characters, build the arcs, and your ending then has to create a satisfying payoff. So it is a more streamlined, more flexible way to think about structure that I think can be helpful, especially in the revision process that we are not going to get hung up on. Did I have my inciting incident happen at exactly word number 10,999. That's not the goal. We want to just think about it a little bit more flexibly. Think about it in a way that is going to be more helpful to your story as a whole, more organic. And hopefully, if we can make sure that each part of our story is doing its job, we will create a story that readers love.
And if the idea of just thinking about your structure that fluidly does not work for you, that's totally fine. Again, I still think that Save the Cat can be super helpful. I think Anatomy of Story is super helpful. The Hero's Journey can be really helpful. As long as you are not letting that structure system take over, as long as you are not letting that become something that stops you from writing or something that you're so paralyzed about getting it right that you're not moving forward, as long as you are using structure as a tool, and as long as it is not becoming a hindrance or your main goal, then keep doing what you're doing, use structure, explore different systems, figure out what works for you for your stories. And again, do not get hung up on what structure isn't, focus on what it is. And that is just one of the tools in our toolbox to create a great story that our readers love.
All right, thank you so much for listening to another episode of the Better Writer podcast. If this episode resonated with you, please share it with a friend, post about it on social media or maybe this episode has you feeling some type of way, whether you love structure or hate it, please message me on Instagram. I'm @oliviahelpswriters. I would love to hear your thoughts on this episode about structure or anything else writing related. Just reach out again. It's @oliviahelpswriters on Instagram or threads or Facebook or wherever you're hanging out online.
Alright, thank you again for listening to another episode. Have a wonderful week. Keep writing and keep getting better one word at a time. See ya!
Episode Eleven: What does it mean to give readers a great experience?
I talk about crafting a great experience for readers ALL THE TIME. But what does that even mean? In this episode, I’m breaking down three things fiction writers need to do to craft a great experience for their readers: meet their genre’s expectations, make readers care, and immerse us in the story.
You can listen to the full epsiode here. Or, watch here.
Links Mentioned:
Transcript
Please Note: This is an automatically generated transcript that has not been edited.
Olivia Bedford (00:00)
Welcome to episode number 11 of the Better Writer podcast. I am so excited to be here talking to you again for another week. I know this episode is a little bit delayed. I usually try to get episodes scheduled ahead of time so they come out right at midnight, the Monday that they're releasing. Unfortunately, I got a little bit delayed this week. I've been working really hard on my new revision course and that has been taking up a lot of my time, but I still wanted to get this episode out. It's still Monday, so I haven't missed it yet. And today I just wanted to talk about what it means to give readers a great experience.
I talk a lot about reader experience in my teaching, in my editing, in the new course that I'm creating. I know that I've also mentioned it on this podcast. So I decided to talk about what that actually means. What does it mean to give readers an amazing experience? How do we actually do that? What does it look like?
This is going to be a very short, sweet introduction to this topic, so I'm definitely not going to go into all of the detail and nuance of what it really means to give readers a fantastic experience because, as we all know, novels are complicated. It's not something I can give you in 15 minutes, but I am going to try to give you the very high-level overview, something that you can take and work with going forward. All right.
As an editor, I see a lot of manuscripts that are not quite giving readers a fantastic experience or ones that are super, super close. And based on that work, I would say that there are three main things that you need to do to give your readers a fantastic
Number one, and this is something that I will shout from the rooftops over and over and over again, you have to meet the expectations of your genre. That is number one, and it is really non-negotiable. You could have written the best book in the world. Say you have written the best cozy mystery that has ever been written. If you market that book as a police procedural, if you market that book as a romance, it is going to fall flat. It will completely fail, even if it is technically well written.
Even if the story is coherent and logical and has great conflict, if you mislabel that book, if you present it as something that it's not, it is going to fail. And more importantly, it's going to disappoint readers in a major way. When you give your book a genre label, it is not just a meaningless title. It's not just saying, you know, this is where we're going to be in the bookshelf. It's not an opportunity for you to cash in on a really popular genre.
When you label your book with a certain genre title, you are making a promise to readers. You are telling them something about what is going to be in that book and you need to deliver. So the number one thing that you need to do as a writer is A, get clear on what your genre actually is. If you are newer to writing fiction and you're not sure that you really know all the genres that are out there, do your research. Make sure you are accurately labeling your book from the start so you don't run into any problems.
The other thing that you really need to do is make sure you understand the expectations for your genre. Do your research. Even if you have accurately categorized your book, you need to know what it is that readers are actually looking for. What do they want when they pick up that type of book? What kind of experience are they looking for? Are there certain plot elements that you need to hit? Are there certain tropes, conventions, things like that that are essential to your genre? And when I say this, I don't mean that your book needs to be identical to other books in the market. There are always going to be a million different ways to meet the same genre conventions, you just need to make sure that whatever those essential elements are for your genre, you have included them in some way in your book.
All right, number two, you need to make us care. And there are a couple of different ways that you can do that in your writing, but you have to give readers a reason to keep going through your story. Why are we compelled to keep going after page one and find out what is going to happen next? And like I said, there are a couple of different ways to do this, and it will vary based on the situation, based on your genre. But one thing you can do is give us a question that we want answered. Introduce a mystery. Introduce a conflict that is mysterious, something that we don't yet understand, but we want to know what is going on.
And you don't have to introduce just one question throughout your narrative. You are going to introduce and answer multiple questions over the course of your story. If you're writing a series, you might have questions that remain unanswered by the end that you're going to answer in book two or book three or beyond. So yeah, there are going to be multiple questions, but you need to give us something to wonder about, something to be curious about so that we have a reason to keep moving forward. The other thing you can do is give us characters that we care about.
Create characters that we love, that we're rooting for. Make us worry about them. Make us want to see how their story ends up. Whether they're making good choices or bad choices, if we care about the character, we're going to want to see the outcome and we're going to be motivated to keep reading because we need to know what happens to this person. We want to see them succeed. Or maybe if it's a character that we love to hate, we want to see them fail, whatever it is, just make sure you have given us a reason to follow your character and want to see where they end up.
You also need conflict and meaningful stakes. And again, that's going to vary for every single genre. There is no one set standard for what is high stakes in a story. High stakes in a romance could be the family bakery closing down, versus high stakes in a thriller could be a third of the world's population is going to die if the super virus gets released.
Very different scale, very different scope of that conflict. It just depends on your genre and the scope of the story that you're trying to tell. And the other thing to note here is that just because the stakes are high doesn't mean that they're meaningful. They usually need to mean something to your character in particular. For example, in that romance example, if the family bakery is closing down,
We need to know why that family bakery is so meaningful to your main character. Is it the place that they grew up? Is it wrapped up in all of the memories of their family? Was it their childhood dream to take over and they're going to feel like a failure for the rest of their life if the bakery closes on their watch? There are many different ways you can go about it. It's just going to depend on your character, how you've developed them, their backstory, all those kinds of things. And the same thing goes for the thriller Why does your main character care? Why is this their responsibility to deal with?
And how can you put something that they love that they care about specifically in danger in addition to having the entire world be in danger?
All right, and then finally, number three, you need to immerse readers in the story. And again, there is not one right way to do this. There's not one single way to do this. You'll often hear show don't tell as a writing rule. I am a big fan of show, don't tell. However, I think a lot of people talk about it the wrong way. A lot of times when you hear about show, don't tell, it's kind of presented as one technique. It's just this one thing that you do. In reality, showing is the combined effect of multiple techniques working together, such as writing in scenes, giving us moment by moment real time narration, being specific. All of those things work together to create the effect that we refer to as showing versus telling. So in your story, a) I do recommend writing in scenes. My specialty is genre fiction. so
This might not apply if you are doing something more literary or more experimental, but for genre fiction in general, I recommend writing your story in scenes. And those scenes need to be happening in real time. The conflict needs to be developed on the page. We need to see these things happening. We don't want them summarized by characters after the fact. The other thing that you need to do is get super, super specific. Generalizations are going to take readers out of the story because they don't let us visualize or imagine what's going on on the page.
The other thing that you're going to want to do is make sure you are getting into characters' heads in some way. There is definitely still room for objective narration, but we need to have some way to find out what each event of the story means to your character. there are multiple ways to make that happen, but we do need some sort of window into why the conflict matters to them, how it's affecting them, and how they are being changed or influenced as a result of the things happening around them.
Another great option for immersing readers in your story is creating a distinct voice for your characters or for your narrator. If you can fully immerse us in a unique and compelling perspective, readers will be along for the ride, even if you're not strictly showing things on the page. You can do a lot of telling if you make that telling interesting by giving your narrator a specific, unique, and interesting perspective. So again, like I said at the beginning, there is not one single way to create a great experience for readers. There's not one single way to immerse readers in your story.
That is part of what makes writing fiction so much fun. There is so much room for creativity and experimentation and play. However, that is also what makes it super difficult because when there are a million ways to do something right, there are also a million ways to do it incorrectly as well. So in my opinion, the entire process of learning to write is just learning how to master these techniques that will create an amazing experience for your future readers. So consider this your starting point. If you heard me say a term or mention something and you have no idea what I'm talking about, consider this your invitation to start researching, to start exploring. Hit me up on Instagram with your questions. You can email me with questions. Reach out and I would love to help you continue this journey.
Thank you for listening to another episode of the Better Writer podcast. I just really appreciate you being here listening to me. This was definitely a shorter episode, but I hope you got something out of it, learned something, and I will definitely be following up with more insight into how you can create a great experience for your readers. If you found this podcast helpful, I would also appreciate it if you shared it with a friend so that they can learn something too. All right. Thank you again for listening. Have a wonderful week and keep writing. Keep getting better one word at a time. See ya.
Episode Ten: Masterclass Replay - Revision Without Overwhelm: Learn the 4-step process to take your draft from messy to marvelous
In this episode, I’m sharing a partial replay of a masterclass I ran for writers called Revision Without Overwhelm: Learn the 4-step process to take your draft from messy to marvelous. In this class, I’m sharing 1) what really makes revision overwhelming, 2) the 4-steps to a successful revision, and 3) tips for managing your revision process so you can make your manuscript better without getting completely lost in the weeds.
If you’re listening to / watching this episode when it comes out, Reader Ready Revisions is officially open for enrollment until January 30th, 2026! You can learn more and enroll with the link below. Missed this session? No worries! Subscribe to my newsletter and be the first to know when the next session opens!
You can listen to the full epsiode here. Or, watch here.
Links Mentioned:
Transcript
Please Note: This is an automatically generated transcript that has not been edited.
Olivia Bedford (00:00)
Welcome to episode number 10 of the Better Writer podcast. For this episode, I'm sharing a replay of a free masterclass that I ran last week called Revision Without Overwhelm, Learn the 4-Step Process to Take Your Draft from Messy to Marvelous.
The class ended up being a lot of fun and everyone who attended said it was really helpful, so I thought I would share part of the recording with you here. So I hope you enjoy and learn something from this session. If you want to be able to see the slides from the session on your screen, go ahead and find this video on YouTube. I am at Olivia Helps Writers and you can find every episode of the Better Writer podcast with video there.
If you're not watching right now, go ahead, go to YouTube so you can see all of the slides or sit back, relax, and enjoy the audio, which I'm sure is still going to be super, super helpful either way.
This is revision without overwhelm, learn the four step process to take your draft from messy to marvelous. All right. And then over the next hour-ish, we might run a little short, a little long, we'll see.
I'm going show you how to take the overwhelm and confusion out of your revision process so you can make revisions easier, more efficient, and ultimately more effective. All right. In case we haven't met or worked together in the past, my name is Olivia. I am a developmental editor, and I am a certified fiction book coach. Before I started working with writers, though, I was a writer just like you, ⁓ trying to figure out what to do, of testing things out, trying them along the way. ⁓
Along that path, I discovered that I am much, better at analyzing other people's work and giving them feedback. ⁓ So I'm a decent writer, but I really, really come alive when I'm giving feedback and helping other writers. And that is how I became an editor, how I became a book coach. My mission now is to help fiction writers turn their messy drafts into stories that their future readers will love. I do that with my editing services. I do that in coaching. And I'm going to do that now over the next hour and in a new course that I'm going to talk about at the end.
Before we dive in, I think most people here are writing some form of genre fiction. So mystery, fantasy, science fiction, all that is under that same kind of umbrella of genre fiction. That is what I specialize in. So you are definitely in the right place. If you write something else, so if you write more literary fiction or maybe write memoir, other types of nonfiction, I think this particular session is going to be helpful for you. I'm talking more about the process overall. So I think that is definitely going to be relevant. However,
I'm going to talk a little bit about a course that I'm offering in the end. That is probably not going to be the best fit for you. It really is for genre fiction authors. So I just want to put that context in upfront. That is my specialty. Most of what I do is kind of focused on those genres in particular. So if you write something else, I hope you will get a lot of the session. But just keep in mind that it is not necessarily going to fit perfectly. And you might have to tweak and adjust to make it really fit your process and your genre. All right.
Okay, before we dive into the actual content, I just want to ask you to put away the phones, shut the million tabs that are probably open on your computer right now, and just really give yourself this next hour to focus on your writing, on this content, just so can all be present together. I know how tempting it is to multitask, but multitasking is a myth. So we'll try to shut out those distractions for now.
Okay, we are here to talk about revision. I just want to know which one of these describes you. So you can put it in the chat, whichever one of these resonates or multiple do. If you have ever struggled to revise something you're working on or if you have ever doubted whether the book you're working on is truly worth all the effort that you're putting in. And if you are someone who wants to write a great book, if you only knew how to do it.
Okay, so Paul's saying all three amazing, I am got, ooh, spiritual memoirs. That is, I actually just read an article about writing a spiritual memoir in Writers Digest. All right, anyone else wants to throw in the chat? Are you one of these people who has struggled to revise, who wants to write a great book, or if you have ever felt doubt? Okay, definitely question whether it's worthwhile is super valid. I think all of us have that point where like, why are we doing this? Who are we to think that we could write a book?
Okay, all right, so you can keep throwing that in the chat if you are in one of those categories right now with your current project. All right, page says struggling. All right, okay.
So whether or not one of those categories perfectly resonated with you, I'm guessing that you're here because you have a draft and no idea what to do with it. Or maybe you have finished a book before, but you want to make your revision process more efficient, more effective. Or maybe your revisions have totally stalled out and you just need help. You have no idea how to move forward. And that's why you're here. If it's any of those reasons, you are absolutely in the right place. And hopefully, this session is going to help you. All right.
Before we start off, I just want to say that I believe you can all write a great book. It may take time. It may take a lot of effort. Some of you may be further or closer to that goal, but I believe that it is possible. I believe that revision does not have to be miserable, and I believe that you can do this. That is why we're here. That is why we're here learning together. All right. So here is the plan for today. We are going to talk about what makes provision so overwhelming for so many writers.
Then we're going to talk about a four step process you can use to make those revisions more manageable and more efficient. Then we're going to talk about how I can help you with that process if you want me to. And we'll end with a Q &A session so you can ask any specific questions you have about revision going forward. All right. To start, why is revision overwhelming? I think it comes down to a few things that tend to get in the way of this process. First off, there are writers who try to do too much at once.
So they are trying to fix plot holes, analyze their characters, and fix all of their typos and comment issues, while they're also trying to discover their voice, give each character a unique voice, and trying to wrap it all up with perfect formatting, ready to be published as soon as they finish their draft. And that is just unrealistic. These are all separate parts of the process that need to be treated as such. And if we try to do everything all together, it's going to be totally overwhelming and we're not going to do it effectively. Then there's the writers who don't have a strategic approach to keep them on track. They're bouncing around through different classes, different resources. ⁓ They're trying, you know, different strategies all the time. They're trying to, you know, jump to chapter one and then chapter five and then the end and then trying to figure out and make it all come together. And it's just not working. And finally, there are people who try to the entire story in their head at once while they're revising. They are trying to memorize their entire plot so that they can revise it and, you know, trying to remember what's going to happen in Chapter 50 when they're working on Chapter 1, trying to keep this whole complex thing in their head just by looking at one section at a time. Then there are also people who think that they have to get everything right in one single round of revision. So there's definitely some overlap here with the people who doing too much at once, but I think this is more the emotional side of it, where they are so convinced that the second draft has to be perfect, that they don't start. They think that the first draft could be messy, but draft two is where it all has to come together. It all has to be flawless. And so they never really start revising or they never move forward because they're so terrified that the decision they make is going to be the wrong one. And so they just keep getting stuck in that same spot and never moving forward.
So here are just some specific examples of what that could look like on a more tangible level. It could be trying to read your first draft straight through and trying to assess plot level issues just by reading it through chapter by chapter, as opposed to trying to find a way to look at the whole thing more holistically. It could mean bouncing between story and scene and line level revisions throughout the process, never really finishing any one of them, but just switching back and forth all the time. It could also mean that you're revising as you go without stopping to assess your whole book revising chapter one in isolation, then chapter two, and then chapter three, and never really stopping to consider does chapter one lead into chapter two, into chapter three, and so on. Again, these are just a few examples of what this could look like. There are many, many different ways that revisions can go wrong, and they are as unique as the writers making the mistakes. Those are just some examples to make it more tangible for you. All right, so now we know what we are trying to avoid. What leads into that revision overwhelm? What are we supposed to do in step?
All right, that is where the reader ready revision method comes in. Essentially, I took my process as an editor, what I do to analyze and help analyze client work and help them revise and thought, how could I turn this into something that writers can use on their own? Because ⁓ it's not possible to have an editor in your pocket 24 seven. And a lot of this revision work really does need to happen. ⁓ The writer doing it themselves. It's not just about finding someone to help you. You need to be able to do this on your own. So I thought, how could I translate this process into something that writers could use to make their revisions more strategic. Because I found that what I was learning to do as a writer in terms of revision was very, very different from what I was being taught as an editor to actually evaluate manuscripts and give feedback that helped. So I created this framework to help you. There are four steps to the revision process. And we want to go through each one in each round of revision. First, we're going to prioritize, then analyze, then strategize, and finally, revise.
And we are going to go into each of those steps. all right. Step one is to prioritize with clear goals. And in this case, I don't mean goals about how you're going to do the work. I mean goals about what your book is going to be for your readers. Because we need to know what we're trying to create before we can actually do the work to make it happen. And we need to set a goal for what our book is going to end up as when we finish this process.
And specifically, you're going to need to get clear on your personal priorities as a writer. What is the core of the book for you? And I know I talk a lot about getting your book ready for readers. I talk a lot about putting readers first, but you are the writer. This is your project. You have to be proud of what you create. You have to love what you create. So we will start with what matters to you. What is the core of your story? The message that you want to convey, the key piece of your story that it just wouldn't feel like yours anymore if you
That's where we're going to start. We're going to put that in the category of non-negotiables because throughout the revision process, you are going to have to make a lot of decisions. You are going to have to make some sacrifices, changes, things like that. And we want to know what is in that bucket of non-negotiable things that you're going to keep so that we can then make changes around it instead of trying to change that thing. You also need to get clear on your genre and your sub-genre. Now, that may seem really, really obvious. It may seem like you should already know your genre going into the revision process, but I will tell you, as an editor, I have people coming to me all the time who think that they are writing one thing when really they've created something else. They say that it's a romance, but there's no happily ever after. And the entire relationship develops off screen, which would be fine in a different type of book, but not if you're actually writing romance. So we need to figure out what genre are you aiming for? And does your book actually match that? Or are we going to to make changes? Or do you need to pick a different genre category? Either is fine. We just need to know what applies. You also want to figure out who exactly you were writing for. That involves both kind of the big categories like age. A YA book is gonna have a very different tone from a middle grade book or an adult book. So we need to know who is the audience. But it also has to do with what is your audience interested in? What kind of experience are they looking for when they pick up a book? And what do you need to deliver in order to make sure that they love the thing you create for them? And then finally, you also wanna think about your publishing goals. I don't think that the choice between self-publishing and traditional publishing should totally change your approach to the writing and revision process. However, you are going to have to keep a couple of different things in mind just based on those goals. For example, if you are going for a traditional publishing deal, word count is going to be far more important than if you are self-publishing. You still need to keep word count in mind because with self-publishing, you have to think about printing costs, but it's not as big of a deal compared to traditional publishing where an agent or an editor might have a cutoff point where they're no longer going to consider your book if you hit a certain word count and go over that. So it is something we want to consider. It doesn't necessarily make or break what you do with your story, but I do think it is important to keep in mind throughout the revision process so you can be strategic and know when you're making a decision that could affect your publishing chances versus a decision that is going to support them.
All right, most important though, we need to decide what kind of experience we are going to give to our future readers. What do we want them to get out of our story? What do we want them to feel when they finish? And to that we need to think about what matters most to those readers. What do they want from the type of book that you're writing? And that's going to vary genre to genre. If you are writing fantasy, maybe you need to all them with magic. Maybe you need to pull them into an adventure that makes them feel like they could be a hero saving the world just like your characters. If you are writing a cozy mystery, you are going to need to create a very different experience compared to if you were writing a different sub genre of mystery. You need to give us a sleuth who is not a professional, who's an amateur, who gets pulled into a mystery. It's not gonna be as gritty or boring as if you were writing a different type of mystery. So you really need to know what specifically are your readers looking for that they're not going to get from a different genre or from different writer. And then you need to figure out how can you deliver? What do we need to do to get our book to the point where it is ready for those readers who want a certain kind of experience from our book? And that brings us to step number two, where you are actually going to analyze your manuscript.
Before you can figure out how to create the book your readers need, you need to know what you're working with right now. What is happening in your current draft? And it is so key that we actually do this analysis step because oftentimes we think that we know what's happening in our story. We think we know what we put on the page. But in reality, there something else has happened in the drafting process. And it's super important to get clear on what is actually there on the page in the moment.
Too many writers at this point jump in and they start reading their draft as if it is a finished book. They just start on page one and try to treat it as if they are a reader and this book is ready for them. That can work if you are an experienced writer. It can work if you tend to write a clean draft, but for many of us, especially if you identify as a pantser, that process can be a recipe for despair and disaster because it is going to either gets you to hyper-focus on line level things that aren't important when you start revising, or it could lead to you getting so caught up in the gap between what you your book to be and what it is right now that you feel stuck and you don't even know if it's worth it to move forward. So we don't want that to happen. So instead, I recommend starting with a reverse outline. Basically, that is a summary of your book. Let's see. near saying experience. So I think that really varies. So experience could mean you have finished multiple books. It can mean you have already published before. There's no one thing that no one certifies you and says, check, you are an experienced writer now. It really is ⁓ just depends on how many stories you've written, how confident you feel in the process. ⁓ And it kind of is going to depend on you testing it out and seeing, is my first draft readable enough that I can sit down and somewhat experience it as a reader would?
Or if you're newer, ⁓ then maybe ⁓ that is going to be something that ⁓ it's not going to feel that way. Also say, even if you're experienced, but you are a cancer or someone who writes super messy drafts, you may never, never get to the point where your first draft is going to be readable. And that's totally fine. That's not the goal. I'm just saying, if you have more experience and you tend to write clean drafts, then maybe you're good. But you need to figure that out for yourself. I definitely identify as a panzer. I don't imagine getting to the point where my first draft is super readable and coherent. And that's OK. That's not what I'm aiming for. page example of the reverse outline, not right now for this workshop. But I'm going talk a little bit about how we could be working together. And that opportunity definitely does involve examples of the reverse outline. But you can also email me later. And I can send you a couple screenshots that I have from a different class that I taught as well. And I will put my email on the screen in a little bit.
All right, okay. So. Like I said, I recommend starting with a reverse outline, which is basically a summary of your book, either in bullet point format where you're summarizing each scene or each chapter with a bullet point, or you can do it in a spreadsheet. Some people like to do one scene per line in Excel. Some people like to do it more of a synopsis and write it out as a narrative summarized. There's so many options. There's no one right way that works for everyone. You have to figure out what works for you. But the key thing is that that reverse outline is going to boil your story down to the most important parts our purposes when we're revising, the most important part is the plot itself. It's character arcs, character development, that kind of thing that's happening at a very high level over the course of your story. And a good reverse outline is going to narrow your focus to just those elements. So you're not trying to focus on character descriptions and the arc and your plot and your plot all at the same time, you're narrowing our focus. It's also helpful for helping you isolate level revisions because we're only looking at an outline. We're only looking at how that plot develops over the course of story. We're not also thinking about how we executed it on the page in individual scenes. So we're isolating it to just the plot. We can worry about everything else later. And it's also a great way to keep your entire plot in your head because instead of working with your entire 500 page draft, you can narrow it down to a five page outline or maybe a 10 page outline that is much, much simpler to work with instead of trying to conquer your entire NSTC manuscript, an editor, have encounter manuscripts that are 700 plus pages and you don't want to try to hold that entire thing in your head all at once because it'll make your life so much harder than it needs to be. All right. Then that reverse outline is going to enable you to find plot holes and dropped threads. It's going to help you evaluate carriage arcs and the cause-effect chain and so many other things that are super important.
And the best trick with reverse outline is to revise the outline first, but we are going to do that in the next step. Not quite yet. I will get there in a second.
And with our reverse outline, we are looking at things like conflict development, narrative drive, narrative focus, character arcs, effect, subplots, and more. In the next 40-ish minutes that I have with you, I am not going be able to go into detail about what each one of these things is. ⁓ This is just an example of the types of things that we're going to look at with the reverse outline. So you can take this list, take a screenshot, and then if you need to do further research on what those are, you could either do that with me. I'll talk about how later. Or you can do that work on your own.
But again, this is just kind of the starting point, the overall process that you can take and run with and customize to what you need.
Our goal in step two, when we are analyzing our manuscripts, is essentially to figure out where we have fallen short of the vision that we set in step one. So you set a goal for what you want your book to be. In the analysis step, we figure out where we're not meeting that goal yet. And this is not so we can beat ourselves up. It's not so we can get stuck in these feelings of failure or just revel in all the ways that we have not met the goal that is not the purpose. The goal is that we figure out where we're not succeeding yet so we can do better and create the book that we want to give our readers. And that is what happens in step three when we start strategizing our revisions. In step three, we are going to choose solutions that are going to bridge the gap between the current draft and the vision we set for ourselves. You are going to ask yourselves questions like which revisions are going to serve my readers? Which scenes do I need to revise or add or cut? And how can I amplify what is working already in my story?
I think that last bullet point is so key. We often think of revision as just finding problems and fixing them, but it's not. Revision is also about finding what's already working and making it even better. How can we amplify the things that are already great, make them even, even better sometimes by cutting other things that aren't working so well. But again, revision is really about both what is working, what isn't working, how can we make the whole thing work together. The exact revisions you choose are going to depend on your book. It's going to depend on what you were trying to create.
If you need specific help figuring out what that is, stay tuned. But again, it really is going to be personal and it's more in-depth than I can cover in just an hour. But there are many different solutions for every revision problem out there. This is the stage where you try to figure out which ones are going to work for you. Like I said before, we're going to make those changes to the reverse outline, not the manuscript first, so that we can test things out without having to rewrite 50,000 words at a time.
You might be wondering why we're doing the analysis and the strategy step separately. Why, you know, why not just start planning solutions while we're still analyzing the manuscript or analyzing our reverse outline? And it's because every part of the novel is connected. Every part is working together. So what seems to be a conflict issue could actually be a character arc issue and vice versa. If you try to start coming up with solutions while you're still analyzing your manuscript, there is a good chance that you're going to end up with solutions that address the symptom and not the root cause. Because all these things are working together and sometimes issues seem like it's about pacing or it seems like it is about not having a likable character when there's really a deeper issue in play that needs to be addressed first. Otherwise, the changes that you make to your characters or your conflict are not going to land the way you want them to. So we really want to get that holistic picture of our story first. We want to analyze the whole thing first and then think
How can we revise in a way that is going to address multiple problems at once? How can we revise in a way that is going to make the entire story better instead of trying to address these little pieces in isolation?
All right, again, if you made a reverse outline, this is when you're going to edit it with those planned changes. You add summaries of the scenes you're planning to write, mark scenes that need to be cut, and then make notes of changes that you're going to make to other scenes. This is not something that we're going to try to do all in one round. You might go through multiple rounds of revision with just your reverse outline, adding little changes, seeing if there are ripple effects in other parts of the manuscript, and then continuing on until you feel like you have gotten your plot to a solid place where it makes sense in the reverse outline.
At this point, it's also helpful to start setting specific goals for your process. Give yourself a deadline. Mark writing sessions on the calendar so you can commit to them. There is, again, no one right way to do this, so whatever works for you. Some of us really like to have a lot of structure and set specific goals. Other people are going to prefer something that's more flexible. Whatever works for you, this is the time to kind of think about, what do you want this revision process to look like going forward? All right. And then finally, it is time for step four, revising your draft.
And you will notice that we have gotten to the end of the process, and this is the first time I have mentioned actually making a change to your manuscript. And that is because in a successful revision, 90 % of the work is going to happen before you touch a single word in your draft. That is what we're doing, the hard thinking. We're making decisions. We are figuring out what is going to make our story better. So all of that thinking is done, and we have a clear plan guiding us before we ever sit down to start writing again.
Once you have that clear strategy, it becomes easier to implement, becomes more efficient, and hopefully more effective.
Are you going to run into issues or potentially have to make changes along the way? Yes, most likely you will. But that pre-work is still going to help us work smarter every step of the way. But again, we aren't going to stick super rigidly to that plan because we want to leave room for creativity. We want to leave room for our ideas to keep developing and changing along the way. And that is totally fine.
Now, this is another benefit of starting with a reverse outline. That's why I am such a fan, because you can now use that reverse outline as a checklist for your revisions. Each one of those changes you marked on the reverse outline becomes a task for you to complete in a future writing session. So you could work through it chronologically if that works for you and your brain, or you could bounce around because you don't have to worry about messing up something in your book if you jump straight to chapter 50 instead of starting with chapter one, because you've already done the thinking. You've already decided what's going to change along the way. So gives you a lot of freedom to kind of bounce around without having to worry that you might be creating problems for yourself down the road.
All right, some tips for addressing this step, because even though a lot of the thinking and hard work has been done, when we get to the revising stage, that is still going to be a difficult part, it's going to be a time-consuming part. So I recommend setting a realistic schedule that involves breaks when you need them. Do not try to just rush through, just because you've done the thinking doesn't mean it's going to be super, super fast or that you need to finish on a certain timeline. Give yourself the space, creative breaks.
Let yourself take this process as slowly as you need to to do it successfully. It's better than burning out and giving up on your story completely. think taking a break can also be a great way to see your story with clarity. So I highly recommend giving yourself a revision timeline that allows you to rest, recharge, and come back to your story with new energy when you need to. I also recommend staying focused on revision, not editing. Even though you've made revision decisions ahead of time, we still want to stay focused on developmental issues. Even when we're working with specific scenes, we are focused on plot level stuff, not going into, my heroine's eyes be sapphire or emerald? Those are not the questions for right now. We want to focus on keep making those conflicts as strong as possible. We want to make sure each scene is purposeful and engaging. And then we can worry about all that line level stuff later once the story itself is solid. The other thing I recommend is that you don't copy paste or work in your old draft. I actually recommend retyping the entire story. And yes, I did actually say, retype your draft, and I mean it. ⁓ Retyping is a great way to make sure you actually make changes. It's the same kind of concept from physics that an object in motion stays in motion, an object rest stays at rest. If you are working with an already complete draft and really trying to make changes, ⁓ it's a lot harder to do that than it is to start fresh with something new and make it better. Because when you are in your draft, if you want to take out a whole paragraph, you have to actually highlight the whole thing, delete it. Those words are gone. You feel like you lost something. And oftentimes when people are just making tweaks to a draft, they end up pushing issues down the road into their next revision. So even if they feel like they're being productive because they have technically revised, they changed some words around in a paragraph, making those big meaningful changes often means rewriting huge sections. It means actually getting rid of stuff that isn't serving your future readers, that isn't as strong as it could be.
And it's going to be much, much easier to make those changes if you are actually retyping the story and not just fiddling around with the draft you already have. Now, I don't mean actually rewriting it from memory that is excessive and not necessary. What I like to do is have one copy of the draft next to me, and then I have a blank document, and I am referencing the old copy while retyping the new one. Yeah. So again, that is just a way to actually force yourself to decide.
Is that original sentence or original paragraph strong enough to stay in the new draft? Or is there something better that is going to have more conflict, more tension, that is going to better communicate who my character is, that is going to better develop the world, whatever it is? We want to make sure that we are only putting the best content into our new draft and not just moving problems down the road into another round of revision by keeping things almost entirely the same with only small changes.
I am not saying that you need to do this for every single draft that you write. This is a great strategy for going from your first draft to your second draft. But I don't, but again, you're not going to do this every single time. Now, if you are someone who has made only very cursory changes in your first few rounds revision, you might have a fourth draft that quite honestly isn't all that different from your first draft. And maybe you need to do this to go from draft four to draft five. So fine, but we're not going to do it again to go from draft five to draft six unless something huge comes up along the way. But we're not going to this every single time. We are going to do it when we need to make big, meaningful changes to our main shows. Again, we're also still revising. We're not going to spend hours and hours and hours fine-tuning every single word. We are going to make a concentrated effort, to improve what we have on the page. Because ultimately, every plot-level element of your story gets executed on the page with words. It's happening in your scenes. So, while we do want to try to separate editing from revision, it's not going to be a perfect split because all of your characters' traits come out through the words you use to describe them. All of your conflicts come out through the words that you use to describe the conflict. So there is a little bit of that line-ending element baked in, but we are going to try to stay focused on just making those followable changes, improving the story as a whole versus, again, we're not trying to decide what is the perfect name for the bread-type product in your fantasy world or anything like that, that can wait for later. Also, I just to say, if you are not someone who can retype comfortably or efficiently, do what works for you. Again, I'm not saying that everyone should do this. If it's going to be something that's going to be a hardship, either because of your schedule or low physical needs, that's fine. This is not the only way to do this work. If you can commit to making those big meaningful changes while working your draft, do it. And don't even worry about this process.
Oh, I also want say I did not come up with this idea of retyping originally if you want to learn more about it. I originally got this from Matt Bell and his book Refused to Be Done, excellent book on the topic of revision that I highly recommend.
All right, to recap, I just threw a lot of information at you, but our four steps overall. We're going to start by prioritizing with clear goals of what we want our story to be. Then we are going to analyze what is happening in our current draft, strategize revisions that will get us closer to our ultimate goal and how we want to serve readers. And then finally, we are going to put all of those pieces into action when we actually go back and revise our story by retyping the draft or committing to making those meaningful changes in the draft that we already have.
Margaret, thank you. I'm so glad this is helpful. I do love memoir even though it is not a genre that I work with. Okay, so now that you know the process and where you know my recommendation for how to approach this revision process, you might be feeling overwhelmed. You might be thinking this is too much work or my book is even worth it. I just want to leave you with this quote. If there's a book that you want to read but it hasn't been written yet, then you must write it. You have a voice. You have a story to tell.
There is a reason why you decided to go on this journey of creating a book. You have something to say and that matters. I want your story to be in the world. I want readers to find it. I want it to be great. At the same time, I also firmly believe that if there is a book you want someone else to read, then you must revise it. No matter how hard you have worked on writing your book, you don't automatically earn anyone's time or attention or money. You have to earn it.
And this is a little bit of tough love, but I think it is true. There are so many books in the world and more and more are getting published every single day. And of course, some of them are AI garbage that no one really wants to read, but a lot of them are coming from writers just like you who are committed to writing a great book, who really care about their stories. And if you want your book to be competitive, you have to do the work to make it great because your story is worth it and your future readers are worth it. So you have to do the work to make it ready for them, to make it great for them, and it's worth it.
Thank you so much for listening to another episode of the Better Writer podcast. I really hope you enjoyed that replay of the free masterclass.
If you're listening to this episode when it comes out live, then my brand new revision course, Reader Ready Revisions, is officially open for enrollment. So, if you enjoyed what you heard in this master class, if you like the way that I teach and you want to dive even deeper into every nuance of the revision process, find the link for Reader Ready Revisions wherever you're listening to the show.
Enrollment will be open until Friday, January 30th, and I would love to have you in the course so that I can help you write the best book possible. Now, if you're listening to this in the future, don't worry, I will be running this course again. So get on my newsletter, check out my website, and you can find out when the next session is going to be open for enrollment. All right, thank you again for listening to this episode. I hope you learned something. I hope it was helpful.
If you have a writer friend who could benefit from this lesson as well, Please share this episode with them. Leave a review. Share it on social media. I really appreciate anything you can do to help this podcast find as many writers who need it as possible. Alright. Thank you again for listening. Have a wonderful week.
Keep writing and keep getting better one word at a time. See ya.
Episode Nine: The #1 Revision Mistake I See as a Developmental Editor
The biggest revision mistake writers make: not revising at all. I don’t mean people who are skipping revisions intentionally, I mean people who think they’re revising but aren’t. Confused about how that works? Listen in for the four ways writers accidentally skip revision and my best tips for making sure your revisions are efficient & effective.
You can listen to the full epsiode here. Or, watch here.
Here’s what you’ll hear in this episode:
Skipping revision is the biggest mistake I see writers making. They think they’re revising, but they aren’t making the big changes that will actually make their stories better and serve their future readers.
There are four ways that writers accidentally skip revisions: 1) they stick too closely to their original ideas and resist big changes even when the story isn’t yet working, 2) they skip straight to editing, addressing sentence level issues instead of plot level ones, 3) they make small tweaks and leave the bulk of the manuscript intact, and 4) they revise unstrategically, choosing revisions that address surface level issues, not the deeper root causes that need to be revised first
I recommend revising strategically by following four steps: prioritize, analyze, strategize, revise. You can learn about them in the free masterclass I have coming up on January 20th & 21st - https://my.demio.com/ref/FIuxckXO69ir6Cxh
Revision is hard work, but it’s so worth it. Just make sure you’re using a revision method that allows you to make the big changes that will serve your future readers.
Links Mentioned:
Transcript
Please Note: This is an automatically generated transcript that has not been edited.
Olivia Bedford (00:00)
The question is, what do I do about it? How do I make sure that I'm actually revising and not just tweaking or accidentally editing or skipping the revision process altogether? And the answer is that we have to get strategic. We need a process that allows us to dive deep in our novels, really see what's going on, and then make the decisions that are going to move your story forward in the most effective way.
Welcome to episode nine of the Better Writer podcast. In this episode, I wanted to talk about one of the biggest revision mistakes I see writers making, and that's not revising at all. And that might be strange because you're probably thinking, well, of course, if you don't do the thing you're supposed to do, then that's a mistake. But these writers think that they are revising.
So it's not that people are deliberately skipping revision thinking it doesn't matter. I'm sure that does happen, but that's actually not what I'm talking about today. I'm talking about the people who think that they are revising, but for one reason or another have actually skipped over that part in the process or just aren't doing it effectively because they have a misconception of what revision is and what revision should actually look like. I wanna make sure that you aren't making this mistake in your own writing. So I'm gonna share four ways that people accidentally skip revisions and how you can avoid those.
The number one way that people actually skip is simply holding too tightly to their original ideas. So they think that the purpose of revision is simply to adjust what is already on the page or to make sure that, you know, they've cleaned things up a little bit so there are no plot holes, things like that, but they aren't actually willing to reconsider what already written. So even when they're getting feedback from beta readers or from an editor that something isn't working or isn't serving readers, they are incredibly reluctant to actually make a change. Either they will make that change in a very cursory way or they will kind of argue with that feedback, try to avoid it, find a way around it, or try to kind of make minute adjustments thinking that that is going to be the same thing as fully revising their books. And sure, there is often a way to make something work. If there is something you're doing in your novel that you're really committed to and really want to explore, there is often a way to do it. However,
it's likely going to require bigger changes somewhere else. So if one part isn't working, maybe it's not emphasized enough, maybe you're not setting it up properly, you might have to cut something else in order to keep that thing that you're really attached to. So either way, if there is some fundamental big picture part of your novel that isn't working, you are going to have to make a big change in order to make your book work by either changing the thing that isn't working or changing something else to accommodate it. Either way, big rewrites are needed and if you're not willing to do that work, if you're not willing to let go of that original idea, the original thing that you thought was going to serve your readers, then that's going to be a problem. It's going to keep you from actually revising in an effective way and unfortunately trying to hold on to all of your original ideas could lead to you not making any of those ideas work. So instead of picking the ones that really were serving your readers, that were creating a great story, if you try to hold on to all of them, you end up with something that isn't working at all when you could have had something that worked really, really well and was an amazing book if you had been willing to let go of the things that weren't working or had been willing to change them so they do work.
The second way that people end up inadvertently skipping revision is by prioritizing the wrong things. So they think they're revising, but they're actually starting to jump into line editing or even copy editing because they are putting the line level edits, the sentence level edits first when they should be focusing on the big picture stuff first.
As a developmental editor, I sometimes get sample edit requests from people who have already had a professional copy edit their manuscripts. And it always breaks my heart a little bit because if you go straight from first draft to copy edit, there are almost certainly going to be developmental issues that were missed. And once you have gotten developmental feedback, you're most likely going to be rewriting or significantly changing a large portion of your book, especially if you are a first time author. Getting a copy edit before developmental editing is a waste of your money because one of two things is going to happen. One, you're either going to have to have that work redone when you have actually finished revising your book because things are going to have changed so significantly That first copy edit is no longer valid.
Or you are going to be so unwilling to make changes because you've already had a professional copy edit that your developmental edit is wasted because you're not going to actually make the changes that you need to make or listen to the developmental editors advice.
So if you are a first time author out there and you aren't sure when you should be having an editor work with your book, Please check out the blog post that I will link with this show. I walk you through the different types of editing and when you should work with each type of editor in your process. Not saying you need to hire multiple editors for your book. I also have a blog post talking about when you should hire an editor and whether you need an editor. But. If you are hiring editors, please make sure you're doing it in the right order so you can get the most for your money and not waste money on a round of editing that is going to have to be redone.
Alright, that was a bit of a tangent because even people who aren't working with professional editors can accidentally skip revision and go straight to editing. It can be really really tempting to start with that line level stuff because it's very apparent, it's very easy to spot typos, grammatical errors, sentences that are just plain awkward. Those things jump out at us
Especially if you sit down and try to read your first draft, like as a finished book. If you're trying to experience your draft like a novel, then those sentence level things are going to be what you notice because that's what's jumping out at you on the page. Then when you go to actually make revisions, rather than focusing on the big picture, The story level stuff that needs to be adjusted. you are more likely to fixate on the sentence level errors and start there. That editing part of the process often feels easier than the improvements are obvious and immediate. When you are revising a single paragraph, it is so easy to see your progress. When you are trying to rewrite your entire novel to address a structural issue, that progress is slow going.
it feels like you are moving backwards or like you're walking through molasses because it can be so slow and it can be so much harder than the drafting process. However, that step is essential. We have to get through that slow revision process so that we can go to editing, so that we can have a story that works and then start polishing it.
This is one of the reasons why I am such an advocate for reverse outlines because I think it is a really good way to make sure that you are actually evaluating your story at a high level before you start going into the editing process and looking at your sentences specifically. I've already touched on reverse outlining in a separate episode, so I'm not going to go into it here, but again, oftentimes when people are accidentally editing instead of revising, it's because they are trying to hold the entire story in their head. It's because they are trying to
read their draft straight through, trying to assess the structural errors that way, and instead all they really see are the surface level errors, the sentence level errors, and then they move past all of the structural stuff, the characterizations of the plot stuff, without meaning to, but just because they're not focusing on the right things and they're not looking at their draft in the right way.
The third way that people end up accidentally skipping revision is by making small tweaks rather than actually doing the hard work to rewrite their draft. This is one of the reasons why I am such a big fan of actually rewriting your story, not copying and pasting or working in the draft that you've already written. I got this idea originally from Matt Bell and his book Refuse to Be Done, which I'm sure I've mentioned on the show before,
But essentially he advocates for literally retyping your entire second draft. So nothing remains from the first draft unless you have explicitly decided to retype it the exact same way. And I know that sounds excessive, but you would be amazed at how easy it is to just gloss right over a passage that isn't actually working, that has no conflict, that doesn't make any logical sense to just let those things slide by and remain because they're already there in the draft. When you are working in a copy of the draft that you've already written, it's so easy to just let things remain. It's kind of that concept of an object in motion stays in motion, object rest stays at rest. If your draft is there, inert, you're moving things around a little bit, it's going to be much, much harder to make big changes because when you're working with that draft that already exists, to change an entire paragraph, you have to select the whole thing and then delete it. Poof, it disappears off the page. It feels like you're moving backwards versus if you retype your
It feels like you're moving forward because you are adding words to the page. Even though technically you are recreating something you already did, find it psychologically, you feel like you're creating something rather than destroying something. And I think that can be really helpful. for making some of those big changes, for really, really interrogating every scene that you wrote previously, every sentence that you wrote previously, and deciding does this deserve to stay in my draft, or is there something better that I can write right now in this new draft?
Alright, and then finally, the fourth way that writers inadvertently skip revision is by approaching the revision process unstrategically so that they end up only looking at surface level issues and not diving deeper into the root causes.
Essentially what I mean here is that someone is attempting to revise. They're looking for plot holes, they're looking for character issues, but because they don't have a systematic way to look at their story as a whole, they are only addressing the most obvious piece of the puzzle. They feel like their conflict isn't building up to anything, so they try to make things bigger and flashier and they add explosions,
But if they had gone deeper and looked at their story strategically, they may have realized that the problem they thought was happening at the end with their climax not feeling meaningful actually started at the very beginning when they didn't effectively establish the stakes or what the conflict means to the character in the first place. So just because an issue is appearing in one part of your draft doesn't mean that it's actually isolated to that one part of your draft. Novels are incredibly complex.
every part of your novel is interconnected. You cannot have conflict without characters, you can't have characters without a world, you can't have a world without the culture that your characters are building within it. They're all interrelated. So you need to have a strategic way to look at your novel that allows you to look at all of those pieces simultaneously without getting overwhelmed, without getting lost in the weeds.
We need a way to look at our story in its entirety so that we can make decisions that make the entire book better Instead of making changes that only address the most obvious surface level symptom of that issue versus the thing that is actually holding our story back altogether.
And sometimes I will say, sometimes the surface level thing is the thing that needs to be fixed, but we're not going to know that for sure unless we have done that work to fully evaluate the story as a whole.
so now that you know these different ways that people end up actually skipping the revision process, The question is, what do I do about it? How do I make sure that I'm actually revising and not just tweaking or accidentally editing or skipping the revision process altogether? And the answer is that we have to get strategic. We need a process that allows us to dive deep in our novels, really see what's going on, and then make the decisions that are going to move your story forward in the most effective way possible I like to do this with a four step process that I've been working on in the background to create for all of you. basically I took my process as an editor and I turned it into a framework that you can use for your revisions. I'm calling it the reader ready revision method
Because at the end of the day, your job as a writer and my job as an editor is to create a book that readers are going to love. We want your book to be ready for readers. So that is what this method is all about. That is what my work is all about.
There are four steps to the revision process that I want everyone to go through. First, you're going to prioritize. Figure out what it is that you want to create for your readers. You're going to set goals for your book that are specific to your genre, your ideal reader, the person that you want to enjoy your book in the future. We're going to start there, setting a vision For what you want your book to be. Step two.
you're going to analyze. We are going to get strategic and actually figure out what is going on in your draft. You are going to look at it holistically. I like to do that with a reverse outline. There are other ways to do it, of course, but that is what I recommend
The third step is where we strategize. after we know what's really going on in your draft, then and only then will we start determining solutions. We look at the big picture first, then we decide what we're actually going to do in revision to make the story better. Finally, step four. you actually revise. This is where you actually start
The key thing that I want you to notice is that the first three steps do not involve making any changes to your manuscript. The heavy lifting, the hard thinking, the decisions are all happening upfront.
Then we revise. We make a plan, we make it strategic, we make sure we have fully analyzed the manuscript, then we start rewriting. Too many people are jumping right in, they're reading their book on page one and just making changes along the way. That is not an effective or efficient way to revise your book because you have no idea what you actually need to do on a big picture level until you've analyzed the whole thing, thought about revisions that are going to make the entire story better. So we prioritize.
then we analyze, then we strategize, and then finally we revise by rewriting our drafts, actually making those big changes, especially when you're working with a first draft. But if you have a second draft that isn't really all that different from your first draft because you didn't follow these steps, didn't actually revise, then you might need to treat your second draft or third or fourth or even fifth or beyond, you might need to treat that draft like a first draft and really do this deep revision work so that you can create the best version of your story possible. All
if this episode has you feeling like you actually don't know what revision is and you have no idea how to actually revise your book strategically and efficiently and effectively, I am running a free masterclass this week and I'm going to go over all four of those steps in more depth. I will talk about some additional pitfalls that can trip people up in revision and how you can avoid them so you can finally
get your book done and ready for readers. So the link to that free masterclass is going to be in the show notes. If you find this months from now, weeks from now, after masterclass is over, it's okay. I'm also going to include a link to sign up for my newsletter and that is the best place to find out about all of these events when they happen. So if you are listening to this in real time, sign up for that masterclass.
I'm going to be teaching you all about that four step revision process so you can make sure you are actually revising your novel. And if you are listening to this in the future, Get on my newsletter so you can be the first to know when another one of these free classes is happening and you won't miss
Thank you so, so much for listening to another episode of the Better Writer Podcast. If you have a writer friend who needs to hear this message, please, please, please share the show with them. Post about it on social media.
I really appreciate all of your help getting the word out about this show. I've been having a lot of fun creating episodes and I hope that you are having just as much fun listening to them. again, if you want to make this the year that you finally finish revising your book, please join me for that free masterclass. The link is in the show notes and I would love to see you there live this week.
Thank you again for listening to the show. Have a wonderful day. Keep writing and keep getting better one word at a time. See ya.
Episode Eight: Revision Isn’t the Icing, It’s the Whole Cake
In this super short episode of the Better Writer Podcast, I'm reading an email I sent to my email list a couple months ago. You may have heard other writers/writing teachers compare writing to the process of baking a cake. It's true. They're both complicated processes, hard to master if you're a beginner, and totally worth the hard work. Writers often think revision is the icing in this process. It's not. It's the whole cake.
You can listen to the full epsiode here. Or, watch here.
Links Mentioned:
Transcript
Please Note: This is an automatically generated transcript that has not been edited.
Olivia Bedford (00:00)
Hello, and welcome to episode number eight of the Better Writer podcast.
Before we dive into the content, I just want to give you a quick warning. I am currently on the road staying at a lovely little hotel with a room overlooking a busy road.
out most of that noise, but if you hear any loud sounds come through, that is why, and I am very, very sorry that the audio quality is not as good as it usually is.
If you are a YouTube watcher slash listener, I also apologize there is no video due to a camera issue, but hopefully I will be back on your screens next week.
Alright, I'm gonna keep this episode short because like I said, I'm not at home,
But I couldn't miss this episode because it's number eight and I'm on a roll.
So I'm actually going to share an email I sent out to my newsletter a couple months ago, all about revision and cake. Here it is.
Writing a novel is a lot like baking a cake. Complicated, prone to errors, but so worth it in the end. I'm not the first to make this connection, but I see a lot of writers getting this analogy wrong. Often, writers think of revision as the icing on the cake, the decorative, sugar-sweet coating that makes your cake look beautiful after it's baked and cooled during the drafting process. They're wrong. Revision isn't the icing. It makes the whole damn cake. Revision is tasting the batter and making sure you have enough salt
sugar, vanilla extract, or cinnamon. Revision is tasting the batter and realizing you used salt instead of sugar and need to dump out the whole thing and restart. Revision is deciding midway through that you actually want to make a chocolate cake and running to the store for cocoa powder. Revision is coating the pans with butter and flour to make sure your cakes slide out effortlessly later. Revision is realizing you forgot to set a timer and trimming off all those crispy little edges or, sadly, tossing the whole blackened thing and starting over.
so that they're level and stackable. Revision is carving your cake into a new shape because you're feeling fancy and ambitious that day. Revision is adding just enough filling between your layers to make sure the cake flavor isn't overpowered or destabilized by what's inside.
Revision is all-encompassing and pervasive.
Revision means re-evaluating every single part of your novel and being willing to edit or omit or change anything that isn't serving your story. Revision is being willing to do the hard thing, the thing that will make your finished novel so unbelievably tasty that your future readers can't put it down. Revision is ruthless, but worth it.
Now, if you're not a baker and these cake metaphors have your head spinning, here are three simple strategies for treating your revisions like the whole cake.
Number one, be willing to toss the whole bowl. I fully subscribed to the Terry Brooks philosophy that the first draft is just you telling yourself the story, but revision is about your future readers. That means you need to be willing to do anything and everything to make sure your story works for them. If a subplot creates confusion, cut it. If a character feels random and steals the stage from your protagonist, save them for another story. A pretty chapter that doesn't do anything
needs to be rewritten so it is relevant or banished from your manuscript. And if you find a problem that fundamentally destroys your premise, you may need to be willing to rewrite the whole entire thing.
Number two, prioritize effectively. Just like baking, writing a novel has a set order of operations. You can't trim the top of a cake that hasn't been baked yet, and you can't polish a novel that hasn't been drafted. On a less extreme level, we have to be careful to work through our revisions in the right order. Don't jump to line or copy editing before you're 100 % certain that your plot works, your character arcs are well-developed, and your world makes logical sense, among other high-level concerns.
This is not an exhaustive list. The alternative is to waste time polishing paragraphs that may never make it to the final version of your book, or to get so attached to the way you wrote something that you lose sight of why you wrote it and what purpose it's supposed to be serving in your novel, which will make it 10 times harder to cut the sections that aren't pulling their weight.
Number three, remember that the batter isn't the end game. Cake batter is delicious, and I will always sneak a taste, but that doesn't mean I'm going to stop there. Eventually, the cake goes into the oven. Eventually, it will be cooled and frosted and shared. Every hard, messy step along the way serves the true end goal, creating something you're proud of and excited to share with the world. Your job isn't to write the first draft or even the second.
your job is to create something that your future readers will enjoy as much as you hope they do. That also means making decisions with that reader in mind. For example, if your entire family loves chocolate cake and hates strawberry, you either need to bake your strawberry cake for someone else looking for.
It'll be worth it when they come back asking you for a second slice and tell everyone else they know about your amazing recipe.
Alright, that is it for episode number eight of the Better Writer podcast.
I hope you enjoyed that little sneak peek of what my email newsletters are like. If you enjoyed it, you can subscribe. There is a link wherever you are watching or listening to this show, and I would love to have you as a subscriber.
if all these baking metaphors have you craving cake, I will do the same thing I did when I originally sent out this email and link to one of my favorite cake recipes. It is a chocolate orange cake that I often make around the holidays. It is absolutely delicious. I hope your family enjoys it as much as mine did.
All right, have a wonderful week. Thank you so much for listening to this show. If this episode resonated with you, please share it with another writer who can use it, post about it on social media. Anything you can do to help me spread the word about this podcast is so very much appreciated.
thank you again for listening. Have a wonderful week. Keep writing and keep getting better one word at a time. See ya!
Episode Seven: The Do’s and Don’ts of Revising Your Novel in 2026
Revision can be overwhelming but it doesn’t have to be. As a developmental editor, revision is my superpower and I love helping people figure out what to do with their messy first (or second) drafts. In this episode, I’m sharing six do’s and don’ts for revising your novel successfully in 2026. If you can approach revisions strategically, the entire process becomes easier, more efficient, and more effective. Let’s dive in!
You can listen to the full epsiode here. Or, watch here.
Links Mentioned:
Get my Revision Kickstart Guide for free here: https://olivia-helps-writers.kit.com/revision-kickstart-guide
Read my blog post on reverse outlining here:https://www.oliviahelpswriters/com/blog/reverse-outlining-what-why-and-how
Learn more about Matt Bell’s book Refuse to Be Done here: https://bookshop.org/a/93888/9781641293419 (head’s up, I’m a bookshop.org affiliate!)
Transcript
Please Note: This is an automatically generated transcript that has not been edited.
Olivia Bedford (00:00)
Revision is hard, it is not easy, but we can make it doable, we can make it better, we can make it easier.
And that is my goal for today.
Welcome to episode number seven of the Better Writer podcast. This is our first episode of 2026. And I'm so excited that you're here because today I'm talking about one of my favorite topics in the world, revision. Now, before you roll your eyes, exit of the
really do love revising. I'm a pantser at heart. I think this is why I'm a developmental editor.
because revision is where I come alive. It is my favorite thing in the world to help people with. And I know that I am kind of in the minority there.
everyone has their strengths and weaknesses when it comes to the writing process. For me, I cannot help you come up with ideas. Do not ever ask me to help you to come up with the idea for a novel because I can't do it. I come up with ideas all the time, but they are like a lightning bolt. I am struck by an idea. I do not know where it comes from. 99 % of the time, it's while I'm brushing my teeth at night. Couldn't tell you why, but...
Ideas just kind of come to me is great when it works, not so great when it doesn't, but I am not the person who can really sit you down and help you find an idea for your novel. In contrast, if you come to me with a draft that already exists and ask me to help you make it better, I become the lightning storm. I am the one shooting off lightning bolts of ideas all the time. And it's so funny how, you know, different people are just better at different parts of the process, are better at explaining different parts of the process.
For me, revision is my superpower and that's why I want to talk about it today with you. Because I know that for so many people, revision is overwhelming and confusing and hard.
So I'm gonna try to help make revision a little bit easier with this episode by giving you six do's and don'ts of revising your novel. And this is gonna apply whether you are just working on your first draft or whether you have been circling your novel, poking and prodding at it for months, if not years. So first off, I just wanna say revision is hard, it is not easy, but we can make it doable, we can make it better, we can make it easier.
And that is my goal for today. All right. So here are my do's and don'ts for revising your novel.
first, do revise in layers. What do I mean by that? I mean you should break your revision down into steps so that you are not trying to revise every single aspect of your novel at once.
Revision becomes overwhelming when we try to every single little detail in our book at the same time. You're trying to fix character arcs while you also fix your commas and you're trying to add on to the conflict while you also try to fix all of your dialogue and your setting descriptions and everything else. And it quickly spirals out of hand because we cannot hold the entire picture in our heads at once.
And if we try to do all of those things in the same revision, it's going to get overwhelming, it's going to feel impossible, and most likely you're going to end up, working inefficiently because you're gonna have to backtrack and address all those things separately anyway. So you might as well do that from the beginning and save yourself time in the long run, even if it seems like you're working more slowly because you're working on one thing at a time.
Specifically, when we think about
that looks like in practice, I recommend starting with high level stuff first. Worry about your structure, your plot, your character arcs. Worry about how your conflict is escalating over the course of the novel as a whole. I recommend doing that with a reverse outline so that you are only looking at your structural elements and not worrying about how you've actually executed it on the page.
If you want to learn more about what a reverse outline is and how it works, will link a blog post that I wrote about it in the show notes. But the basic idea is that you are summarizing your story and then working from that summary to do your first round of revisions by literally just focusing on the story itself, revising your ideas for the story itself before you even think about implementing it into your story.
Then once you've done that, once you have looked at all the structural stuff and made sure that your story is working on that high level, go back and work on your execution at the scene level. For now, we're only worried about big things, but we're focusing on how they actually come across on the page. So for this round of revisions, you want to focus on how your characters are coming across in individual scenes. You want to make sure
each individual scene has conflict, that each individual scene is shown and not just told or summarized.
And you want to make sure that your dialogue is working at this point as well. But again, we are thinking about this in big terms. You want to make sure that your dialogue has conflict, that your dialogue is purposeful. We're not going to worry about fine tuning every character's voice quite yet.
Once each of your scenes is doing what it needs to do, it has a purpose, it has conflict, it has character development, then we are going to go back. We are going to dive in and really focus on that line level writing. This is where you want to fine tune your setting descriptions. You want to make sure that everything you're narrating is vivid and precise and clear for your readers. This is where you want to start editing dialogue to make sure that your character's voice is coming through on the page.
and that all of your characters sound different. You also want to make sure that your dialogue is engaging at this point. Are your conversations including a lot of filler words or small talk or are you getting to the point and making sure that those conversations have tension? These are all things that we want to do at this line editing stage to really refine and strengthen each individual scene. Then at the very end of this process, we'll start thinking about spell check,
about finding typos, all those grammar issues, and little things like that. I see way too many writers trying to start there. They want their story to be clean, so they run spell check and they think that they've revised. That's not revision, my friends. I'm so sorry if you thought it was, but revision is unfortunately far more complicated than that. And unfortunately, when you start by looking for grammar errors, if you start by looking for typos, you may end up wasting a lot of time because the section that you edited
could end up being taken out of the book completely or completely rewritten or completely changed in some other way. So start with the high level stuff first. Make sure everything on the page actually belongs there in that form. Then start fine tuning, then start cleaning it up.
Now, the exact tasks that I just listed are just scratching the surface and the exact order is going to vary author to author. You may have things that you don't need to revise because you already did them on the first draft. You may need to revise things that I didn't mention here. It's going to vary person to person.
Number two, do not read your first draft like it is a finished book. This one is so dangerous and it trips up newer writers all the time. for some reason, people think that the first step after finishing a first draft is to print the whole thing out or export it to a Kindle and sit there and read it as if it is a clear and compelling story. And,
You might be a person who writes super clean drafts. Maybe you can do that. But most likely,
If you're just starting out, if you have never written a book before, your first draft probably isn't in a state where it is going to be readable or enjoyable as if it's a book. And that's okay. Your first draft isn't meant to be perfect. It's not meant to be good. And I think if you sit down and try to just read your draft, two things can happen. The first is it can be incredibly demoralizing. You look at your story, you're expecting it to be great because it felt great when you were writing it, and then it's not.
and too many people I think give up because their first draft doesn't live up to their expectations and they think that they failed, that they're not going to be able to make it better and that simply isn't true. then the second thing that can happen is even if you don't give up on your story after reading your draft, you might be tempted to start changing surface level things because that's what pops out at you
when you're just reading the story from cover to cover. What I mean by that is you might fixate on grammar issues or awkward sentences or descriptions that fell flat, but until you have actually established that your story works on a plot level, those edits are pointless because you might be editing scenes that don't belong in your story or don't belong in the story in that order or need to be completely rewritten. So I am a big fan of reverse outlining because it a.
does not require you to read your book through like it's ready to be read. And because it enables you to really hone in on those story level issues first and to revise just the structure of your story before you try to do anything else. right. Then number three, do retype your draft instead of just copy pasting from the old draft.
This one is probably going to be controversial and you might have a cringe just hearing me say that, but trust me when I tell you that there is a world of difference between actually rewriting your story from scratch and simply copy, pasting, or tweaking the version that already exists. You don't need to do this for every single draft of your book, but I really advise you when you go from draft one to draft two
rewrite the thing. I did not come up with this by myself. I got this idea from Matt Bell and his book Refused to Be Done, which I will also link to in the show notes. But the core idea is that you actually have to make changes as you go from one draft to the next. And oftentimes, especially if you write messier or you're newer, your first draft is going to contain a lot of great ideas.
but is going to be hampered by very poor execution. Again, it doesn't mean you failed, it's just the reality of the process. So if you simply start tweaking what you already have, if you're just making minor changes, or you're just copying things over and then starting to move them around on the page, it is highly, highly likely that those problems of execution will persist into the next draft.
because you might think you're making big changes, but really the core of what you have is still there and it's still not working. When you're retyping your story, you put yourself in a position to critically evaluate every single sentence in your story and you have to decide for every single sentence, is it worth retyping? Is it worth putting on the page again? Or is there a better way to say this? Is there a better version of my story?
That doesn't mean that you need to completely rewrite it from memory either. What I like to do is have a printed copy of my book next to me and then I type into a document on my computer screen. You could also use a split screen or a dual monitor, whatever works for you. But again, I'm referencing what I've already written, but then I'm deciding, is there a better way to say this? Or if I decide it really is already working well, then I will retype that exact phrasing. But again,
only if it's worth it.
Another benefit of this process is that it works really well with a reverse outline. So basically, the reverse outline becomes my checklist of scenes to add, scenes to delete, scenes to rewrite. And then I have my reference copy as I'm retyping, either revising old scenes or adding new ones as I go. It also allows you to start handling those line level issues at the same time that you're still working on
developmental changes by implementing new scenes, et cetera. So it is a great way to kind of kill two birds with one stone while making sure that you are actually making changes that matter to your story.
Number four, do not fixate on your original ideas. You have to be willing to let go of what you wrote before. Otherwise, your revisions will not work. And I want to be really clear. That does not mean getting rid of everything that you wrote the first time. I am not an advocate of kill your darlings as a blanket rule. I think that advice is often given with
out enough context and it ends up getting misused. Loving something is not a reason to cut it from your book. I sometimes hear people who say, I loved the scene too much so I think I have to get rid of it. I'm like, why? If you love it, readers probably will too. So Kill Your Darlings gets overused where people think that liking something is a bad thing in their books and it's not.
Kill your darlings really means if there's something that you added because you like it, because it's fun, but it isn't serving your story or isn't serving the experience you want readers to have, then we get rid of it. But only then.
What this really means is you just need to be honest with yourself about the impact of your choices. Maybe you decided to do something experimental and it didn't work. Maybe you have a character that you really, really like, but they actually are completely redundant with another character. You don't automatically have to get rid of them, but you might need to change what they do in the story or how they're used. killing your darlings
mean
removing them from the story. It could mean changing them, reworking them, adjusting them. The idea here is that you're not getting stuck on your first idea and assuming that your first idea is your best idea. Unless it is. Sometimes what you came up with in the original draft is great, is working. So we want to be careful here that we're not trying to change everything just to say we've revised. We want to be
critical, we want to be very strategic. We want to analyze what is and isn't working before we start making these choices. But when we realize something isn't working, we need to be willing to let go of that original idea and do something different. Another thing to be careful of here is critically assessing whether what you prioritized was the right thing.
I see this often when writers are trying to surprise readers. They think that surprising them is the best way to keep readers engaged and hooked in stories. And I think this happens because surprises are often memorable. We remember twists in books that we read. We tell our friends, you have to read this book. It has a great twist. And then we want to replicate that. And twists are great. Surprises are great.
However, surprises are only one tool in our literary arsenal and they often aren't the best tool for actually engaging readers long term. Because you think about it, you can't be excited about something if you don't know it's coming. You can't be afraid of something if you don't know it's coming.
And those two emotions, anticipation or concern for the characters is what keeps readers engaged in the story. So, surprises can absolutely work. They can enhance a reader's experience. But if you're over relying on surprise, you can end up with a book that has no suspense, no tension, no conflict, because readers have no idea what they should be worried about. They have no idea what's going wrong in the world because you were trying to surprise them. And instead, you just made your book boring because all of the
problems are hidden from the reader. your intention was good. You wanted to have a twist. You wanted to surprise readers and have them talking about your book to all of their friends. But if you misapply that goal, if you make that goal a priority when it should be secondary that is where we can run into trouble. And that is where you might need to let go of that big twist and instead plant that conflict earlier. Let readers see what's happening earlier so they can actually
Get excited, be worried about the characters, and be hooked in your story from the start.
the big thing to remember here is that the first draft can be just for you. When you're writing, when you're creating, when you're drafting, it is all about what you want, what you find exciting, what you find interesting and unique and fun to explore. Once you decide that you are going to publish your book, you are no longer the most important person in your writing. It's now the reader.
And if you hate that, if you don't want to write for other people, that is totally fine. But then publishing should not be a goal. If you want to publish your book, if you want to make money from your writing, you have to put the reader first. And that's what this tip is all about. If your original idea does not serve the reader, it has to go. Or you need to decide that you're writing something else for a different group of readers. That's fine, too. But either way, we need to make sure that our audience and our writing align. Otherwise, it's not going to work out very well for us.
And that brings me to number five, do put genre first. I see so much writing advice out there that is supposed to be genre agnostic. And there are definitely tips and rules that apply to all genres equally. However, almost all of that advice still needs to be adapted to a specific genre lens.
For you as a writer, when it comes time to revise, you need to think very critically about the experience you are giving readers and what they want from a book in your genre. a romance reader does not want a generic story that happens to have a couple on the cover. They want the book to be a romance from start to finish, and that means following different rules than if you were writing a mystery or a thriller or even women's fiction.
The goal here is not to make your story identical to the other stories in your genre. It's just to make sure that you are actually hitting the expectations, the conventions, the things that readers are going to want to see when they pick up that specific book.
I also recommend starting your revision process by getting super, super clear on which genre you're actually writing. You may think that you know or that it's an obvious answer, but you would be shocked by the number of times I have clients come to me who say they're writing one genre and then I get into the manuscript and I have to let them know that they're actually writing something else. Usually it's a matter of a specific sub-genre, but sometimes I have people writing romance with a tragic ending and
It's no longer romance, at least not a romance with a capital R. And that's not necessarily a problem. there is no one genre that you should be writing. It's just a matter of making sure that what you are labeling your story as is what it actually is. Because ultimately, genre is a marketing category. Genre is a method of communication that allows you to find the right readers for your book. So it's not
that that person should have written romance with a happy ending, they just actually needed to call their book something else so that they can set the right expectations for their readers. But that is something that we need to be clear on as we revise so that we can make sure we are making the right choices for our genre for the story we are trying to tell.
And finally, number six, do not get feedback before you're truly ready. And specifically don't get the wrong type of feedback before you're And that can happen in a couple of different ways. First off, I highly, highly, highly recommend keeping your first draft to yourself. Make revisions on your own first before showing it to anyone else.
and this is especially true of anyone who is not an experienced writer or editor. Your first draft should never go to your best friend who loves book talk. Why? Because your best friend has probably never seen someone's raw first draft and they're either going to give you feedback that is unhelpful or they're going to give you feedback that is downright harmful. That could look like them telling you that your book sucks because it's unreadable because it's a first draft
Or it could even be in the form of them giving you valuable feedback on something you shouldn't be worried about at that point in the writing process. For example, if they go in and clean up your grammar, it might be very helpful, it might be very generous, but that's not the kind of feedback you need on a first draft. So I generally recommend that everyone do at least one round of editing on their own. But if you really need feedback, if you are hopelessly stuck, go to someone who understands the writing process.
Go to a writer who has experience with their own first drafts. Go to a critique partner. Go to a writing class. Go to a developmental editor who is going to specifically look at the story as a whole and will not give you feedback on your grammar when they know it's a first draft. So again, it's not that you should never get feedback. Feedback is essential.
but you do need to be very careful about who sees your first draft and whether or not they are actually going to be equipped to give you helpful feedback or if they are going to focus on the wrong things and knock your revisions off course. Also be very careful that you're only showing your early drafts to supportive people. We all know the people in our lives who give us scathing critiques in the name of being helpful and that's
might be helpful at some point in your process, but it's unlikely to be helpful with a first draft when you're still building confidence in your story. Honestly, I am never a fan of scathing critiques. I think they usually do more harm than good. That is why I am a strengths first editor. That is why I always lead with what is working. I try to be positive and empowering because writing is vulnerable. Writing is hard. And if you know that someone is going to tear you down,
Do not share your draft with them. Just don't, even if they want you to. Just say it's not ready and keep saying it's not ready until they forget about it and leave you alone.
are also ways that you can get feedback on an early draft. I generally don't recommend developmental editing for first drafts, but a manuscript evaluation, a book coach, something like that.
can be helpful because again, those are gonna focus on very high level things. They are not going to get into your execution on the page. They're not going to get into grammar or anything like that. And if anyone tries to give you feedback on your grammar when they are reading your first draft, just run, run the other way. That does not matter at this point in the story. The only thing that you need to worry about when you are revising your first draft, that first round of revisions is whether or not the story is working as a whole.
everything else can wait because if your story is not working at a structural level you are going to be rewriting. You are going to be making massive changes and that is going to mean redoing all of those line level edits anyway so don't double your work. Just handle the story level stuff first then come back to line edit and copy edit and everything else at the end when the story is set in stone.
All right, those are my six do's and don'ts for revising your novel in 2026.
Thank you so, much for listening to the Better Writer podcast. Happy New Year. I hope you have a wonderful start to 2026 and I'm so glad that you're here making me part of your writing journey.
One of my big goals for 2026 is to share this show with as many writers as possible. So if you know someone who needs to hear this right now, please send it to them. Take a screenshot, share it on social media.
Anything you can do to support would mean the world to me.
Thank you again for listening to another episode of the Better Writer Podcast. Happy writing. Keep getting better one word at a time. See
Episode Six: How to hit your writing goals in 2026 (even if you feel behind...)
2025 is almost over, and if you’re anything like me, you’re feeling behind as a writer. This was a big year for me, but it was also an insanely unproductive year for my writing. In this episode, I’m sharing what I used to do to fit writing into my busy life as a full-time high school teacher. These are the habits I’m recommitting to in 2026 laid out so you can steal them and move forward on your writing goals this year!
You can listen to the full epsiode here. Or, watch here.
Links Mentioned:
Subscribe to the Better Writer Weekly newsletter here
Check out Sarah Elizabeth Sawyer’s work on Fictation here
Check out my blog post on setting flexible writing goals here
Check out my blog post on setting non-word count writing goals here
Key Takeaways
For me, 2025 was a pretty incredible year. It was also an incredibly busy year. I got a lot done, but my writing unfortunately took a backseat to everything else. In 2026, I’m recommitting to my writing.
Here are my top tips for making writing a part of your life, even if you’re super busy.
First, set goals that mix flexibility and accountability. For me, that meant setting a strict monthly goal (e.g., 10,000 words) and flexible weekly/ daily goals. I would aim to write an average number of words per week (e.g., 2,500) but adjusted the specific number depending on how busy each week was. The same was true for my daily goals. I had a number to aim for, but if I missed the goal, I moved on and used other days to catch up.
I also tracked my goals, but I only focused on what I’d actually accomplished, not how far above or below my goal I was on any given day. That analysis was saved for the end of the week when I assessed my progress and adjusted the remaining weekly goals accordingly.
Second, be realistic about your constraints. I prefer to set goals based on how much time I have, not try to fit an unrealistic goal into my life after setting it.
Microgoals (e.g., 8 words per day) are also great for keeping yourself mentally focused on a goal, even if you don’t have enough time for a serious writing session.
You can also embrace shorter writing sessions or writing sessions that look different from the norm. For example, dictating your fiction can be a great way to sneak in a writing session while doing something else, like driving.
If you’re feeling behind going into the new year, stop it! As long as you’re making progress, you’re better off now than you were one year ago and you’ll be even better off next year compared to right now. Be realistic, set goals that make sense for your life, and enjoy the process.
Transcript
Please Note: This is an automatically generated transcript that has not been edited.
Olivia Bedford (00:00)
my goal this year is to bring back some of the stuff I was doing and to try to make writing a part of my life again, because even though working with clients and helping my clients write books is my priority, I still love writing. I still love creating stories myself, and I want to do more of that in twenty twenty six. So I'm making this episode for you, but I'm also really making this episode for myself. So as I was thinking about what was happening in the past when I was writing consistently, even though my life was busy,
versus now, I realized that there are a few things that I did in the past that really worked and I got away from them and now I want to bring them back.
let's talk about what those things are and how you can use them for yourself this year.
Welcome to episode number six of the Better Writer podcast and the final episode of 2025. I cannot believe that we have already reached the end of this year. It feels like time is moving so quickly. a lot of great things happened for me in 2025. And I was also very busy in 2025.
Just to give some context, I got a puppy this year. We had wanted a dog for so long. We finally got our landlord to say yes and we got a puppy. She's wonderful, but oh my goodness, having a puppy is so much work, which if you're a dog person, you know that having a puppy is a lot, but she is so sweet and so worth it. I also got engaged this year just a couple of weeks ago. I haven't really started planning anything for a wedding.
We've dated for eight years, so we're not in a huge rush. Clearly, we're taking our time. But I have started looking into all of the things that go into a wedding. And that's just another thing that it's great, it's wonderful, it's a lot of work.
I also had some not so great things happen this year.
talked about this before on the show, but I was formerly a high school English teacher and my partner still works in a school. He is now a school administrator. And to make a long story short, he had two English teachers quit over the summer. One of those was the ninth grade English teacher. And I basically said, I'm not going to let those ninth graders start.
their first year of high school with just a random series of subs. And so I agreed to step in. I went back into the classroom. It was only supposed to be for a short period of time while they were looking for a teacher. The first two weeks with the ninth graders were amazing. I loved them. They found a great teacher very quickly. I then transitioned into the 11th grade and that was so much harder because it wasn't just
back to school fun stuff anymore. It was real content and you know, I was there for a month and that was a lot longer than I thought it would be than I was hoping it would be. And I was still editing full time. I was still doing client work, keeping up with all those deadlines and it was really difficult to balance running the business and teaching full time. I was glad.
that I was able to step in. was really, really glad that the ninth graders had an amazing start to the school year in English. And I don't think that would have happened if it was just random teachers getting called in to lose their break for the day. So I'm really proud of that. I'm so glad I did it. But it was a lot.
even though I was only really subbing for about six weeks, the impact felt much more significant than that. In twenty twenty five, I also became.
a certified book coach. finished author accelerators program. I got certified, which was so exciting and I'm so proud of that. As a result, I started changing things in my
I have started changing some of my offers
I start to adopt a more coaching centric model. I am rolling out a new revision course that I'm so excited about. I started this podcast. So many fantastic things are happening in my business, in my life, things that I am
proud of things that I am celebrating as we go into the new year. But one thing that really did not happen for me this year was writing. I'm to be honest, writing has not been a major priority for me over the last couple of years. I am way more excited about helping other people write their books at this point. And honestly, I think I'm much better at helping other people write their books. If no one's ever said this to you before, editing
Other people's work and writing your own are two very different skills and editing other people's work just comes more naturally to me. I love it. It lights me up and it's something I'm really good at, ⁓ is what I found over the last few years. honestly, my writing has not been a huge priority, but 2025 in particular was unproductive for me as a writer. so this episode is for everyone else in that camp.
who feels like they are behind on their writing, who feels like they have not accomplished enough as a writer, this episode is for you. If you're someone who has accomplished everything you wanted to accomplish as a writer, that is amazing. Congratulations. Keep going. Hit me up on Instagram. Tell me how you have managed to balance writing and everything in your life, because I would love to hear how other people are doing it. But my goal with this episode is to ⁓
talk about what worked for me in the past because as I was reflecting I realized that part of the reason I haven't gotten any writing done this year is because I stopped doing all of the things that allowed me to write while I was teaching full-time. Because, I was just as busy as a teacher when I wrote my first book as I am now, but I still managed to write and I think it's because I was doing things differently, I was approaching things differently.
And my goal this year is to bring back some of the stuff I was doing and to try to make writing a part of my life again, because even though working with clients and helping my clients write books is my priority, I still love writing. I still love creating stories myself, and I want to do more of that in twenty twenty six. So I'm making this episode for you, but I'm also really making this episode for myself. So as I was thinking about what was happening in the past when I was writing consistently, even though my life was busy,
versus now, I realized that there are a few things that I did in the past that really worked and I got away from them and now I want to bring them back.
let's talk about what those things are and how you can use them for yourself this year. All right, the first thing that I did in the past was I set very specific goals for myself, but I made them flexible.
And I think that duality was incredibly important. So I would have a very strict monthly goal and then I would set very loose weekly and daily goals. So that means if I wanted to write 10,000 words in the month, my 10,000 word goal was set in stone. So I would say I'm going to write 10,000 words in January. That goal is not going to change. To hit that 10,000 word goal,
I would then set a weekly goal. Let's say it's a four week month, my goal is going to be 2,500 words per week. But I held that goal very loosely because maybe one week is busier, so I'm only going to write 1,000 words and then the next week is going to be less busy, so I'm going to write 5,000. Or I don't think the math there actually worked, but you get the point. So I would have a very strict monthly goal.
and then flexible weekly goals that changed depending on how much time I had. The same was true for each daily goal. I would say I'm going to try to write X number of words each day, but if I miss a day, if a day is totally unproductive, then I can shift those words the next day. If a day is super, super productive, then maybe I can take a day off later in the week when I have less time. again, I try to balance
accountability for myself with flexibility by having that set monthly goal and then very flexible daily and weekly goals that I could adjust as needed to accommodate days that were busy, days that I wasn't feeling well, days that just didn't work out with days where I put the pedal to the metal and really go for it.
second thing that I used to do was I was super realistic about my constraints. I set goals that were completely based on what I thought was realistic for the month, not what I thought I should be doing for the month. So that means that I would actually look at my calendar first. I would...
find the days that were just not going to work for writing because I knew I had something going or I had a big deadline or grades were going to be due or something like that and I would just cross them out. Those days did not exist. Then I would look at the number of days remaining, decide what was a good reasonable average for those writing days, and set my goal that way.
instead of saying, I'm going to write 20,000 words this month because I think I should, I would look at the calendar and say, I've got 20 writing days, I think I can write about 500 words per day, and so my goal is going to be 10,000 because that feels realistic. I might, you know, adjust it slightly higher to push myself, or I might say,
This month is going to be a little iffy. There are some things that I'm not certain about whether or not they're going to happen. So I'm going to adjust this goal a little bit lower just in case. So again, it's about being realistic, not having no accountability for yourself, but just acknowledging that life happens, you're busy, and you only have so many hours in the day. And if you set a goal that is unachievable, most likely you're not even going to get close because you are going to give up, burn out, beat yourself up.
Whereas if you set a very realistic goal, an achievable goal, you're much more likely to stick with it because it doesn't feel impossible.
Another thing I did is I treated different days differently. I did not have one set daily word count goal that I was trying to hit every time. Instead, I adjusted based on whether it was a weekday or a weekend, whether I had something going or not, or whether it was just a day in the week that I tended to have more energy for writing. So Tuesdays, for whatever reason, tended to be a really good day for me, even though it was a weekday. So I would set a higher goal.
the rest of the week had a slightly lower goal for each weekday. Sometimes I decided not to write on Fridays too, it just depended on how the week was going. Then I would do the bulk of my writing on Saturdays and Sundays because that's when I had time and flexibility and I would do an all-out sprint, sometimes writing 2,000 words or more on a single day. That number is not to say that that's what you should be doing, there are no shoulds, but that is what I was personally able to do on those weekends. And those add up.
It is totally possible for you to write 10, 20, 30, 40,000 words a month even, not writing every day. And I know this because I did it when I was writing consistently in the past. these are things that I know I know how to do and I just got away from them because I think life got a little chaotic and a little busy. like I said, client work
priority, but I am trying to fit more of my writing back into my life. Client work is still the priority, just so you know, but.
I'm trying to make a little bit more space by again, being flexible, being realistic.
The other thing that you need to do is accept when things change. And I think this is the mistake that I made. I didn't realize that being an editor and running a business was going to feel and be completely different than being a teacher. When you own your own business, the work never stops. I don't have an office. I don't leave the house to go to work. So there is no transition between.
personal time and business time. That is something I am definitely trying to work on. I'm trying to better boundaries in my life. But again, I was a teacher. So honestly, being a workaholic comes naturally. That is basically what my entire professional life has been. So I am working on it, but I think that I didn't recognize that my approach to writing would need to change when I no longer had set transition points in my day, when I no longer had
workspace versus home space, because I think a big part of my writing practice was in the transitions. And I would write a little bit before going to school, I would write a little bit after school, and now there is no before and after work because I'm always home, So I needed to change up my process and that's what I'm going to be working on in 2026 is figuring out how do I be an editor and a writer at the same time because that's going to look different.
than being a teacher and a writer at the same time. My other suggestion is to be creative in how you approach the writing process. And again, this is something I used to do really well. one thing that I used to do is if I was in a really busy season, I would set micro writing goals. And by micro, I literally mean my goal would be to write
eight words a day. That's like one sentence or less takes about a minute. And I used to be really committed to that. this was for really busy seasons where I wasn't really trying to get words on the page. I wasn't really trying to make progress. I was just trying to stay in the habit, stay in the mindset of my project. And I used to write anywhere, all the time, bathrooms, especially, I know TMI, but I was really committed to staying in the habit.
And I got away from
thinking that writing needed to be these long sessions,
think part of that came from working from home. And I was like, you know, I should have so much more time. I should be able to sit down and write for an hour every day. And it's still not realistic. I'm still working a lot and I need to get back into the mindset of writing can look different and it doesn't need to look.
perfect or be an hour or two hours every day to be successful and move me forward. Something else that I am trying to work on as well is letting go of my idea of what writing means. And specifically, I have been getting really into dictation as a writing style. I'm already dictating editorial letters, emails, blog posts, all kinds of things. And my goal for 2026 is to embrace dictation in fiction writing as well.
you've never heard of it, dictation basically means I am speaking into a speech to text app and it is converting what I say into text. You can speak punctuation, you can speak words, dialogue, all that stuff. It's great. I love dictation. If you are interested in exploring how it works, how to do it well, Sarah Elizabeth Sawyer has an amazing class called Fictation.
and it's on dictation for fiction authors. It's amazing. Highly recommend. will link in the show notes. But basically, I am trying to embrace dictation because it just opens up the possibilities for where and when you can write because you can go mobile. One of my favorite ways to dictate is to hook my phone up to my car and just speak while I'm driving. And it's surprisingly accurate.
super easy and it allows me to multitask. So the next time you are driving somewhere running errands, instead of that driving time just being empty, wasted, it can turn into a writing session. So this is definitely something that I am trying to embrace in 2026. Like I said, I'm already doing that for a lot of non-fiction applications, but I'm excited to start exploring how to use it for fiction this year.
finally, addition to rethinking what a writing session can look
also want to encourage you to be creative about the types of goals that you set. Oftentimes we get stuck in a word count rut. And don't get me wrong, word count is a great thing to track when you are drafting, when you are trying to get something done, but it isn't your only option. And
Sometimes tracking word count exclusively can lead to burnout, it can lead to us putting quantity over quality, and it can generally be unhelpful if we are trying to do something like revise where actually word count is the last thing we should be worried about, especially if we need to cut things from the story. So, alternatives you can think about using are tracking time, tracking chapters that you've worked on, tracking pages or something like that.
You can also decide to stop tracking quantitatively altogether. That means letting go of the numbers and instead tracking something like how you feel about your writing. You could give yourself a quick rating on how well you think you writing that day. There are other options and it does not need to be just word count.
Another thing that I recommend and something that I used to do religiously is tracking. If you have a goal that you're trying to accomplish, you have to track progress toward that goal. Otherwise, how do you know how you're doing? How do you know if you need to change things? How do you know if you're getting there or even exceeding your goal? I know tracking can be difficult. It can definitely open up some negative feelings, especially if we are not as close to our goal as we want to be. But I do think it is an important part of keeping yourself accountable and making sure that your process is actually working.
And like I said, used to track word count religiously when I was drafting, when I was getting things done. I wasn't always tracking word count. There were other things that I kept track of as well, depending on where I was the writing process. But that tracking element, I think, was essential because it gave me a way to know if what I was doing was working. And when I said that my goals were flexible, only the daily and weekly goals were. So that monthly goal, I really tried to hold myself to.
And the only way to know if I needed to adjust, move faster, move slower or whatever was to keep track of what I was doing on a daily and weekly basis. And I think that there's a way to track that doesn't have to feel bad. And what worked for me is that I set goals, but then I only kept track of what I was actually accomplishing. So what that means is I would have a calendar on my wall in my office and every
day would get a sticker with the number of words that I intended to write. If it was a day that I wasn't going to write at all, the sticker would have an X on it to signal that it was a non-writing day, but there would still be something for every day on the calendar. Then I had a set of those little dot stickers, and every day after a writing session was done, I would write my actual word count and I would put that on top of the original sticker. So the only thing that actually showed on the calendar by the end was what I actually accomplished.
whether that was higher or lower than what I intended. There was no comparison, no keeping track of how close or far away from the goal I was. I simply documented what I actually got done. The benefit of doing that is that I was tracking, but I was tracking without guilt because the old goal no longer mattered. I was simply keeping track of what actually happened or not on that particular day. And
then at the end of the week, I could calculate everything up, see if I was ahead, behind, and then think about what I needed to change for the week ahead. So I made sure that those original goals were also written on stickers that were erasable so I could change things if I needed to. The dot stickers were not erasable because you can't change the past when something is done. the key point here is that I focused on what I did, not what I didn't do.
I focused on what actually happened. I tried not to beat myself up, again, by covering up that original goal. So the only thing that I could see going forward was a record of what I accomplished without paying attention to how far above or below that goal was because the calendar only showed those weekly goals. And then eventually I would put the total for the month at the end. Again, once everything was done, not focusing on whether that was greater or lower than my original goal.
just what was.
All right, those are the things I'm recommitting to and trying this year. I hope this episode was helpful. And once again, if you're feeling like you were behind, like you're not moving fast enough, you're not, you are making progress. You are working on your writing. And as long as you're moving forward, that's what counts. You are further along than you were one year ago. And at this time next year, you're gonna be further along than you are right now. And again, as long as we're making progress, we are moving forward.
Life is busy, life is crazy, life is chaotic, life is beautiful,
And it's not a race. It's not a race. So do what you can this year to make your goals happen by being realistic, being flexible, keeping track. Do not beat yourself up over what you should have done in 2025. The only thing that matters is what you can do in 2026. And I hope this podcast helped you think about how to set goals that are going to support your writing and not get in your way.
Thank you so, so much for making me part of your writing journey in twenty twenty five. Here is to an amazing twenty twenty six. I hope you will stick around. Keep listening to the podcast and keep getting better one episode at a time. If this episode helps you in any way, please leave a review. Let me know what you thought.
And if you're willing, share this episode with a friend or share it on social media. Help other writers find me and get the advice they need to keep moving forward as well. Again, thank you so, much for listening. Happy writing. Have a wonderful day and keep getting better one word at a time. See ya.
Episode Five: What does a developmental editor do?
Ever wondered what a developmental editor does? Not even sure what developmental editing is? This episode breaks down my entire process as a fiction developmental editor - covering what developmental editing is, how I work through a project, and why developmental editing matters to you as a fiction writer. Let’s dive in!
Links Mentioned:
Subscribe to the Better Writer Weekly newsletter here: https://olivia-helps-writers.kit.com/better-writer-newsletter
Check out my services here: https://oliviahelpswriters.com/services
Learn more about my new revision course here: https://readerreadyrevisions.com
Find an editor via the Editorial Freelancer’s Association here: https://the-efa.org
Key Takeaways
The vast majority of readers DNF (DNF = did not finish) books because of developmental issues - boring stories, characters they don’t like, nonexistent plotting, and more. It’s not bad editing (grammar/typos as many writers believe).
Unlike other forms of editing that focus on line-level issues, developmental editing is all about fixing the big-picture elements of your story - the story elements that keep readers hooked.
My developmental edits are built around the four step revision process: prioritize, analyze, strategize, and revise. I do steps 1-3, so you can focus on step 4.
My edit starts before I ever see your manuscript. First, I need to understand your genre, target audience, publishing goals, and story vision, so I know what to prioritize.
Then, I analyze your manuscript by commenting on your work and creating a book map (structural overview of your story).
Step three is to strategize by crafting an editorial letter full of revision suggestions you can use on your own.
My goal as an editor is to empower you with multiple revision choices, not hand out a set of mandates.
I don’t work with every genre because I’m not an expert in every genre, but if you think I’m the right person to help you write a great book, get in touch!
Transcript
Please Note: This is an automatically generated transcript that has not been edited.
Olivia Bedford (00:00)
My job ultimately is to help you create a book that your readers can't put down, a book that hooks them in the beginning.
keeps them engaged through the middle and then has them reaching the end absolutely shattered or delighted or elated or whatever emotional response you're going for so that they want to read your next book. That is my job as an editor to help you craft that experience that readers do not want to abandon, do not want to DNF.
Hello and welcome to another episode of the Better Writer podcast. I'm so excited that you're here taking time out of your day to hang out with me as I talk about writing.
I did want to say that if you
Listen to a 40 minute version of episode 4. I am so sorry. That was the unedited raw audio that Accidentally got uploaded if you listen to a 27 minute version of Episode 4 then you don't need to worry you have no idea what I'm talking about But if you did hear that unedited version, I am so sorry. I corrected it as soon as I could Hopefully you got the right version, but if you didn't I'm so sorry This is a brand
new endeavor for me. I'm still learning, so please forgive me. And if you listen to that unedited 40 minute version and you're still here, thank you. Thank you for giving me grace and for, you know, joining me this adventure. I honestly never saw myself as the kind of person who would ever have a podcast or have something to say, but I'm having so much fun putting these episodes together. So much fun talking about writing because it is one of my favorite things in the world to discuss. I have a lot of opinions and
Some of them are even helpful. So thank you so much for sticking around, joining in on the fun. Let's dive in to episode five. All right, today I decided to talk about what I actually do as a developmental editor because I realized that some people don't know what developmental editing is. They think that editing is just commas, grammar, that kind of thing. And developmental editing is not that at
all. It is very different. So I decided to give you a behind-the-scenes look at my process as an editor, what I do, how I do it, and why it's important for you as a writer to engage in the developmental editing process, whether you are doing it with an editor or not.
To start off, have some data for you. So this is from a survey that Goodreads did asking readers why they abandon a book. In other words, why are people DNFing, not finishing stories that they start? this survey is from 2013, so it is a bit outdated, but I don't think our reasons for DNFing have really changed,
our reading habits have changed in other ways since then. So what they found is that a full
46.4 % of readers DNF a book or abandon a book because it is slow or boring. Another 18.8 % will abandon a book because of weak writing. 8.8 % abandon books because they are quote, extremely stupid, end quote. And then there were another 8.5 % that said it was a ridiculous or non-existent plot that caused them to abandon a book. And finally, 4.9 %
that they did not like the main character and that was enough to get them to give up on a story. You may not know this, but every single one of those reasons, those top reasons for DNFing, abandoning a book, are all developmental issues. I will admit some of those issues could be a reader genre mismatch, so it could be an instance where
someone picked up a book that just was not a good fit for them on a personal level, but in an instance where the genre and the reader should be a good fit, these are developmental problems. Having a slow or boring book that could be a pacing issue, a conflict issue, a character arc issue, that is developmental.
Weak writing may sound like a line editing or copy editing thing, however, as a developmental editor, I do address issues of show-don't-tell, of dialogue. I address a lack of specificity and things like that that are often what readers are talking about when they say weak writing, even if those things can also be addressed in a line edit and to a lesser extent in copy editing. Copy editing is really about grammar mechanics. Typos not so much the actual word choice.
people often think that they only need copy editing because all people care about is, having clean, grammatically correct writing, and that's honestly not the case. There are definitely readers who do care about typos and grammar issues, but only 2.9 % of readers in this survey said that they abandoned books because of bad editing.
Again, weak writing is more of a developmental line editing issue, not a copywriting issue,
of writers don't know until they start really exploring the different types of editing and how they work.
So the reason I'm sharing this information is because I want you to understand that the things readers care about most are big picture. The things that readers are abandoning your book over are happening on a plot level, a story level, a character level.
clean text, clean as in air
it is important for your writing to be error-free. We want to catch typos. We want to solve grammatical problems. But if that's all you're worried about in terms of editing, you are putting your focus on the wrong things. You are putting...
your focus on the things that writers tend to care about and that editors tend to care about. But what do readers really care about? Readers care about the story. They care about the characters. They care about how those things are showing up on the page in a fun and engaging way that is appropriate for the genre you're writing. And that is what I handle as a developmental editor. Now, I want to be clear. This is not just a sales pitch for developmental editing. You can address these aspects of your story.
in revision on your own. Hiring a developmental editor is not your only option. I think it is a great option if you can afford it, if you have the time in your publishing schedule, but it is not the only way.
So even though this episode is focused on developmental editing and the work I do as a developmental editor, keep in mind that a lot of what I'm talking about applies to the revision process more broadly.
My job ultimately is to help you create a book that your readers can't put down, a book that hooks them in the beginning.
keeps them engaged through the middle and then has them reaching the end absolutely shattered or delighted or elated or whatever emotional response you're going for so that they want to read your next book. That is my job as an editor to help you craft that experience that readers do not want to abandon, do not want to DNF. Now again, a reader might stumble on your book who is not the right fit. We are not trying to be perfect for everyone, but
I want you to be able to reach as many people in your target audience as possible by writing a book that works for them.
I actually do that? First off, let's just talk a little bit about what do I mean when I say developmental editing. Developmental editing is not like other forms of editing. I do not use a red pen. I mean, most of us are on computers, but you know what I mean. I do not care about your comments. I do not look for grammatical errors. I will ignore typos and awkward phrasings and all those kinds of things.
My job is to look at the gap between your vision for the story you want to tell and your current draft. And then I give you strategies for closing that gap.
And I do that in three different ways.
First, I write comments on the manuscript itself. Not all editors include comments for developmental editing, so you do have to be really careful about assessing services and figuring out what you're actually getting editor to editor. But I comment in a developmental edit, I'm commenting on things like characterization, world building, whether you're showing, not telling, all those things that feed into how you actually execute developmental aspects of your novel on the page. I also provide a book map.
is an Excel spreadsheet that contains a summarized, high-level view of your novel. So I summarize what happens on the page, I keep track of conflicts and how they're developing, I keep track of characterization, character development, all those kinds of things that are really helpful to see broken down in a simplified format.
If you're writing a multi point of view book, I also track the different point of view characters. There's some quantitative data in there like, how long is each scene, what percentage of the manuscript is each scene. I keep track of structural benchmarks, like where is your inciting incident happening,
Is it happening at the 50 % mark when it should be close to the 10 % mark? All those kinds of things are tracked in the book map.
Then I also provide an editorial letter that summarizes all of my feedback and gives you very clear strategies for revision. The bulk of the editorial letter is a summary of what is working in your novel, so I do cover the strengths, things that you should amplify and maximize in revision, and then I talk about what needs work, the things that aren't yet meeting your vision. I consider myself to be a very
educational editor, so my editorial letters tend to run long because I do try to give detailed descriptions of the issues that I'm seeing in the manuscript plus suggestions that you can use. These suggestions are never mandates. I often give multiple suggestions, multiple different ways that you can approach a revision with some discussion of the implications of each one, and I leave plenty of room for your creativity. So my editorial letters are meant to be a starting point for you to
brainstorm and revise on your own after getting my letter. In addition, the letter has some extras that are helpful for you to have. I always include a premise statement and a synopsis that you are welcome to use when you go on to query or market your work. I also provide a series of next steps that break down how exactly you should approach the revision process. I offer resources that you should check out, books that I think are going to be particularly helpful for you based on what I'm seeing in your manuscript.
there's anything in your book that could affect your ability to market your work, I'll also note that in a marketing consideration section. For example, if you have chosen the wrong genre or the wrong age group, I'll note that in the editorial letter so you can act accordingly. If you have specific questions that haven't been addressed in other parts of the letter, I also have an author concern section that
I basically use to address any of those questions that didn't neatly fit into a category that I've already covered in a different part of the editorial letter. So like I said, my editorial letters tend to be comprehensive, they tend to be long, but I do try to design them in a way that you're getting very clear, actionable guidance. And I will say, I'm not going to list every single thing that is a problem in your manuscript. I am going to choose
no more than four big categories that I think are going to have the greatest impact on your revision. So you're never going to get like this whole laundry list of problems. You're going to get four areas to focus on in your next round of revision. And my process for editorial letters has changed. I think when I first started editing, I really felt like I needed to just tell someone,
every single thing that was wrong with their book because they were paying me all this money and I wanted to be comprehensive, but ultimately that was not effective for the clients and it was not effective for me because honestly writing a 60 page editorial letter is good for no one. It is not good for me because that took way too long and I think the quality is definitely diminished when an editorial letter is that long and for the clients getting a 60 page editorial letter was overwhelming I'm sure.
So if you are that person who got a 60 page editorial letter from me, I'm so sorry. I've learned and I am now doing better.
and altogether, the editorial package is going to include feedback on the high level parts of your story.
that can include characterization, character arcs, could include plot, structure, conflict, world building, could include scene dynamics, so the way that you're actually putting together the scenes in your novel. I might address pacing, the transitions, I might address genre conventions. It's going to change and adapt and be different for every author.
No two editorial letters that I've ever sent out have had the same exact categories because it's always personalized to you and what your novel needs. basically what this means for you as a writer is that if you hire me or anyone else as your developmental editor, we can do things like make sure that you are actually targeting the right genre with your marketing. So we can tell you you're hitting the requirements for this genre or
actually you're hitting the requirements for totally different genre and that's where you should position your book. If you're really committed to that original genre, I can also tell you what you would need to change to actually meet the expectations of that genre instead. I will help you find places where you might lose readers because the pace is too slow, the story is too complicated, the conflict isn't engaging, there's a lapse in cause and effect. I can find places where your characterization is underdeveloped.
or where your character arc is falling short because we're not seeing a part of their change happen on the page. I am not a sensitivity reader, but I do flag sensitivity issues when I see them. So again, this is not my area of expertise, but if I see something that I know is considered offensive or is going to do harm to your readers, I will tell you because I'm not going to keep that information and I want you to be able to make
informed choices going forward. Thankfully, I work with incredible authors. No one has ever been offended that I did that because I really assume that everyone wants to do the best for their readers and there are so many blind spots that we all have when it comes to offensive stereotypes, offensive characterizations, offensive tropes that are, super commonplace and we don't know until we know. So I do flag those as well, even though no one's coming to me just for sensitivity reading.
Overall, my editorial process is rooted in the four steps of a successful revision, and that is to prioritize, analyze, strategize, and then revise. Step four belongs to you as the author. I don't do the revised part for you, but essentially when you hire me as an editor, I am doing steps one through three for you instead of you having to do them on your own.
So what does that actually mean in practice? Step one, prioritize. Step one actually starts before your manuscript is on my desk. Step one happens
when we go through the client intake process, you will fill out a questionnaire talking about what genre you're writing, who your target audience is. You'll let me know what specific concerns you have about your project, which you're really proud of in your project. And I'm also going to ask about your writing history, if you have plans to turn this book into a series, all that kind of stuff. And I need to know that upfront because your target genre, your target audience, your vision for the project
is going to determine how I give you feedback.
And I think it's so important to recognize that there are very, very few rules, rules as in quotation marks, that really apply to every genre universally. There is no one objective standard for fiction. That is not how it works. You need to have an editor who is well-versed in your genre, who knows what is appropriate and expected for your genre specifically.
so that you can get feedback tailored to the kind of reader you are trying to reach. for me, that also means that I am very selective about which genres I work with.
work exclusively with genre fiction,
just like I tell readers, your book is not for every person. Not every reader is going to love your book and that is okay. Your job is to find the readers who will love your book. And as an editor, I'm the same way. I'm not going to pretend that I love everything or that I am the right fit for every writer. I am great at editing genre fiction. I love genre fiction. I do not touch...
memoir, I do not touch literary fiction, I tend not to work with things that are strictly comedic either, even if that technically would fall into a genre category. I'm just not a big comedy fiction person. I don't know why. I love comedic TV shows, but with writing it's just not my thing.
have read literary fiction that I loved. I have read memoirs that I loved.
but in a professional context, I don't read enough of them. I don't like enough of them for me to feel comfortable telling someone what to do to write that genre at a publishable level. And that's honestly what my job is as an editor. I help people write books that could sell. If I'm not reading anything that's currently selling in a current genre, how do I have the authority to say that at all?
So
are editors out there who have a much broader range. I'm not going to comment on how anyone else is running their business, but for me, I find it hard to believe that they are an expert in every genre and category. And my fear is that they may be misapplying the rules of the genres that they actually read and love to books that they are reading in a different genre. So as a writer, I would just urge you to be very careful.
about vetting editors, make sure that they actually read and enjoy the genre you are writing and that they're not going to inadvertently try to turn your book into something else. And again, there are definitely editors out there who read a variety of genres and do so well. You just need to be really careful that that person actually has expertise, not just in fiction in general, but in your genre in particular. So for me, I work with fantasy,
I with fantasy romance, I work with historical fiction, contemporary romance, and the occasional mystery slash thriller. And that actually is a pretty broad range compared to some editors who will really only work with one specific genre. Again, these are genres that I enjoy, I read, I feel well-versed in the structures and expectations of those genres, and that is why I am comfortable editing them.
If an editor ever says to you, I'm so sorry, I don't work with that genre, please do not take it personally. I've actually gotten some nasty responses when I say that to people and I'm just trying to help you out by not wasting your money on an editor who doesn't specialize in your genre because every genre is unique. So that was a bit of a tangent, but all that to say that the editing process starts before the edit begins.
with my knowledge of your goals and my knowledge of the genre that you're writing. And based on those two things, I am going to already have in mind some priorities. What does your book need to do for readers in order to succeed in that genre? And that is the mindset that I'm going to be bringing into the story. I will also ask about your plans for publishing.
Are you going for a traditional publishing deal or are you planning to self publish? If you're planning to self publish, you have more freedom in certain respects and I can take that into account. If you are going for a traditional publishing deal, I'm going to be much, much stricter on things like hitting a certain word
it's not going to necessarily completely change how I approach the edit, but I am going to take that into consideration.
The other thing that I really want to know beforehand is if you're planning to write a series and what your plans for the series are. Sometimes people don't want to give me spoilers, but I am immune. I'm immune to spoilers. And the more information I have, the better I can help you set up for a great book one and great book two and great book three or whatever your plans are. So the more information people give me at this stage, the better I can help them in the next phase of the edit.
Then we move on to phase two of the revision process, which is analyzing the manuscript. And this is the stage at which I am actually going to read your book. Some people like to do a cold read. I am not one of those editors. I prefer to read and comment on the book at the same time. So I read your entire story. I write comments as I go. I also create the book map as I'm going through. All that happens in one round.
My goal in this round is to observe what is happening in the story. I will start to make some suggestions for revision if it's something that is happening on the page level.
For example, a show don't tell issue, I will start commenting on, you know, this would be a great place to show, here's where we should do more telling. So I do get a little bit into strategy, but for the most part, I am just taking note of what's happening. That summary is going in the book map. I'm adding comments with my initial reactions and observations, and I am jotting down notes of things that I'm noticing on a structural level that aren't just contained to any one scene or any one comment.
By the time I'm done with the initial read, there are comments on practically every page of the manuscript and the book map is drafted. It's not complete, but it is drafted. Once that step is done, I do a full analysis of the manuscript. Once the comments and book map are done, I'm going to go back and analyze everything together.
I have a software tool that allows me to pull all of the comments that I've written into a separate document. I tend to print them out unless there's too many that'll just keep it on the screen. But I will go through and reread each of my comments looking for trends. What are the issues that I noted over and over again throughout the manuscript? I look at the book map and I look for structural issues. Is the inciting incident happening 50 % into the book?
or is there no actual climactic scene? Things like that that are going to show up in the book map, et cetera. I look at all of that together and from that I start strategizing. What are the most important things for this writer to focus on? What is going to have the biggest impact on their ability to tell the story that they want to tell? At this point, I outline my editorial letter and that is where I'm going to decide
What are those four things that are going into the editorial letter that I want this person to focus on in their revisions? Once that editorial letter is outlined,
It's time to write the editorial letter. And like I already said, the editorial letter is more than just a summary of my feedback. I'm writing a premise statement, I'm writing a synopsis, I'm writing a revision guide for you, offering resources, next steps, but the bulk of the letter and the bulk of my time is spent on figuring out the best way to explain what's working and what needs work in your story and giving you specific
actionable suggestions that you can use to revise.
These letters typically end up being between 15 to 25 pages depending on how long your book is. And that sounds really long, but again, I really try to give you specific examples from your book. So it's not just 25 pages listing out a bunch of like teeny tiny things you need to fix. It is, you know, 15 pages of here is the issue, here's the theory of why this thing actually needs to be addressed.
Here are specific examples of where this went wrong in your story And here are concrete, actual things you can do to fix this issue in revision. Like I said before, I also try to give you multiple options for revision. So I am not the person who's going to come in and say, you must do X by Z in your manuscript. I'm gonna say, here's X by Z that you could do. X will give you this effect. Y will give you this effect. Z will give you this effect. Here's what I might recommend.
But here are some other things that you should think about as you make this decision. So I'm really trying to give you the information that will empower you to make the right choices for your book and will help you write the best book possible going forward.
Once the editorial letter is drafted, it's time to start revising my work. Yes, as an editor, I revise the edit very meta. Basically, I do two rounds of editing on the editorial letter. One, I will read through it on the screen, making bigger changes, reordering things, making sure everything is as clear as possible. Then I print out the editorial letter and I do a revision on paper so I can make sure
that I'm actually catching some of those errors. If you want to go back to episode four, I talk a little bit about why it is so hard for us to self edit. And one of the strategies that can help you catch typos and other errors is changing the format you're working in. So I practice what I preach. I print out every editorial letter to revise on paper at least once. And then I actually do a third round of editing for the editorial letter where I listen to it read out loud using the text to speech feature on my computer.
just to catch any final errors that may have slipped through. By the end of an edit, I've reviewed my editorial letter so many times, I'm so close to it, that I really need to hear it read in order to catch those final typos and give you the cleanest, clearest editorial letter possible. I also revise my comments choice. The first time I'm revising the comments, it is a full-scale revision.
comments get deleted, comments get added, comments get completely rewritten in light of the way that your story works as a whole. Oftentimes, the bulk of that work is happening in the first 30-ish percent of your book because obviously my impressions of the first third of your book are going to change by the time I get to the end and something that I thought was important in the beginning might actually not be important at all. So the bulk of that work is going to happen at the beginning of your book and then by the end it goes a little bit faster. But again,
every single comment gets re-read and if it needs to get revised, changed, deleted, that happens at this point in process. Once that is done, I go back to the beginning and each comment gets reviewed one more time. This time I'm looking for typos only. I'm not as focused on, you know, subsystem changes unless I see something glaring that needs to be changed. But that final comment review is again making sure I'm giving you the cleanest package possible.
The same thing happens with the bookmap.
My first book map revision is all about making sure it is accurate and complete. I always have a column in the book map that is tracking plot movement, and that is basically saying what is this scene setting up? If I'm at the beginning of the book, I don't yet know what conflicts are coming, so that plot movement section often gets filled in at the end once I know what we're moving toward in the story.
If I feel like there's a column missing, I might go back and add that in there and I will reread everything and make sure that it is fundamentally accurate, clear, et cetera. Then I go back to the beginning of this one as well and I revise for type of grammar, et cetera.
The final step of my process is to get everything formatted for you and then I send everything to you at once. So you get the manuscript, the editorial letter, and the book map all together at the very end of the
process. at that point, you also get a link to schedule our follow up call. That is the final step of the process where we meet. You can ask any questions. We can talk about your next steps, brainstorm ideas for revision, whatever it takes to get you ready for the next steps in your process.
Alright, that is my process as a developmental editor in a nutshell, and it basically goes back to the four steps of a revision process. I learn your vision. I learn your goals for the project, and I use that to direct my priorities as an editor. Then I read your manuscript. I analyze what is currently happening in your story and try to find the gaps between what you currently have and where you want your story to go.
then I start strategizing. I figure out how you can revise your story to make it work.
And that happens in the form of comments on the manuscript showing you exactly where to implement your edits, plus an editorial letter that summarizes my feedback and gives you a very high level view of how you should approach the revision process. Finally, I send you the entire editorial package and that is where the revising happens. For that part, you are the one doing the work, but I am still there to support you with a follow-up call where we can...
brainstorm, discuss issues, troubleshoot, whatever you need to feel confident and empowered in revision. And you can schedule that call whenever you want to. You could do it right after the edit ends, but you could also wait six months when you're stuck and you need someone to talk to you. Or you can, you know, start with that call and then continue working with me for coaching after that if you need additional support. So even though the revising part is on you, step four is on you. I am still there to help you with whatever you need after the edit.
Hopefully you enjoyed that behind the scenes look at how my editing process works,
If you have been sitting here listening and thinking that what I described is exactly what your book needs, I would love to work with you. I would love to help you write the best book possible, assuming, of course, that you write genre fiction. So if you write fantasy, fantasy romance, historical fiction, mystery or thriller, go to oliviahelpswriters.com slash services. If you write anything
Other than those genres, I still want you to succeed. I highly recommend checking out the Editorial Freelancers Association or Readsie. Those are both directories where you can find an editor who specializes in your genre and will be able to help. And if you are interested in learning how to master the four steps of the revision process for yourself instead of just relying on an editor,
I am starting a brand new revision course. We kick off in February, 2026, and I've basically taken my process as a developmental editor and translated it into a process that you can use as a writer. Public enrollment has not started quite yet, but get on my newsletter now and you will be the first to know when you can sign up for the course in January. So.
If you want to learn how to become your own developmental editor with my support, encouragement, and feedback, then you definitely want to be on my newsletter so you can find out when the course is open because I think it's going to be amazing. All right. Thank you so, so much for listening to another episode of the Better Writer Podcast. I'm so grateful that you're here listening to me talk about writing and editing and all these things that bring me so much joy.
If you enjoyed getting a behind-the-scenes look of what a developmental editor does and why it matters, please consider sharing this with a friend, subscribing to the show, or leaving a review. I would appreciate anything you can do to help me get the word out to other writers. Thank you again for listening. Have a wonderful, wonderful day, and keep writing, keep getting better, one word at a time. See ya!
Episode Four: Why Fiction Writers Can’t Just Edit Their Own Work
Listen to episode three here.
Watch episode three here.
If your image of a writer is someone sitting alone in an attic writing a masterpiece all by themselves, I’ve got news, that image is a myth. Collaboration is essential to writing a great book. Today, I’m talking about why you can’t just edit your book and five specific areas where we tend to mess up when we try to do all the editing by ourselves.
Links:
Subscribe to the Better Writer Weekly newsletter here
Learn about my editing & coaching services here
Key Takeaways:
The image of the solitary genius writer is a myth.
Collaboration is essential for revising. That doesn’t mean you need to hire a professional editor, but it does mean you need to let other people read your work.
Our brains process information based on patterns, which can lead to errors in writing.
There are five common areas where writers can make faulty assumptions that affect the reading experience. They include:
Assuming character motivations are self-evident
Worldbuilding infodumps - we know why that information matters, but readers don’t yet
Assuming all readers would react the same way your character would to a given situation so you don’t need to put their reaction on the page
Vague visual descriptions
Typos/misspelled words
To avoid missing typos/ misspelled words you can: use text-to-speech software to hear your work out loud, change the font/text color to trick your brain, use an AI powered spell check (e.g., Grammarly or ProWritingAid) or hire a professional copyeditor/proofreader.
Transcript
Please Note: This transcript was automatically generated and has not been edited.
Olivia Bedford (00:00)
Today I am going to talk about why you can't just revise your own work no matter how great you are, no matter how good of a writer you are, you cannot revise completely by yourself. And we're going to talk about why that is.
I want you to imagine this. A writer, a solitary genius, sits alone in a damp attic, at the computer, and magic pours from their fingers. They don't need anyone else. They don't need any writing guides. They don't need an editor or a critique partner or anything else. And in fact, if they had help,
That would just be an impediment to the real work. Those people would just be stifling their genius. My friends, if that is your image of a great writer, you need to know that that image is a lie. It is a myth. The solitary genius writer does not exist.
You need other people to write a great book and you definitely need them to help you revise. Welcome to another episode of the Better Writer
Today I am going to talk about why you can't just revise your own work no matter how great you are, no matter how good of a writer you are, you cannot revise completely by yourself. And we're going to talk about why that is. This is another opinion that is probably not as controversial as my thoughts on plotting versus pantsing, but it does counter some of the narrative that we hear especially about, you know,
how writing works. And I think especially if you are someone who is newer to the writing process, you may not know how collaborative writing is when you start working toward publication because we don't see that part of the process. We hear about the authors, we don't hear as much about the people behind the scenes who are helping to make those books come into the world.
And you don't really find that out until you start writing yourself. So I want to try to demystify that a little bit and talk about why you can't do it by yourself. You need other people. And if you don't believe me, let's start with an example that I find to be so much fun. And that is the story of F. Scott Fitzgerald and the Great Gatsby, which he did not want to call the Great Gatsby.
settled on that title. He went through a couple of different titles actually. Some of the ones he considered were Under the Red, White and Blue, Gold-Headed Gatsby, The High Bouncing Lover, not really sure what that means, and Among the Ash Heaps and Millionaires. But the one that he wanted to use in the end was Tremolchio in West Egg. I'm say that again. Tremolchio in West Egg. And if you're wondering
What in the heck is a tremolchio? What does that even mean? You are not alone because that was my exact reaction when I found out about this. I did a little bit of research and I found out that tremolchio is the name of a character from a Roman satire. And tremolchio was a former slave who
ended up becoming wealthy and became known for throwing these lavish parties. Now, who does that sound like? So this title wasn't completely random. There was a very good reason for Fitzgerald to think Trimalchio in West Egg was a great idea, a great title. The problem here is that Fitzgerald wasn't thinking enough about his audience.
and how they would respond to and react to this title. Again, the connection between Tremolchio and Gatsby is clear. Gatsby, of course, wasn't born a slave. Though I have heard some theories that Gatsby is actually a white passing black man, don't ask me what the evidence for that is. I could not tell you, but I have heard it said. Again, that is a whole other thing that we could talk about, but...
there is a connection between Tremolica and
connection is very clear.
But It's not super enticing. Tremolchio as a figure in satirical Roman literature is not a good hook into the Gatsby story that we know and love. And I think the real issue, the real issue is that
using the name Trimalchio, making that allusion, that reference in the title is going to exclude a large portion of the potential audience. For most Americans Trimalchio is not a recognizable character. I had to go and Google who that even was or what that was referring to. I'm guessing that 100 years ago when Gatsby was originally written, that reference may have been more familiar to a certain
class of people.
Fitzgerald's Yale friends may have known who Trimalchio was. However, I'm going to guess that even 100 years ago, that was not a common reference for most Americans. It was probably just a common reference for someone who took the same classes as Fitzgerald. You probably heard
about Trimalgio in a class at one point or write about him in something and it was like, ⁓ yes, that is the perfect thematic connection. But he was assuming that the parallels he drew in his own mind would automatically make sense to his readers. He was making an assumption about what his audience would associate with the name Trimalgio when they saw it in his title. And the real problem, I think, is that
the thematic connection between Trimalchio and Gatsby isn't clear until you've read the book. And unless you are going to analyze it in a very intellectual way, the appeal of Gatsby is not about just the concept of someone going from rags to riches. There's so much more to it that you understand after reading. But just seeing it upfront,
Tremolchio and West Egg doesn't really tell us anything about the story or about the characters, about what we're going to get from that book. So again, the title makes sense, but it is not anything close to this title that has now become iconic, that kind of draws people in. We're wondering, who's Gatsby? Why is he great? In a way that we just don't ask that question of who's Tremolchio and why is he in West Egg. It's just not as compelling of a question for us to be asking before we read.
So Fitzgerald in the end did not arrive at the title of the Great Gatsby by himself. It was the editor, Maxwell Perkins, who, as far as editors go,
famous, well known for being a great editor. He is the one who advocated for the Great Gatsby as a title and really pushed for it. And now here we are, however many years later, I don't think that high school students
all over this country would be reading The Great Gatsby a hundred years later if it was called Trimalchio and Wesseigh. It could be the same book. But I don't think it would have been iconic. It would not have become the widespread popular book that is today if it had that title. If Fitzgerald had kept his blinders on, had gone with his assumptions, his
idea of what was going to work, we would not have the Gatsby we know and love or maybe don't love. I don't know how much your high school English experience was, but it wouldn't exist. And Fitzgerald is still the author. Fitzgerald is the name that we know, the name that we associate with Gatsby. Most people will never hear of Maxwell Perkins. Most people will never know how he influenced the story. And you know, I
speak for myself, I assume most editors feel the same way. I am sure he's fine with that. He did not want to be known as the guy who named Gatsby or anything like that. But he still played an integral part in making that book what it was, even though he was never going to be recognized for it, at least not outside the publishing world. And that is the power of collaboration. Collaboration
does not mean you are losing your story or losing your voice. It is having someone come in and say, hey, I know that made sense in your head, but is it going to make sense to anyone else? You need that person because our brains are not designed to do that kind of thinking on their own.
Let's talk about the problem with our brains. I want to this by saying our brains are magical. Our brains do so many incredible things. And even when things sometimes go wrong, you know, I say this as a person who has struggled with depression for a long, time, there are so many things that our brains do that are just straight up magic. The fact that we are alive and talking and thinking and reading, it's incredible. But our brains are not perfect, as we all know. And one thing about
how we think and how we function is that our brain operates based on patterns. And that's because we have to.
Our brains are constantly inundated with information. Sensory details are coming at us from all directions all the time. For example, if you are driving in your car right now listening to this podcast, you are hearing me talk, but you're also hearing the sounds that your car makes,
Your brain is also processing the temperature of the car. Are you too hot, too cold? Your brain is processing the feeling of the seat against your backside, the feel of the steering wheel under your hands, the flow of air coming out of the heater and touching you. Your brain is processing the amount of the light that is coming through the windshield. It's seeing all the other cars on the road. It's seeing the buildings on the road next to you. It's seeing the markings on the street. It's seeing lights and...
children running and countless other things. And you are not consciously processing all of them because if you were, you would never be able to function. So your brain is constantly filtering things out and your brain is constantly taking shortcuts. Your brain looks for patterns and it makes automatic associations. We do that so we can move faster, so we can function.
The problem is that your brain doesn't always know when those automatic associations are correct. This happens all the time with typos because if you are a proficient reader,
When you look at your own
you are not consciously processing every word on the page. Your brain is basically taking the first letter and the context and then automatically filling in the gaps. So you literally cannot see typos because your brain isn't reading what's actually there. Your brain is just making an assumption of what's there and then moving forward with that. So.
If you have ever had the experience of you wrote something, you read through it a million times, and then two weeks later you came back to it and found a typo, that's why you couldn't see the typo because your brain was just saying, oh, that's what she meant to say, we'll just keep going, keep moving, and so on.
The type of example is very obvious, but the same thing can happen on a developmental level because you know everything about your story. You know your characters, their backstories, their motivations, where those motivations are coming from. You know what their flaw is, what they need, what they need to get over. You know everything. You know everything about your world. You know everything about your plot. You know everything about what you intended to put in your story. But you can't actually see objectively whether
everything you intended to convey showed up on the page or if some of that story is still living in your head and only in your head. All right, you now know that this is a problem, but what the heck are you actually supposed to do about it? The first thing, and I'm just going to get this out of way right now, you must have other people read your work. The only way to know if the story is there on the page for them to read is to actually test that out by having other people
read your work. I know I'm saying this as a professional editor. I obviously have a bias, but help does not need to be professional.
You should have more than one person read your book, and I am not advocating for hiring a bunch of different developmental editors. Get help from beta readers, from writing friends, critique groups. There are multiple ways to get feedback. You should get feedback in multiple stages in the process so you can make sure your intention, your vision is actually on the page in a way that makes sense to your readers.
But at the same time, feedback is not the only way. Once you know that your brain is likely to skip over things and fill in assumptions that you didn't intend, you can start being more conscious about your editing. So I just wanted to go over a few areas where these assumptions are most likely to show up so that you can be aware of those when you go to revise your own work. And you can try to find those areas and make sure you're being crystal clear before you get feedback.
So you're not, you know, having to go back and revise a ton after your beta readers have already read your book. All right, the first area where I see this issue come up a lot is with character motivations. And that's because you know your characters so well. You understand where their behavior is coming from. You know why they're doing what they're doing and you know what they're trying to accomplish. And oftentimes, instead of making that clear for readers, writers will imply motivations without actually stating them.
That can happen because you don't have enough interiority on the page, we're not getting into your character's head, we don't actually know what they're thinking, but it can also come from you having a certain life experience and assuming that other readers are going to interpret your character's actions and motivations the same way. For example, if your character is really, really determined to get...
married by a certain age. you might assume that everyone grows
a society or in a family or in a culture where that is the norm, but you might have readers who are coming from a different context where they were actually encouraged to get married later. so your assumption may not be true for your readers and therefore your character wanting to get married by 21 might be completely bonkers to them because that's not their experience.
So you need to make sure that we know why your character in particular wants to get married by 21. What are they going for? are they trying to accomplish? Because the assumption that you assume makes sense to your readers may actually not be clear to everyone.
Trouble spot number two that I see is with world building info dumps. And this one might sound a little counterintuitive because in this case, you're giving readers more information. You're not making an assumption. You are explaining to the world to them because they don't know anything about your world. The problem comes in when you are giving readers information without context because you know it's going to become important later. But
readers don't know that. They don't have the benefit of knowing that this tiny little tidbit is going to pay off in a big way later. For example, you might find it really, important to fully describe the layout of the castle in your book because you know that in the final battle on page 500, there's a little side door that is going to completely turn the tide of the battle and you don't want it to feel like a cheap trick.
So you know you need to establish that this door exists early on. So you decide to fully describe the castle on page 10, including a lot of description about that door that's going to be important on page 500. The problem is that as a reader, I do not know what is going to happen on page 500. You know I don't. All I see on page 10 is 17 pages about a door.
that I don't care about because the story hasn't yet started. The door needs to matter on page 10, if you're describing it on page 10. It can also still matter on page 500. Keep that twist. Don't get rid of it. But you need to find a way to make that information about the door relevant on page 10. And you also need to filter out what is actually important for people to know.
Do I need to know that the door is carved with an image of the first king? Maybe, but maybe not. Maybe I just need to know that there is a door and I can see that there's a door when your main character uses it to sneak out one night when they want to go drinking with their friends. That's not the only option. There are many, many ways you could make the door relevant. But if you just describe the door, if you just give me that detail completely devoid of story context, A, I'm probably not going to remember it.
But more likely, I'm going to get bored and shut the book and not come back to the story. And I will never make it to that epic battle on page 500 because I wasn't hooked by the story in the beginning. So again, we want to world build. We need to world build. But the world building has to happen in the context of the story. It is not enough for you, the author, to know that something will be important later. You need to make it important in the moment for your readers.
Alright, trouble spot number three, and this is one that gets a lot of writers. It is very common, so do not despair if you fall into this. Number three is vague visual descriptions. I'm gonna give you an example. I want you to imagine a dog. Imagine a dog. Close your eyes, unless you're driving. Don't close your eyes if you're driving. But just picture. Picture a dog. Alright, you have it in your head. What does that dog look like?
I could ask a hundred different people to describe a random dog and those 100 people, unless they happen to live in the same household with the same dog right now, they're going to describe something different. for example, I currently have a six pound long haired chihuahua sleeping in my lap.
⁓ Unfortunately, if you are on YouTube, you can't see her. Of course, if you're just listening to this, you can't see her either. But I have a very small dog asleep in my lap right now. That is a dog. If I were to conjure a mental image of a dog, she would be it.
Someone else who was exclusively raised with hunting dogs. For example, my grandmother on my dad's side is not a huge fan of dogs. They only ever had outside dogs. Those dogs were not chihuahuas. When she thinks of the word dog, she's probably thinking of, a sporting dog of some kind. We're both right. Those are both dogs, but they are going to be completely different.
And if you ask me at different points in my life, we used to have a golden retriever, we used to have a Pomeranian, different day, different dog is going to pop into my hat.
Imagine if you just use the word dog in your book. Every person is going to have a different mental image. Even if you give it an adjective, if it's the nice dog or the cute dog. That's gonna mean something different to every single person. imagine if you say, there's a dog at the house on the corner.
and someone imagines the sweet golden retriever that they had as a child and then the next scene that dog attacks someone violently that is going to completely throw them out of the story because they were thinking golden retriever and I had a golden retriever who literally would have walked across hot coals before hurting a single person so if you tell me
that the dog on page six bites a child on page seven and I'm imagining a golden retriever, that does not compute. And again, there are probably golden retrievers out there who are aggressive, I've never met one, but my life experience, the dog that randomly pops into my head would never do that. And now we have a problem versus if it's a breed that is more known for violence, or if you tell me that the dog is snarling, you don't have to tell me the breed, but if you tell me the dog is snarling already,
that this dog is staring down everyone who passes by. We add that layer of specificity by naming a breed, by describing what the dog looks like, by describing the dog's actions, and suddenly there's no cognitive distance. Because if you tell me that this dog is angry, that it's snarling, I might not have the exact mental picture that you have, but at the very least I know that this is not a nice dog, and I am not going to be thrown out of the story when that dog does something aggressive.
on the page.
We have to be specific because we are not our readers. We are not in their heads. We do not share the same experience, the same background, the same anything. I grew up in Washington state. What a normal neighborhood looks like in Washington state is very different from what a normal neighborhood looks like in Rhode Island. There are different types of trees, different types of architecture. Things are just different. The streets are laid out differently.
these are both states in the same country, we're not even getting into people who are growing up in different countries, in different cultures, but already, if you just say her childhood home was just a normal suburban family home, normal to who? Normal in what state? Normal in what country? You have to be specific. Otherwise,
your reader may be coming up with a completely different mental image than what you intended. They may be having a completely different experience from what you intended because your assumption of what they would see based on the description is not what they actually come away with. Alright, trouble spot number four is with character emotions. This one is very similar, but in this case, you are assuming that
every person is going to have the same reaction to a specific event or type of conflict. So you don't put the emotion on the page because it's obvious the character got an F so they're going to be upset. I don't need to go into detail. I don't need to give the interiority because everyone would be upset by an F. ⁓ But
every person is unique. Not every situation is going to be the same. So we need to put that those emotions on the page. Obviously the know student veiling is a very extreme example but this happens all the time that we assume
Our reaction is the default, it's normal, and that's natural. We all have a little bit of main character syndrome because we only get to exist in our own heads. But we need to make sure that we are conveying what the events of our story mean to our characters. Otherwise, readers won't know how to interpret what's happening. They won't know what's at stake. They won't know what matters or doesn't.
And again, this is another tricky one because we don't want to go too far. We don't want to go into melodrama or doing too much telling. But we do need to find ways to create clarity to signal to readers what the events of the story mean so that our readers can engage with their characters and fully understand what's going on and why it matters.
All right, finally we get to our last trouble spot, number five, those misspelled words, the pesky typos, the words that look similar but just aren't. I'm sure we all know what those look like. I'm not going to explain what a typo is for you, but I did wanna go over some strategies you can use to help your brain see those errors that it might gloss over. So first off, I highly, highly recommend listening
to your text out loud. Use the text-to-speech function on your computer and have the computer read your words to you. The beautiful thing here is that the computer is going to read exactly what's on the page, not what you thought you wrote, and it is miraculous how many errors you will hear that you completely glossed over while reading. The second thing you can do is to use spell check. Use Grammarly, use ProWritingAid,
Typically those AI powered checkers, they're not generative AI, they are AI powered. They are better at catching some of those misused words that a traditional spell checker is going to miss. Another thing you can do is to read your pages in reverse order. I'm going to be honest, I have not done this because the idea made my brain hurt, but it's something I've heard other people have done that works for them. But basically you're not like reading the page backwards, but you're reading
like page 300, starting at the top, going down, go to 299, go down. So you're reading the story out of order in a story context so that you're not paying attention to the story, you're kind of shaking your brain up, but you're still reading the sentences in the right order. Just to clarify, that's the part that made my brain hard. I haven't tried it yet, maybe I will. But the idea here is that you're no longer focusing on the story as a story because you're reading it backwards and that frees up
your brain to focus on the individual sentences, the individual pages, what you actually wrote. Another thing you can do is just change the font. Change the color of the text on your computer.
This one is basically tricking your brain into thinking that it's seeing something new. Because again, your brain knows what's on the page, knows what should be on the page, so it fills in the gaps. If you change the font or change the text color, your brain is going to interpret this as, this is something new, I'm actually going to stop and read it. And finally, you can also print out a copy of your work and read it that way. Again, just like changing the font, you're now taking
that work out of context, telling your brain this is something new and your brain is going to pay a little bit more attention to exactly what's on the page. It's not perfect. Again, if you are a proficient reader, your brain is skipping over words all the time. That's how we read quickly because we're not reading each individual word ever. So I know I used to be a reading specialist, so this is kind of where this comes from, but...
Once you are a proficient reader, you are reading with automaticity. You are not actually consciously processing every word on the page. So you will continue to miss typos. That is why it is so important to use Spellcheck, use that speech-to-text feature, or hire a human copy editor, a human proofreader, someone who is not you, does not have your brain, who can also help find those things.
never forget your brain is incredible, but your brain is only human and it's not perfect. I hope these tips help you to overcome some of the shortcomings of your editor's brain. And if you have other suggestions, I would love to hear them. You can DM me on Instagram or Facebook. I'm at OliviaHelpsWriters and I would love to hear if you have another great tip for helping your brain get better at editing. Alright.
Thank you so, so much for listening to another episode of the Better Writer podcast. I'm so grateful that you're here, spending your time with me and listening to me rant about writing. If this episode was helpful at all, could you please consider leaving a review, sharing it with another writer or posting about it on your social media? This is a brand new show and my dream is for it to find as many writers who need it as possible and I can really use your help. So please share. would be so, grateful.
you'll be your hero because you get to share this great writing advice with someone else who needs it. All right. Thank you again for being here. Have a wonderful day. Keep writing and keep getting better one word at a time. See ya.
Episode Three: Plotter? Pantser? Does it even matter?
In this episode, I’m tackling one of fiction writing’s greatest controversies - the divide between plotters and pantsers.
I’ll talk about the real difference between plotters and pantsers, how to find a writing process that works for you, and how to avoid the shame that comes from putting too much pressure on what we “should” be doing instead of focusing on what we could accomplish if we just honored our strengths.
Links:
Subscribe to the Better Writer Weekly newsletter here: https://olivia-helps-writers.kit.com/better-writer-newsletter
Learn about my outline critique service here: https://oliviahelpswriters.thrivecart.com/outline-critique/
Learn more about my work here: https://oliviahelpswriters.com
Key Takeaways:
Plotters outline their stories, while pantsers write spontaneously.
The distinction between plotters and pantsers exists on a spectrum.
Outlining can take just as long as revising a draft and ultimately it doesn’t matter how you spend your time.
Readers care about the final product, not the process. No one gives you a gold star for outlining or a free pass if you wrote without one.
Experimenting with different writing methods is essential.
Your writing process may change over time and that’s okay - you have to keep testing and adapting.
Don't let other people’s expectations dictate your writing habits.
Quality of writing time is more important than quantity - don’t beat yourself up about not having enough time, just focus on making the most of the time you do have.
Every writer has a unique approach to creativity. Find yours and make the most of it.
The goal is to create a book that readers love. That’s it. The route you take to get there doesn’t matter.
Transcript:
Please note, this transcript was automatically generated and lightly edited. I apologize in advance for any errors that may have come through.
Are you a plotter or a pantser? Do you even know? Does the difference even matter?
to another episode of the Better Writer podcast. Today, I am tackling one of the most controversial topics in the writing world, the difference between plotters and pantsers.
In episode 2, I mentioned an experiment that I did in my classroom where I basically allowed students to self-identify as a plotter, a pantser or in between, and then choose a set of deadlines that worked for them. And I thought it would be good to talk a little bit more about that plotter versus pantser distinction and what it really means.
whether or not it really matters to our writing and then how we should navigate the questions about plotting, panting, and our writing process in general.
So first off, in case you have not heard these terms before, a plotter is someone who writes their books with an outline. Essentially, they plan their books in advance, they design the plot of their story ahead of time, thus the term plotter. In contrast, a pantser is someone who makes up the story as they go along. They write whatever comes to mind along the way.
The term pantser comes from this idea that they are writing by the seat of their pants. I personally prefer the term discovery writer. I think it makes a little bit more sense because essentially they are discovering the story as they write it rather than designing it ahead of time.
This is not an all or nothing situation. You're not like fully in one camp or the other. In my mind, it is a spectrum and people exist anywhere along that continuum. Some people will literally plot out every single aspect of their story until their outline is like 25,000 words or more. Some people will literally jump in with a single
image in their head and nothing else and then see what comes next. And then most people are in between. I've noticed that in terms of talking to writers professionally, but that also was true in my classroom experiment. I continued to use different sets of deadlines for students for the remaining three years of my teaching career for multiple assignments. Almost universally, middle in between set of deadlines was the one that students chose.
What I have come to realize as an editor, as a writer, as a teacher, is that ultimately this distinction does not matter. At least it does not matter in the way that we think it does or the way that we're often told it does. And again, this might be super controversial, but I will stand behind this opinion. And I think the perfect example,
I was listening to a podcast called How Writers Write. It was hosted by Brian Murphy, great podcast. There are still episodes out there. Unfortunately, the show is not being created anymore, but the back episodes are there. Go listen to them. It's a fantastic show. In one episode, there was an author, very successful author. He'd been writing for years, published multiple books, millions of copies in print. And he went on this long rant talking about how
outlining is the only way. And he is moralizing on, you know, outlining is the only way to be efficient. It's the only way to write a good book that if you do not outline, you are wasting your time because you are going to have to go back and fix everything in revision. And then this man said that it takes him up to eight months to complete an outline. Eight months.
I just sat there in my car and laughed. Because eight months spent outlining is the same exact amount of time as eight months spent revising. One is not inherently more efficient than the other if they take just as long. And I also want to be really clear. There is no specific timeline in which you should be writing your book.
It could take you less time, it could take you more time. I would say especially if you were writing your very first book, it will probably take you quite a long time. You may spend more than eight months revising. That does not mean you're inefficient. But for someone to sit there and say that writing an outline is so much more efficient when it takes him almost an entire year just to produce the outline, has not drafted a single word,
And this is not a beginner. This is someone who has published multiple books for him to sit there and say that pantsing is inefficient, that it is not the way to write a book. When there are authors out there who are pantsing and finishing books more quickly than he is. And again, it's not a race, but he is sitting there putting a moral judgment on the writing process, saying that pantsing is wrong. It's bad. It's inefficient. When his process,
to a pantser probably looks just as inefficient. that pantser is probably sitting there saying, I can write a fast draft of my entire novel in two months and then start revising. Why would I spend eight months outlining when I can do XYZ faster? So again, it's not about the timeline. You are not aiming to write your novel in a certain period of time, but.
There is no difference between spending more time outlining and spending more time revising because ultimately we are all going for the same goal and it does not matter if we get there differently. I think a lot of this kind of like moral overtone of plotting versus pantsing, I think a lot of it comes from that high school mindset of the kids who follow the rules, write the outlines, those are the good students.
and the kids who want to skip the outline, those are the bad students. So this is something that is starting early. It is starting in the classroom in our K through 12 education system. And if you want to hear more about how education is misguiding us when it comes to writing, go back and listen to episode two if you haven't already. But the other thing that I think contributes to this is that a lot of people who are very adamant that you must outline and very adamant that pantsers are just bad writers are people who are trying to sell you their outlining system.
are doing it to sell a particular method that has worked for them. And they are then making the assumption that it will work for everyone else. And that just isn't how it works. People's brains work
In my opinion, and this is based on what I have seen in the classroom, what I have seen in my own writing, what I have seen from clients. It does not matter how we approach the process as long as you are working toward the right goal. At the end of the day, every single writer has the same job. You have to produce an amazing book that meets the expectations of your future reader. And it doesn't matter how you get there.
If you are a plotter, no one is going to buy your outline. No one is going to give you a gold star because you planned that big twist on page 50 in advance. No one cares. No reader cares. a publisher might buy that outline. That's true. But you have to execute on the story effectively. You have to actually deliver a great experience just because your twist on page 50 sounds good in the outline.
If you fail to actually set up that reveal, if you fail to make us fall in love with your characters, if we don't care who that twist is happening to, if there isn't enough emotional processing on the page to actually make that big twist land, it doesn't matter what you put in your outline. It only matters if you deliver and make it matter to readers.
And I think that's something that is sometimes really hard to hear. I talked about this in the last episode, that a book can follow all of the rules and not deliver an engaging experience. I also want say you can also just be working from a bad outline. Just because you have outlined doesn't mean you've done so effectively or that the system or the thing you've been sold is effective for your genre. So I think that's also something to be really careful of is just because you have an outline.
does not mean you're automatically going to create a strong, structurally sound book. As a developmental editor, I have clients who pants, I have clients who plot. And if you were to compare those first drafts side by side, you might not be able to tell the difference. And I know that is gonna be so controversial because there are so many people out there saying that plotting is the magic bullet that is gonna save you from revision. And I'm gonna be honest.
As a developmental editor, can say that's only true if A, you start with a really strong outline and B, you know how to deliver and execute on the story you planned. Total side note, I will put in a quick plug. If you are a plotter and you have a really hard time with revision, you hate throwing out words, you hate redoing stuff, consider getting feedback on your outline. I offer an outlining critique service I know many other developmental editors do. You can get feedback.
on your story plan, on your plot, your conflict, your character arcs, get feedback on that stuff first before you start writing, before you lock yourself into something that you know you're gonna have a hard time changing. I will put a link in the show notes so if you are in that boat, you can explore that service. Again, don't wait until you have a finished draft to get feedback, especially if you know.
that you are not going to want to undo stuff.
back to it. If you are a pantsir, the same thing applies. No reader is going to give you a free pass because you didn't use an outline. If your book is structurally unsound, readers are going to put it down. It does not matter that you did not outline on the front end. They don't care. They don't need to know how you got there. They just need to see that
By the end, your final product has a coherent structure and a plot that flows logically and conflicts to develop and escalate as they should. No one cares how you got there as long as you actually make it to that final destination. And I think something that happens is that people try to kind of pick and choose from the process. They try to pick and choose and skip the parts they don't like. But you just need to recognize what your process requires.
So if you start off without an outline, you are going to have to do more work and revision, most likely. Not always, because again, someone can have a bad outline and end up having to do more work to fix it. But as a pantser, you are most likely going to have to throw away more words, you're going to have to rewrite more sections, you are going to have to rethink different parts of your book, because new ideas are going to come up as you draft that you then need to account for by rewriting the beginning. That's just the nature of the process.
If you are truly a pantser, that delights you. For me, for example, I come alive in revision. That is what I'm good at. I am so much better at taking something that already exists and fixing it than I am at trying to kind of, you know, conceive of how to make it perfect from the start. If that's not you, that's totally fine. There are people out there who hate, hate, hate, hate rewriting their words. They hate adjusting the things they've already done.
So for those people, Start with an outline so that you can minimize the amount of rewriting that you're going to need to do. It's not a guarantee. Again, if you have a bad outline, it's still not gonna work. Just because you have an outline does not free you from having structural problems. But if you wanna minimize the chances of having to do massive, massive rewrites because you hate revising, start with a really strong outline. Get feedback on that outline so you don't have to do that.
In contrast, if you are someone who loves and thrives on writing, do not force yourself to outline just because someone said you should. Don't force yourself to go through a process that's going to stifle you. Just accept that I'm gonna write the craziest worst draft I can and then I'm gonna use that and fix it from then on. So, know, again, the idea is to find what works for you and then adjust the rest of your process accordingly. But, and this is important.
you still have to put in the work to make your book work for readers, and that may include parts of the process you do not like. So just because you identify as a plotter, you're still going to have to revise. Just because you identify as a panzer, you might have to go to the drawing board and answer a character bio or something like that at the end of the day.
You have to do whatever it takes to get your book ready for readers. assuming you want to publish and you want people to buy your work. If you don't care if anyone ever read your book, you don't have to do any of this. You can just write for fun. That's also totally fine and amazing. But if you want someone to pay for your work, you have to be willing to do the work to make it worthy of them paying for it. That might make some people uncomfortable when we say that, but it's true. I don't buy crappy products at the store.
I expect products I buy to work. If I can see that it is not well constructed in the store, I'm going to put it back on the shelf. Why is your book any different? It's not. So again, we have to be ready to make the necessary changes to do the necessary work, but that work doesn't have to look the same.
ultimately my theory on where these distinctions come from is just some of us are more creative at different points in the process. Some people can sit down with a blank sheet of paper and start answering character bio questions and discover who their characters are just with that rough sketch. In contrast,
Some people need to actually start writing scenes. They need to see their characters in action in order to start conceiving of who that person is. Initially, I assumed that I was a plotter. I'm a very type A person. I was best known for having color coded planners in high school. I'm a very organized person, very logical person. You know, I hate surprises. I hate making stuff as they go along.
on paper, I should be the ultimate plotter. I am not. Because where my creativity comes out is in that process of making things up as I go along. And the best example of this, I will never forget this moment, I had just started writing first draft of my first book and I had this character who has a really bad relationship with his father and he's basically exiled from the country where he grew up.
And he's on this ship traveling across the ocean and all of a sudden he punches a child, not like a little, child. He punches a teenager, still evil. And all of a sudden I realized that this character was an antagonist.
As I was initially conceiving of this character when they first popped into my head, I did not know that they were going to turn out to be a villain until he punched that kid. I literally surprised myself. I don't really know where that came from in my subconscious, but I think that is the moment where I really understood that I'm a panzer.
Because if I had sat down with one of those character bio worksheets and tried to plan out who that character was, I would have been totally wrong. And then I would have ended up trying to make that character do what I wanted them to do or what I had thought they were going to do when something so much more creative and beautiful came out of me just starting this scene on the ship and seeing what happened. And that scene had nothing to do.
with the kid who ends up getting punched was just him being seasick and then all of sudden he punched someone. I still don't know where that came from. But again, it's just a wonderful example of how my process works that I need to start writing scenes and then I get to see what happens and I get to explore what happens. And I think I don't know, I'm not a plotter, but I think that plotters have those serendipitous moments when they are planning.
And I'm sure, you know, there are also moments that surprise them as they're drafting, but the real difference in my mind between plotters and panzers is where that creativity happens more naturally and where in the process they are able to maximize that creativity. Like I said, I love revision. It's why I'm a developmental editor. I'm really, really good at seeing where something is and then figuring out how to make it better. I am less good at
just trying to construct something great from the start. And so again, it's just how we all work differently and it all works. The problem happens when people assume that their brain works the same way as someone else's. So for example, you might have a friend who says, well, of course I write an outline. I would never be able to just throw away 50,000 words. And they assume that no one else can throw away those 50,000 words because they couldn't.
You can't imagine crafting a character just from bullet points because you're not able to and you assume that your plotter friend is just being formulaic, that their characters are just cardboard cut out stereotypes. We assume that because we don't think a certain way, someone else has the same limitations and it's just not true. We know this in other areas of our lives. We know that people have different learning styles, different learning preferences. We know
that you can have a student who has an A in English and their best friend can have an F in that class. And then they switch, they go to math and the best friend has an A and that other friend has an F. We know that different people gravitate toward different skills, that different people have things that come more naturally to them than others. Why would writing be any different? Why are so many people out there trying to tell us that there's only one right way to write a book?
The answer is they're A, lying, B, convinced that everyone else's brain is the same as theirs, or trying to sell you something that's probably the big one is that if someone is telling you that their way is the only way to write a book and they're trying to sell you a system, my goodness, they are lying and they know they're lying because there are so many other people out there who are successful, who publish books
before that person was even born or published books before they produced their outline
think Save the Cat is a beautiful example. There are great insights in Save the Cat. There are great things to learn. But every single book that is referenced in Save the Cat existed before Save the Cat was written. Otherwise, it would not have been possible for the writer of Save the Cat to analyze that.
Blake Snyder is amazing. Jessica Brody, wrote, the Catwrites novel, is amazing. there are so many great insights to gain from those books, but this idea that it is the only way, the only method, the only one that works is wrong. And I don't think that those authors actually say in their books that it's the only way.
But I think people start to get too attached and they think that if I can't make Save the Cat work for me, then I'm just not cut out to be a writer. And if I can't make this system work, then I'm a failure. When really, if someone is telling you that there's one path to becoming a bestseller, they're lying.
because not all of their students are best sellers, just fundamentally. And if there was really one magic bullet path, then everybody would be making millions of dollars with their books because if it worked for every single person, everyone would just go buy that system and instantly become a bestseller overnight. That's not how it works. You will never hear me telling any writer that I can make them a bestseller. You will never hear me making that promise, whether as your editor, as a writing teacher
because it's just simply something I cannot guarantee. I am not out here selling a bestseller method. I am selling better. I am selling improving at your craft, however you approach it. This kind of turned into a snowbox moment, but I think it's really important to say because there are a lot of people out there who are not marketing their stuff ethically, who are saying, can make you a bestseller, who are selling the bestselling XYZ method, and that's not actually what they're doing, unfortunately. I wish it were that easy. I wish it were that easy, but it is not.
All right, let's talk about how to actually make this actionable. What can you actually do right now to move forward with this information?
First off, I want you to ask yourself, is the method you're using, is your current process actually working for you or is it working against you right now?
Like I said, on paper, I should be a plotter. I tried to be a plotter for a long time and I never finished drafts. I finished outlines, I finished world building templates, I finished character bios, but I never actually finished a draft of a book until I let all of that go and I pants my first draft and I finished 80,000 words in about three months. And I think honestly, part of why I am a pantser is because I'm so type A. When I tried to outline,
I got so hyper focused on the rules and trying to make it perfect. And I literally sat down with one of those like 150 world building questions and I tried to answer every single one with like a whole paragraph each. And it just, I was frozen, I was stuck, I couldn't move forward. And so I think again, because that is how my brain works, if you give me the worksheet, I want to fill out every single box. I needed to let go of that in order to actually write fiction. And
just because I didn't do the character bios in world building upfront, it doesn't mean I never did them. I just did them after I already had a draft because I think for me I needed to see my character in action first. need to just start getting a sense of who they were. Then I could go deeper. I could go into the specifics. I could start answering specific questions but
I had to experiment, I had to try something different first before I could figure out what worked for me.
And that's what I want to encourage you to do. Really think about, are you making the kind of progress that you want? And I don't mean that you are writing at a certain pace or that you are, you know, finishing books in my own minute. Do you feel good about what you're accomplishing? Do you feel like you are moving forward? Do you feel like what you are doing is actually helping you become a better writer? Is what you're doing helping you finish books? And if the answer is no, is it time to try something else?
And you have to be careful here I'm not saying that your writing needs to happen on a certain timeline or in a certain way, but really think about is the process you have right now serving you or could you benefit from experimenting and trying something new? The other thing I want to encourage you to do is don't get hung up on what you think writing should look like. There are so many ideas out there that are just harmful.
you have probably been told to write every day, write at the same time every day, write in the same place every day. Or, you know, there are people out there who are having like 5 a.m. writing clubs, and those are all great until we try to tell everyone that they need to do that. And I think also, again, people attach this moral value to the process that if you don't write every day, you're lazier and motivated, you don't really want this, you don't really want to get published. Or if you are not
making writing your priority first thing in morning, then you just don't want it enough. And that's so unrealistic.
You need to figure out what works for your life. So if you have been beating yourself up because you're not doing what you should do. Should is of course in air quotes here. If you have been beating yourself up because you're not writing the way you should be, stop. Let go of that. There is no should. There is only what you can actually do.
Do not let this idea of what you should be doing get in the way of what you could be doing if you gave yourself more flexibility, if you focus on what actually works for you. Stop trying to force yourself to outline. Stop trying to force yourself to write every day. Stop trying to wake up at 430 a.m. because you think that writing in the morning is the only way to do it. You can write great words wherever
you are whenever you have time. there's no one right way. So my next step for you is to start experimenting, start changing things up, trying things out to figure out what works for you. And as you're doing that, there are three things that I really want you to keep in mind. First of all, just be realistic about your constraints. Constraints are not inherently bad.
You are not a bad person or a less worthy writer because you do not have the flexibility to spend five hours a day at your desk and complete solitude. If you have kids or a demanding job or a health condition that makes it harder for
energy or focus, do not fret about what you don't have. And I know that there's so much easier to say than it is to actually do. But the sooner you can let go of what
isn't possible and focus on what is the better. 10 minutes of writing is better than 10 minutes of beating yourself up for not having 30. whatever time you have, use it for the actual writing. And even if it is not as much as you want or as focused as you want,
it's better than wasting that time beating yourself up. Do not let the perfect be the enemy of the good, or the good enough, or the better than nothing.
Then as you were writing, experiment with different methods. Try pantsing, try plotting, try writing from picture prompts, written prompts. Try out different things and see what sparks your creativity because it might surprise you.
Try writing in different places, at different times, in different spaces, whatever works for you. Try writing in different mediums. Maybe you've only been typing. Maybe you could try handwriting. Maybe you could try dictating into your phone.
There are so many different ways to get the words down and it doesn't have to look a certain way, it doesn't have to sound a certain way, as long as the words are getting on the page, that's what really matters. I also recommend paying attention to the quality of your writing time. is a qualitative measure. We are not talking about word count or how much time you're actually spending, just
Pay attention to when you're more productive. When does it feel easier? When does it feel lighter? When do you feel more creative? Notice what those times are that are more productive and adjust accordingly. For example, when I was still teaching, I never wrote on Mondays. Didn't matter if it was a Monday holiday. This was true during COVID when we had a four-day work week. I never wrote on Mondays because Monday for me just wasn't a day that I was productive. And I started to notice that I would sit down on Monday and I would just waste time. I would feel bad about it.
So instead of continuing to try to force myself to have a productive Monday writing schedule that wasn't happening, I just canceled Monday and all of a sudden I doubled my output on Tuesdays. I skipped the day that wasn't productive and then the rest of my writing days went better. you do not have to write every day just because you hear on the internet that you should be, if that doesn't work for you, great, find what does. Maybe you do best when you have one long writing sprint a week, but you'll never know.
if you don't experiment and try and find out.
I do also recommend listening to what other writers do. Not so that you can find the magic bullet, the process that you're going to copy completely, but I think it's important to listen to a bunch of different writers talking about their process. Listen to a bunch of different voices. Start stealing little bits and pieces. That's how you discover what to experiment with, by listening to other writers. Hear their process, and then take what works for you, leave the rest. Try it out. If it doesn't work,
Don't put a value judgment on it. Just move on. I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, the How Writers Write podcast. In addition to that one man who was very, very adamant that you have to outline, there are countless other interviews with writers talking about their process, how they create books. And you can learn so much from listening to how different people work, how different people write. And again, start experimenting, start testing their methods, take what works, leave the rest.
And make sure listening to a variety of sources. Don't just listen to all traditionally published authors. Listen to interviews with indies. Listen to people who write outside of your genre. Listen to interviews with a bunch of different writers. You can also read those interviews, find them in other places. Look expansively so that you can actually find different methods, different processes to experiment with. Otherwise, you're probably just going to hear the same old thing. The other thing to keep in mind is that
your process may not remain static. You will change, your life will change, your writing will change, and something that has worked in the past may not work in the future. You might be a pantser right now, but you might have a project that you just need to outline. You might be someone who is a die-hard plotter, and you might just realize that actually you need to spend some time experimenting your draft with a bunch of prompts. Just because your process worked.
for one book or has been working does not mean it's going to work forever. And that's okay. The goal is not to have a perfect process. That is not your job as a writer. Your job as a writer is to create great books that your readers love. Your readers don't care if you write on Mondays. Your readers don't care if you write for 45 minutes or 10, as long as they eventually get a book in their hands that they can enjoy. So, don't get hung up on the process.
Do not spend the next year of your life crafting a perfect writing ritual with the super special pen that you can only get at one store that takes you two hours to drive to. That is not the point. And I think if we get too attached to the ritual, then that can be harmful too, because then it becomes a crutch and then, you know, it becomes more about the process than the product. And that's not what we want. It's just about figuring out how do I work best?
can I work in a way that feels good, that is efficient, not always easy, but that the process is not hampering or making my life harder. That's your goal. And again, we are always working toward that destination of a great book our readers love. The process isn't the point. It's about how we get to a book that readers can enjoy.
right. If this episode has you feeling some type of way, I would love to hear from you. You can find me on Instagram at Olivia Helps Writers.
If you want to come yell at me about the importance of outlining, if you have a process you love that you would like to share with someone else because you're so proud of yourself for discovering it, come let me know. DM me on Instagram. I would love to hear from you. I would absolutely love to connect and talk about the writing process because every writer is unique and I love hearing about how other people work. And as I've said at the end of the last two episodes, this show is still brand new.
If you enjoy this show, if there's something here that you think is worth sharing with other writers, please, please, please leave a review, share this episode with a friend, post about it on your social media. Anything that you can do to help get the word out, I would very much appreciate. My dream is for the show to reach as many writers as possible, to help as many writers as possible. And I would just love it if you could help me do that by sharing this show with someone who needs it.
All right, thank you so, much for listening to another episode of the Better Writer Podcast. a great rest of your day. Keep writing and keep getting better one word at a time. See ya.
Episode Two: Your High School English Teacher Lied - Let's Talk About It
Newsflash: your high school English teacher lied to you about the writing process. How do I know? I was one of them! I spent six years teaching students to write the wrong way before I started writing fiction and realized that professional writers are doing things differently. Like, completely differently. Tune in for the six lies you likely learned in high school and how to keep them from hindering your progress in the future.
Links:
Key Takeaways:
Everything your high school English teacher taught you about writing is a lie.
You do not have to outline; there are multiple ways to write.
Your first draft does not need to be perfect, but too many assignments are designed as if the first draft should be readable and coherent.
Editing involves more than just correcting typos; it requires structural changes and re-envisioning everything about your story if needed.
Collaboration is essential in writing even if it’s often discouraged or downplayed in the classroom.
Grammar rules can be bent in creative writing; focus on storytelling.
There is no single standard for writing; it varies by genre and audience.
The reader's experience is the most important goal; if your story doesn’t work for them, it doesn’t work at all.
Understanding your own writing process is crucial for success.
Unlearning harmful writing habits can lead to better writing outcomes.
Transcript:
I have bad news for you. Everything your high school English teacher taught you about writing is a lie. Yep, I am making a bold claim. I know it. Welcome to episode number two of the Better Writer podcast. Yeah, today I'm going to tell you every way you were taught to write in correctly. saying no shade to English teachers. I was one and that's how I know.
that what I was teaching, what I was taught and then passed on to my students does not apply to fiction and can be really harmful when we are trying to write publishable, sellable books. So let's talk about why that is.
First off, a little backstory.
was a high school English teacher for eight years. I taught in both Connecticut and Rhode Island at two different schools. And like all English teachers, I basically replicated what I had been taught in high school. There were some things that got updated. I think we are much more aware of accommodations and kind of making our classrooms accessible to all students nowadays. But generally speaking,
The frameworks that I was teaching, the methods that I had learned in high school, pretty much had not changed by the time I became a teacher. And I think that's especially true of how we teach writing. Generations of teachers have
pretty much the same things in writing workshops, and unfortunately, they are not helpful.
how I realized that.
The first four years of my teaching career, I was at a school in Connecticut where every student took two English classes. They had a literature class where they focused on reading and analyzing literature. And they had a composition class that was focused on writing. When I started, composition had just become seminar, so that balance was changing a little bit, but essentially they had a reading class and a writing class. I was in the literature department. So I did have students
write literary analysis essays that was part of the shift that was happening from composition to seminars, we had started teaching literary analysis essays. But writing was not the main focus of that class. It was something we did as part of reading, not something we did for its own sake. Then four years into my teaching career, COVID hit. That is when I uprooted my life. I came to Rhode Island. I started teaching at a different school. I actually started with them online.
do not recommend that, it was awful. But I loved that school and one of the things I loved about it is that I could basically teach whatever I wanted. I also had the opportunity to teach my own elective. And at that time I had just started writing fiction really seriously, I had...
basically made it my whole personality kind of overnight. And so was like, ⁓ great, I'm gonna teach creative writing. for the first time, I was teaching English class where I was responsible for teaching both reading and writing. I was also now teaching a creative writing class to students. And I had just started really seriously trying to write fiction and try, I was trying to write at a publishable level.
All of those things converged at the same time and I realized that everything I was teaching my students about writing was the complete opposite of what I was learning as a student of fiction writing in my personal life. Again, I was teaching what I had been taught to do in high school. I was replicating all of those normal high school English things that we do.
And none of it, absolutely none of it, was reflected in the way that I was seeing professional published writers approach their fiction writing. And I think a lot of us writers, we eventually end up unlearning these things, but I don't think anyone is really naming why we need to unlearn them in the first place. And when I became an editor, I saw this even more, that very similar mistakes are happening.
And I think they all go back to how we are being taught to approach the writing process in school. and the fact that no one is really naming the ways in which fiction is just completely different from what we have been asked to do in academic or professional writing in the past. So I have identified six lies that are being taught in school.
are likely affecting your writing if you have not been in the game long enough to kind of unlearn them naturally. And so I'm hopeful that this is going to illuminate some of what makes fiction so difficult to write when it doesn't need to be. Because I think if you can get
mindset and start to see how fiction is different, that doesn't mean you're gonna master the techniques overnight. But I do think it really gives you a boost in just being able to see
what you should be doing and how it's different from ways you have written in the past.
Quick caveat. I do want to give the preface that I am an American. I Taught in American schools. I was educated in American schools. I suspect that a lot of what I experienced is True in other countries especially because my high school was an IB school international baccalaureate So my education is my more internationally focused than most but I do want to say that I am a product of the US public education system and so
This might not translate to your context perfectly, but I think a lot of it will. Okay, let's dive in. The first lie is a big one, and this is going be controversial. Lie number one is that you have to outline. I know that this is still controversial in the fiction writing world, but I will die on this hill. You do not have to outline.
you do not have to outline. There are multiple ways to accomplish the same goal. But in school, we are often taught that the writing process is one size fits all and that we all need to go through the same steps the same way.
This is the lie that I think I feel most guilty about when I think about my own teaching practice because I was the same as most English teachers. I had a very strict process that I made every student go through. We start with the outline. You turn in your outline for feedback. We move on to the rough draft. Everyone has to turn in a rough draft mostly so I can see you have something. Then you do the final. There's no leeway. It's all the same deadlines, the same process, et cetera.
And I would have students who would sit there staring at their outline, whether it was on paper or digital or whatever, they would sit there and they would sit at the outline and they would get nothing done. And then either they just never turned in an essay at all, or they would, you know, finally on the last day of the assignment, I would tell them, oh, fine, skip the outline, write an essay, just do it, get them done. And then, you know, they would turn in something that was subpar because they did it in the last day before the assignment when we'd had, you know, weeks to work on it.
and I think this is probably, if we're honest with ourselves, typical of what happens in a lot of classrooms. And you may have had this done to you as a student in a
Because again, I had been taught that you outline, that's what you do. I outline when I'm writing nonfiction, whether that's an academic essay or, you know, anything like that. But when I started really writing fiction,
I discovered that I'm a panzer. The first book that I ever finished, got to the end of the draft, I did not outline. I just started writing, started making stuff up as I went along, and that was the very first book that I actually finished. And that epiphany changed my entire conception of the writing process, and I realized...
that I had been doing such a disservice to those students who were just sitting there staring at their outlines, not getting anything done, because I assumed, like I'd been taught, that they were just doing it wrong. They just weren't following directions. They were lazy. They were unmotivated.
So the first school year, after I had this realization, I came back and I decided to run an experiment. I gave my students three different sets of deadlines to choose from for our first running assignment. I had a plotter track where students would spend more time outlining. So those students would turn an outline. They had more time to do it. Then they had less time to draft and less time to revise. I had a pantser track for kids who wanted to skip the outline completely.
but they had to turn in two separate rough drafts. So they did a rough rough draft first, then a less rough draft before going on to the final. Then I had an in-between track. Those students turned in outline, but they did it earlier than the plotters. So they would then have more time drafting and more time revising. At the end of that unit, when students were able to pick their own deadlines, pick their own writing process, every single student turned in the assignment.
That was the first time that had ever happened in my entire career. And I was not a new teacher at that point. This was year six for me. having taught multiple writing assignments per year every year. That was the first time I ever had a 100 % turn in rate and 100 % turned in by the deadline.
If you work outside of education, that might not sound very special to you, but if you are a teacher, if there are any teachers listening, you know how exceptional that actually is, especially considering that this was fall of 2021 and these were 10th graders. So these are students who spent their entire ninth grade year at home. This was their first writing assignment, their first year actually going to school in person as a high school student.
Like we even still had masks on. So the fact that everyone turned in that essay really was incredible. And what that experience taught me is that the difference between plotters and pantsers is not a myth. There are actual differences in how people approach the writing process and all of those processes can work. And I'm not gonna sit here and tell you that every kid wrote an amazing paper. I'm not gonna tell you that everyone did it
perfectly, but I can say that I had A's in the plotter group, I had A's in the pantser group, and I had A's in the in-between group. the method that a student used did not determine the final outcome. Their skill as a writer in other aspects determined the final outcome. Their ability to take feedback and apply it.
determines the final outcome. So anyone who tells you that a pantser is just lazy, they're not disciplined enough to outline, they're wrong. They are wrong. You can succeed as a pantser, you can succeed as a plotter. And the idea that there is only one way to approach the writing process,
is a lie. It's a lie. And again, I feel really bad about perpetuating that myth in my classroom, but I didn't know any better because I think there's just so much noise out there. So much goes into perpetuating this myth. And teachers are teaching kids to outline. Teachers are teaching kids that there is only one way to approach the writing process. There's not. And I think so many people are hampered by this when they start writing fiction because they don't know how to figure out their own writing process.
because they never had a chance to explore that in school. I can go on and on about this and maybe there will be another episode about that actually. That will be episode three. So stick around because I'm gonna talk more about this plotter versus pants or divide. right, line number two. Is that your first draft should be readable or coherent or even polished? This one I think is more insidious. It's not something that is being actively said by any teacher.
Maybe it is. I would say for the most part, it's probably not. But it is baked into the structure of so many assignments that are being given in school. For example, students are often given an exit ticket.
Maybe the word exit ticket didn't exist when you were in school. I don't remember hearing it. I think it's more of new thing. But basically, it's like a question you answer at the end of the day to demonstrate whether you've learned the content. And I think the idea that like you have two minutes to scribble on an answer and it's supposed to represent a coherent thought, it's just kind of unrealistic. Like you're supposed to write a whole paragraph that makes sense. I know for myself, I was often told as a teacher that I should be
grading exit tickets for quality, both quality of thought and sometimes quality of writing. So again, a student might have 10 minutes, 15 minutes, less than that to write a full paragraph that then gets graded for quality. The implicit message is that thing you scribbled out at the end of class should be readable, should be gradable, should represent the quality of your thinking and work when
That's not really a realistic expectation, especially for someone who is still learning to write. We also have in-class essays. The SAT essay, when it still existed, is, you you're told, well, you know, they're gonna judge it like a first draft, but that means that your first draft should be judgeable, that your first draft should be readable enough that you can get a grade for it, that a high-stakes assessment can be based on what you wrote.
in under an hour. You know, I think even on a larger scale, if you have an essay that you wrote over a few days, a few weeks, even then,
Usually what happens is you write the essay, you turn it in, it gets graded, and that's it. You don't go back to it, you don't rethink it. the implicit message there is that once you finish a piece of writing, it's set, it's done, the grade is set in stone, it's locked into the gradebook. I know more and more schools are kind of offering revision opportunities now, but I think that message is still implicitly there that
Writing is something that happens once and then you walk away, that's it. And again, I think in class essays I think are particularly problematic, which is why I refuse to do them after my second year of teaching. That's a whole other story. But this idea that the first draft that you vomit out should be readable is really dangerous because I think a lot of people freeze. They think that their first draft has to be more than it is.
They think that their first draft has to be stronger than what's really required. Your first draft, its only job really is to exist. don't get me wrong, if you are a clean writer, that's totally fine. That is something to celebrate. But if you're not, that doesn't mean you failed. It just means that you are going to need to do some work in revision to make sure that your story ends up being what you want it to be. But that doesn't mean that you're doing it wrong. But you were probably penalized for having a messy first draft.
when you had to write an in-class essay or on the SAT. it's a damaging narrative. It's a narrative that isn't being explicitly taught, but it is baked into so many assignments and so many things that we are doing in schools. Teach students that your first draft should be readable, should be coherent, should represent your best ideas when that is not a realistic expectation for a first draft. And the sooner you can realize that that messaging was wrong,
the better off you will be. So I hope that you can start to unlearn that starting today.
Alright, that brings me to lie number three, which is the idea that editing means pulling out a red pen and looking for typos. And you might have gone to a school that maybe taught a little bit more editing than this. Maybe you were looking for missing commas in addition to those typos. But oftentimes I notice that people don't really understand what revision means. They think revision is just
cleaning sentences, making sure that everything sounds right. When really, we should worry about those sentence level things last. That is the absolute final step in your revisions. And that's especially true when you are talking about a novel. Maybe when you're talking about one paragraph, you're not gonna be making big structural changes. Okay, fine, But people try to take that same mindset
to a novel and it just does not translate. When we are talking about a novel, and I would argue this is also true of many essays, we need to think about the structure. We need to think, you know, for a story you're gonna be thinking about character arcs. You need to think about the plot, your chapter order, point of view. You might end up needing to massively rewrite entire sections of your story.
And that's just something that we're not often asked to do in a classroom setting. You might get a bad grade, but you probably don't have the chance to completely start from scratch and get a new grade. So people just aren't used to this concept of, wrote the thing, it didn't work. I'm gonna completely redo it in a new way. It's a foreign way of thinking for a lot of people, which makes it really difficult to approach the revision process because it's something that we...
often associate with that we did something wrong. I'm revising because it's bad. I'm revising because I failed. But in actuality, you're revising to bring your story closer to your vision. You're revising because your first draft was never meant to be perfect. It's really hard, if not impossible, to make your first draft perfect. And therefore, you keep refining and iterating and getting closer and closer to your goal.
And this lack of revision also ties in to lie number four, which is this idea that you have to work alone. For this one, I do want to note, as a high school teacher, getting students to do their own work is an ongoing challenge and a really important goal. So it is very important for us to keep kids from plagiarizing, copying off each other, et cetera. However, what that sometimes turns into is pretending that the writing process can happen completely
completely in isolation. We teach students that they should not work together at all. They should not let anyone read their essays because they might copy and then you both fail. mean, I've definitely shared those horror stories with students that like don't share your essay with anyone because if they turn it in, you could both get kicked out of college. which is true. It is true. But we tend to overdo it and suggest that
You should never share your work with anyone else. It's just you, you alone. All I want to see is what you can do with your brain. And again, there is a time and a place for that. But people who are actually writing and publishing professionally know that the process is incredibly collaborative. Writing fiction for someone else to read and buy requires you to make sure that your story is actually working for someone else.
We cannot, cannot create publishable books on our own. We need feedback. I'm not saying that you necessarily need professional help, but you do need to have someone else read your book so you can make sure that it makes sense to the reader. So you can make sure that your message, your intentions are coming across on the page in the way you wanted them to.
Another side to this problem is that people sometimes become afraid of feedback because in the classroom feedback is punitive or it feels that way. As in you've already gotten a bad grade or not the grades you wanted and the feedback is only telling you what you did wrong. And even if you're student who got
good grades on papers, often the feedback was like, okay, this was fine, but next time do X, Y, Z to be even better. And again, I'm not at all criticizing teachers because you have such limited time. There is not enough time to go through and comment on every single thing that a student did right. And so often the more efficient thing to do, the thing that saves you from spending your entire life grading is just trying to be quick to the point, here's what needs to be better, maybe you have time for...
one positive comment, but then you have to move on. And oftentimes also that feedback is coming at the end of the process. The assignment is done. It has already been graded.
That feedback is then meant to help you on the next assignment, And problem is that, it doesn't actually do anything for you in the moment because the paper is done, you can't improve this score, and the next assignment is going to be completely different, and some of those comments might not actually translate into what you're trying to do next. So a lot of people don't have experience getting good
in the moment feedback on their writing, which makes it difficult when you're trying to then write professionally to accept feedback, to take feedback in a way that doesn't shatter you or doesn't make you want to quit. And think again, a lot of it goes back to this idea that we feel like we're being graded again. We feel like we have gotten a bad grade on the paper rather than the reality that someone who gives you feedback when you are trying to get published is helping you get closer to your goals.
And that is something that I built into the process when I totally revamped my classroom. I actually started teaching students how to both give and receive feedback, starting with just having kids write a question.
for the people who are reviewing their essays. Because I think we don't always get in the habit of thinking about what do I actually want to know about my writing? That's a skill. Knowing what you need to work on, knowing what you need feedback on, that is a skill that oftentimes isn't being developed in classrooms. And we have to learn how to ask for feedback. We have to learn how to give instructions to the people critiquing us. Those are skills. So if you've ever felt like, don't know how to get good feedback. I don't know what I should be asking for or looking for. I don't know how to use these comments.
It's not because you're doing something wrong, it's because you've probably never learned how to ask for feedback, how to use it. There's a process and it's again, it's something that needs to be learned. All right, on to line number five. And this is another one that might be controversial, especially, I'm a little biased as a developmental editor. So if there are any copy editors out there, sorry, not sorry. But line number five is that grammar is God.
and that there are other very rigid rules that can never be bent, never be broken. Goodness, there are a lot of English teachers out there who love their grammatical rules or love the rules like you must use five active verbs in your first sentence and if you don't, you fail. I was not one of those people. My relationship to grammar is very intuitive, very informal. If I ever...
tried to count verbs in a student's paper, I would lose my mind. But, I think that makes sense, that's why I'm a developmental editor. I only worry about the story level stuff. I do not worry about grammar. But I think that there is an overemphasis on certain rules in education that ends up harming writers when they are trying to expand beyond academic writing. Now, I do want to be clear.
Grammatical rules do serve a purpose. They are a necessary part of communication. You can imagine if we had no standardization whatsoever, we would not be able to read each other's writing. So I am not arguing for no rules, no commas, no grammar. But fiction doesn't necessarily need to follow the rules as rigidly as academic or professional writing in other contexts.
There is room for creativity and art and what things sound like and fragmenting sentences if they make sense in context. And if we try to stick too closely to the idea of what good writing means, it can...
the overall experience that we end up giving our readers and lead to a weaker book.
I see that especially with people who are trying to be concise. Part of that comes from publishing itself and there are times when we do need to pay attention to specific word counts. But I also think part of the issue comes from this classroom mindset where you have exactly 500 words and if you go above or below, you get points taken off.
You have exactly two pages and you have to cram in a bunch of information and be as direct and to the point as possible. And I get it for the teachers out there, you have to put limits However, when we start writing fiction and if conciseness is our goal, if we are putting brevity above everything else, it's highly likely that you are stripping the magic out of your story.
because you will end up summarizing instead of showing. You are going to end up using generalities and vague descriptions instead of something that is precise and detailed. And you are likely to skip over a character's interior thoughts in favor of just getting to the point, and not really narrating the full scope of what's going on.
I do want to say I'm not telling you to ignore word count completely. However, I do believe that word count should not be the priority upfront. Get your entire story on the page first. Write in all of the scenes, show the specific setting details, introduce your characters, give us their thoughts on the page. Make sure you are showing your scenes and not summarizing things that readers are going to want to see firsthand.
start by getting the entire story on the page. Do not make being concise your entire goal, especially in your first draft because you can always cut things later. And I think it is easier to do that when you have made sure that the important things are on the page first. Then you can pare back at the sentence level. can, you know, we can figure out what is most essential after that. But I see a lot of people who underdevelop parts of their story.
because they are trying to just cut out the fluff, the extra stuff. When a lot of that extra, the descriptions, the emotion, the interiority is what makes fiction enjoyable to read. So you'd be really careful that you are putting the right mindset, the right goal at the forefront for the type of writing you're doing. If you take an academic or a classroom approach to writing and try to apply that to a novel, it's not going to work.
which ties in perfectly to our final lie. Lie number six is that there is one objective standard and that audience doesn't matter.
I think this is another one that is fairly insidious and that it's not necessarily directly stated, but it is built into the assignments we're given in school. For example, you are writing an essay. There is one rubric. There is one reader, the teacher, but the teacher doesn't really matter. All you're trying to do is demonstrate that you can follow the rules so you can get a grade. You're not
thinking about your teacher's reading experience. Unless maybe you're the kid who's like trying to distract the teacher with humor and get a better grade. But most people are not thinking about the teacher's experience as a reader because they're not told to. They're not thinking about whether or not their essay is enjoyable to read because again that's not the focus of the assignment. The focus is hit this very
specific standardized criteria and hopefully get the grade you want on this essay. When we writing fiction, the mindset has to completely change. There is not one rubric. There isn't one strict set of rules that applies to every book. There are some commonalities. There are things that apply across genres, but your ultimate goal is not to check a bunch of boxes. Your ultimate goal
is to create an experience for your readers that they enjoy. And that experience is going to be completely different depending on the genre you write. In fiction, the standards are incredibly subjective. There is no one size fits all because there are so many different genres, subgenres, age categories, interests, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera.
You have to decide who you are writing for, what genre are you writing, what age group are you writing for, who do you want to read your book, and then you have to figure out what they want from you and how to deliver.
It would honestly be easier if there was one set standard we could all focus on and adhere to, but there isn't. It's just not how fiction works. Because what's good in a romance is different from what's good in literary fiction, is different from what's good in mystery. Again, there's overlap, there's commonalities, but ultimately, the people who read those genres are looking for different things.
even if people read across genres. I read very widely. I have a lot of different interests, but I don't go to a will trend mystery for the same experience that I would turn to one of the Bridgerton books or to a Brandon Sanderson book. Even a Dan Brown book, which mystery and thriller are often thrown together, but I'm actually not looking for the same experience from a thriller that I am from a mystery. So even though I am one person,
when I pull a specific type of book off my shelf, I'm looking for a specific type of experience. If a Will Trent book ended with a wedding between two main characters but never solved the mystery, I would be very upset. And I would be very upset if a Bridgerton book solved a murder but did not have a happy ending because I'm going to those books for two completely different experiences. And even though
A mystery might have a romance subplot or a romance might have a mystery subplot. If you do not deliver on the main core experience your readers are looking for, you have not succeeded. There is no objective standard. It varies based on what you're writing and who you are writing
And ultimately, the only one who gets to decide if you have succeeded is the reader.
And I that's so hard because it's your book, it's your baby, but once you decide to publish, the reader is king. And if you don't deliver, you don't get to go to the reader and say, but wait, my grammar is perfect. There's not a single typo. I used The Hero's Journey and I hit.
every save the cat beat in exactly the right spot, no one cares if you don't deliver on the experience that they're looking for. It doesn't matter how many boxes you checked or how technically perfect your story is, it has to deliver.
that's makes fiction so, so difficult to write because it is subjective. There isn't a neat and tidy set of rules to adhere to that say you did this right or wrong.
⁓ And I think so many of us are looking for that A+. We are looking for someone to hand us a rubric with everything checked off to say, did it, it's perfect, it's great, you passed the class. And that is just not how the world of professional writing and publishing works for fiction authors. I wish I could tell you that it was, but it's not. And I think once you free yourself from that mindset of, I'm trying to check a box, I'm trying to do it all right. Once you free yourself from that idea,
and start trying to figure out how can I give my readers the best day experience I can. That is when you are going to start moving forward and actually creating stories that people want to read. And hopefully that doesn't overwhelm you. Hopefully that gives you a little bit of hope that you can figure out how to do that. Now that you know what your actual goal is, I absolutely believe that you can make it happen
because now you know what you're actually aiming for.
All right, those were six lies that your high school English teacher told you about writing that may have been holding you back in your attempts to become a published writer. Hopefully today has been eye-opening. Maybe today made you a little bit angry. I don't know. I would love to hear from you either way. So if you have a strong reaction, positive, negative, or anywhere in between, hit me up on Instagram, let me know, DM me. I'm at at Olivia Helps Writers, and I would love to hear from
if you have been that person,
bringing academic or business writing habits into fiction, please, please do not despair. Do not think about, my goodness, I have made mistakes. It's okay. You get to move forward now with a new mindset and You can do this. I believe in you.
Thank you so, so much for listening to another episode of the Better Writer podcast. It is really an honor to be part of your day. And I could really use your help. This is still a new show. If it helped you, if you got anything out of it, please consider leaving a review, telling people what you like about the show or share it with a writer friend who needs to hear it.
⁓ or if you'd be willing, post about it on social media. I would really, really appreciate your support because my goal is to help as many writers as possible and that is only going to happen if they know where to find me. So thank you again for listening. Have a wonderful day and keep getting better one word at a time. See ya.
Episode One: Why Writing Fiction Still Matters in 2025
It all begins with an idea.
Show Notes
In the very first episode of the Better Writer Podcast, I’m asking one very important question: Does writing fiction matter?
When AI has shown up to replace us and the world feels like it’s always in a state of crisis does it still make sense to sit down and write your stories?
I believe it is. Here’s why.
Links mentioned in this episode:
Subscribe to the Better Writer Weekly newsletter here
Learn more about my work here
Read my blog post on harmful worldbuilding tropes here
Check out the sources that I consulted in putting together this show:
Article: Paul Slovic observes the ‘psychic numbing’ of COVID-19
Article: Why Your Brain Can’t Empathize with Large Tragedies
Books Mentioned (affiliate links):
Key Takeaways:
Writing is essential even in a world dominated by AI.
Diverse perspectives in literature are crucial for changing our world for the better - even if we don't see results right away.
Fiction is an amazing coping mechanism and your book could be the thing that gets someone through the toughest part of their life.
Stories can help readers navigate difficult emotions and experiences in a safe way that doesn't trigger the defensiveness that can keep people from connecting in real life.
Writing can also empower you whether it's just in telling a story that matters to you or in accomplishing a difficult goal.
Fiction has the power to foster empathy and understanding in the real world too.
No matter who you are, you have a unique story that matters.
Transcript
Please note, this transcript was automatically generated and lightly edited. I apologize in advance for any errors that may have come through.
Welcome to episode number one of the Better Writer podcast. I am just so honored and grateful that you're here spending part of your day with me as I talk about writing. It's one of my favorite things to talk about in the world and I'm just so excited to share this podcast with you. My dream is for this podcast to be inspirational, educational, and I just hope that this is going to help you become a better writer, whatever that means to you.
All right, before we get started, I just wanted to say, if you want to hear even more from me, if you are looking for more inspiration, more craft advice, more information about how I work with writers and help them become better, then I also have a weekly newsletter, The Better Writer Weekly. It comes out every Tuesday afternoon, and you'll just get to hear a little bit from me. I usually share a mix of personal stories, writing advice, random insights into the things that are making my life a little bit better.
at the moment. And if you're interested in that, you can find a link to subscribe in the show notes. And of course, you can also go to my website,
I wanted to kick off the show by answering the question, why write? It's 2025, AI has arrived on the scene. It feels like everything is changing. So why bother writing when the robots are going to replace us and you can churn out a book in 20 seconds? It also just feels like a lot of things in the world are going wrong. Everything is burning down around us.
Why bother writing fiction in a world where children are being zip-tied on the street? Why write fiction while people we care about, maybe even you yourself, are being harmed by policy changes and natural disasters and all of these other things that we are just constantly inundated with in the news? It just feels like maybe this isn't the time, maybe writing doesn't matter anymore.
when all of these other things are happening. But I would argue that all of those things that are happening in the world are actually a reason to write and to keep creating fiction.
So if you have ever asked yourself that question, if you have ever wondered if the things you're working on still matter, today I want you to know that you are not wasting your time. You are not being foolish. You are doing something by writing a book. You are doing something that truly matters for the world. And I have three reasons why I think that is. First, I think the world needs new perspectives. Second, fiction is a way to cope.
When the world is falling apart, we need those stories more than ever. And finally, fiction can actually make people better and that power should not be discounted and should not be forgotten.
right, the first reason we need new perspectives and specifically we need your perspective. Let's talk about the AI elephant in the room. And I'm not going to pretend to be an expert on generative AI, but I think I have at least a basic understanding of how it works. And at a basic level, generative AI is a pattern recognition
machine. AI takes data that it has been trained on, it looks for patterns that are repeated,
and then it repackages and submits that information in the order in which it thinks we, the user, want to hear it. So if you ask ChatGBT, give me a workout plan for getting fit in six weeks. It's going to scour the internet, it's going to scour the data it was trained on, and then it is going to spit back its best.
approximation or estimation of what you want in a six week workout plan. now the problem with that, and I mean, there are a lot of problems with AI, namely, you know, a lot of that data
sourced, stolen from creators. But beyond that, even if all of that data were ethically sourced,
The data set that we have is inherently biased. Think about which voices throughout history have been celebrated and which have been silenced, it is not that long ago in our history that things were even more unequal than they are now, it was illegal.
for someone who looked like me to even learn to read or write in this country. So the data that we have is not representative of the diversity in our world and is not representative of all of the lived experiences in this world. And we need to keep adding to the narrative. We need to keep writing against those old, outdated, biased stories. That is true of racial diversity. When we're talking about gender, I mean, if we think about, you know,
It's been like not even 50 years since women could have their own bank accounts without permission from a man. I mean, those things are just not as historical as we sometimes like to pretend they are. If we think about the conversation around neurodivergence, those conversations were not happening when I was in school and I'm not that old. There are a lot of perspectives and insights that just were not around, are not represented in the data that we have.
which means AI was not trained on them. I am not saying that you should write a book so that AI can be trained on it and learn a new perspective. What I am saying is that if we just throw up our hands and say, well, the computer's doing it, so I'm just not gonna bother, then those stories are never going to be out there in the world. We need to keep telling our stories.
because that is how we are going to try to create a better world. And it might not work, it might be hard, but if we give up, it's definitely not going to happen. So I think the more that we can bring diverse perspectives into literature, the more we can normalize diverse perspectives with our stories, that is going to very slowly start to change the conversation. It's going to change the assumptions, change the norms, because
Let's be real, that's how a lot of us learn about the world by reading, whether we're doing that intentionally, seeking out information or not.
I consider myself to be very, very fortunate to work with authors who are doing this all the time. And I don't just mean people who are writing realistic fiction. That is not the only place where stereotypes show up. And it is not the only place where we can write against those narratives
romance. And that is a great opportunity to A, start
undoing some of those racist tropes that are baked into fantasy. I wrote a blog post about this and I will link to it in the show notes, but a lot of the fantasy tropes that we take for granted are based on racial and anti-semitic biases and we need to be able to acknowledge that and then start writing differently so we aren't replicating those systems going forward. Again, you might not be able to change the world overnight with one book, but if we give up, if we stop telling our stories, then no one is going to represent us.
going forward into the future. And the stories that already exist aren't necessarily going to help us cope with what comes next. So we need to keep writing, keep exploring the issues we're facing now so we have stories that resonate with the current. Which brings me to reason number two, why fiction still matters.
fiction helps us cope. I work almost exclusively with genre fiction, mostly fantasy, fantasy romance, but I will delve into mystery, thriller, all that kind of stuff. And I am also someone who left a job in public service to work with writers and work with books full time. And sometimes I have had that little thought in the back of my head of, you know, did I make a mistake?
I went from a job that very clearly helps people. I went from a job where I was serving students and families every day, and now I read books all day. I've had moments where I've questioned myself and wondered, am I actually doing something that matters now that I'm an editor?
especially when I work with genres that you might consider unserious. For those who can't see me on
unserious is in air quotes there. I have realized that those books do matter. Genre fiction does matter. I've already touched on this idea that fantasy can be used to address real world issues through fiction, and I think that's really powerful. I think using fantasy can be a great way to take an issue that is just too controversial.
to really talk about in our real world and address it. But even if it doesn't do that, even if you're not addressing a real world issue, even if your book is just light and fun, it may be the thing that gets someone through the hardest part of their life. That might be the thing that helps a teacher cope at the end of their workday so they can keep going back and serving students the next day. And I have experienced that in my own life.
I can still remember very vividly that I was reading The Well of Tears by Cecilia Darten-Thorton when I went to New Mexico to visit my grandfather while he was in hospice the last time that I was ever going to see him. I was in middle school. I would say I was probably a highly sensitive child is what you might call it nowadays. But I, you know, I wasn't...
dealing well. I still don't really like hospitals. I don't really like dealing with death and dying, even though it's a part of life. But what I had in that moment was that book. And I still very, very much remember pretty much carrying it with me wherever I went. It was a mass market paperback, so the perfect size for just throwing in a purse or your pocket or whatever. And that helped me. And that's why I still remember it is because it helped me cope.
And it is pretty incredible that I have not actually read another book by that author. But almost 20 years later, I still have a very vivid recollection of that one story that was with me at a particularly difficult time in my life. And I still do this. If I am stressed or overwhelmed, I am going to reach for one of my comfort books.
Anne Bishop is one that I pretty much always turn to if I am, you know, not happy going through something. I will be reading another Anne Bishop book and it's going to help. I also did that during COVID. During the pandemic, I flew through all eight of the Bridgerton books. I'm usually someone who needs a break in between books in a series, I also have a tendency to never finish a series as well.
But I flew through that entire series maybe in a year and a half because I just kept going back to those stories to escape from the reality of the pandemic. I was a teacher during COVID. I was teaching online. It was absolutely miserable. And that series of books helped me get through it, helped me not turn off the computer and quit teaching immediately as soon as we started having to teach online. And that's powerful.
The first Bridgerton book was published in 2000, a full 20 years before the pandemic happened. Julia Quinn did not write that story, so a high school teacher could cope with a global health crisis. But that is exactly what that book did, again, two decades after it came out.
And that, I think, is something to celebrate. It may seem so small, but it could be the biggest thing in the world to someone when they are going through something and just need to be able to escape for a few minutes of their day. And I also want to say you don't need to be writing something that is lighthearted or fun or happy for you to have that impact on someone. I also got really obsessed with The Witcher during that same time period.
And even though the show is super dark, it pretty much could not be further from Bridgerton in terms of content. It still gives us hope that there are people out there who are fighting to overcome the darkness and maybe just maybe they will succeed. And I think that is still the appeal. I think of darker fiction. It's not about the darkness. It's about the hope. Those who are willing to take a stand, even if they're imperfect and maybe especially if they're imperfect. And that is a source of comfort.
When there are dark times in reality and they feel insurmountable, rather than wallowing in that, we want to see the dark world with the heroes who are going to save us from it. So in either case, if you are writing a story, whether it explores darkness and helps someone see that they are not alone in whatever
going through, or if you are writing a book that takes people out of that and shows them that a happy ending is possible no matter what is going on in the world,
you are doing something for those readers that they are not going to get somewhere else. You are doing something powerful for those readers and that should be celebrated. On the flip side, you as a writer can also benefit. Writing can be a way to cope for you as well. And I think that could be in telling your story, telling a story that's meaningful to you, or it could just be
in the accomplishment and the empowerment that comes from setting a big, difficult goal and then following it through. Again, I have experienced that as well. When I started my first book, it was again in the pandemic, I could not control what was happening in the world. I could not control the COVID numbers here in Rhode Island, which were awful for a while. I could not make sure that all of my students had a stable home environment to learn in.
I could not control whether they came to class or turned their camera on or actually participated. I could not control so many things. But when I logged out for the day, I could start writing and I could control my word count. I wasn't necessarily aiming to write the best thing in the world at that point, but I was at least in control of what I produced.
It was just something small that I could control, that I could keep track of, and that I could keep moving forward with. And then obviously that spiraled into me totally uprooting my life, but that's a different story. I have also found that fiction is such a great way to explore the questions that we are trying to answer in our own lives. For myself, my first book explores themes of religion and how religion is used to control women, to try to
tell them what it is to be a good person in ways that it doesn't necessarily do that for men. I also started exploring questions of what it means to have children, because that was a big question I was asking at the time when I started is, do I even want children? Do I want to bring children into this world? I didn't come away with an answer, but just the act of exploring and writing and creating a world in which I could explore those questions without any...
real-world ramifications, because when you create a character, you don't have to pay child support if you abandon them later. And so you get to start imagining different possibilities. You can explore different possibilities safely in a way that just isn't... We can't write all of our possible futures and live them out in the real world, but we can write them in fiction and then explore what happens next.
It can be such a great way to explore and examine the questions that don't have easy answers. Another thing that I ended up exploring in my book is this idea of religion being exploited in order to gain political power, which, you know, not at all relevant to our modern times, is it? But, no, there's no easy way to address that in society. There's an easy way to undo the harm
That is caused by abusing religion for political power, but it's something that I can explore in fiction and I get to control whether the good guys win or not in my books. I may not be able to control the outcome in our world, but I can control the outcome in my story. And I think that is a great way, again, to cope with what is going on, to show people a different pathway, to show people that there is still hope, even if it's only coming out in that
fantasy context. It may not be part of our real world right now, hope is important. Imagining a different possibility is important, and that is something that we get to do as fiction writers.
There's a reason why people have been writing, reading, seeking out stories for entertainment for thousands and thousands of years. Stories sustain us. They help us cope. They help us deal with real life and keep doing the work to make the real world better. And if we don't have stories, then it just gets so much harder to live and enjoy. And I think, again, you might be writing the most lighthearted book in the world, but it
be having a real impact on someone's day. don't ever discount your stories just because they're fiction, just because it's romance or fantasy or whatever it is. You don't know the impact that you're having on someone's life and quality of life and you never know. It could be making a big difference in someone's day and you won't know what that is until you get your book out there and start sharing it with readers.
And then finally, my third reason, fiction can actually make us better people. And this fits so perfectly with my theme in the Better Writer podcast, but there is actual scientific evidence that people who read fiction are better people. So I am going to actually give you some evidence here. Okay, according to a study published by the National Library of Medicine, the study was called, How Does Fiction Reading Influence Empathy?
an experimental investigation on the role of emotional transportation. It's very long title, but the researchers found that
After reading a short story, the readers became more empathetic and those effects lasted for an entire week after they read the story. So just think about that. You read one short story, maybe it takes half an hour, whatever it is, for an entire week, their behavior changed and became more empathetic.
And it's not just that these people were reading. That effect was not observed when people were reading nonfiction. So it was only when they were reading a story they could have read an article that was on a very similar topic. But that empathetic impact only came from fiction. And the researchers theorize that people actually feel more deeply when they're reading fiction because it is providing a safe place for them to feel that emotion. We have a tendency to kind of distance ourselves from
Nonfiction, if you're reading or you're watching the news and you're hearing all these terrible things happening in the world, there's kind of this implicit obligation, like I should be doing something. So we tend to kind of hold back and that doesn't happen with fiction because in fiction, the person experiencing this terrible thing is not real. There's nothing we can do to help them because they do not exist, which then allows us to feel more deeply, to react more.
It's also generally easier for us to be emotionally impacted when we're reading the story of one person compared to when we are hearing about a general tragedy or a large-scale tragedy. That's because of something called psychic numbing. And I'm going to link to all of the sources that I found in preparing for this podcast in the show notes.
Basically, when we are told about a major catastrophe, whether it is a natural disaster or something that's affecting a large group of people, our brains have a really hard time comprehending tragedy on that scale. It is much easier for us to understand and empathize with one person's tragedy versus something that's happening on a societal level or to a very large group of people. So again,
That is what fiction does. We often have one character's perspective, or at least one character's perspective at a time. We are seeing their personal experience. We are seeing their emotions. And so because that story is focusing us on one person, it's much easier to have empathy for that one character than if we were trying to empathize with an entire group's situation. In another study, researchers also found that people are more likely to suspend disbelief
when they're confronted with a fictional narrative. So it kind of goes back to what I was mentioning earlier, saying we can use fantasy as a way to talk about real world issues without people getting super defensive. And I think that is what's in play here, that when it's fiction, we're less likely to start asking those what about questions. Like, oh, you well, you said that that person said something racist to you, but what if they were just having a bad day?
or, you got passed over for a promotion, are you sure it's because they're discriminating against your disability or maybe they just found a better candidate? If we're reading fiction and we're reading a fictional account of someone experiencing those same things, those defensive mechanisms are less likely to crop up, which again allows us to feel more empathy, which may not automatically translate to big large-scale change in the real world.
but it starts to lay the groundwork.
Because just acknowledging that this fictional experience is bad, that's opening a door. Another study in the Journal of Research in Personality also found that fiction reading was associated with greater sociability overall.
Nonfiction was actually associated with less sociability. They theorized that understanding and comprehending characters in fiction parallels understanding people in real life.
⁓ I don't know about you, but I really feel like we need more of that in the world. We need more people who are able to be empathetic and understanding and better at reading other people so that we can try to connect. Again, is this going to change the world overnight? I don't think so. Obviously, it hasn't already. We already have a lot of people reading, but it could at least help. And I think if we had more people reading more fiction, we definitely could potentially find ourselves in a better world.
Another study found that people who read novels are better than average at reading emotions. Again, any way we look at it, fiction has a real impact on the people who read it, and that impact translates to their lives. And I think I've seen this manifest. My interactions with the bookish community in general has been so overwhelmingly positive, and I think that this is why.
People change for the better when they read a lot of fiction and that's magical. Now the challenge becomes how do we bring more people in the door? It's by making sure that there are lots of different books out there that we are celebrating all genres because it does not matter what kind of fiction you're reading. It's this fiction in general that has this impact.
So I feel like I have been ranting for a little bit, but this is something that really gets me excited because I think it's just so powerful. If you think about the fact that you can type words into a computer, someone else, months down the road, years from now, they could be thousands of miles away from you. Someone else reads those words and an image that only existed in your brain suddenly hops over to their brain.
you get to have an impact on someone that you may never meet or interact with. It could happen long after you've left this world because your story will remain after you. And I think that's just so powerful and something that we take for granted that we have this ability to do that. Every year I used to start the school year with an article in Psychology Today called Why Sharing Stories Brings People Together. And that article talked about a study done at Princeton where they put people in an MRI scanner and then had them listen to a story.
And they found that the brains of the listeners synchronized with the brain of the storyteller. So part of the storyteller's brain would light up, the exact same area of the brain would light up in the listener's heads. And I just think that is just so cool. Then it's not just that you're giving someone an emotional experience. It's not just that you are sharing a perspective. You are literally taking over someone's brain.
Because even though that story was focused on oral storytelling, the same thing happens when we read. I'm going to read you a quote from Lisa Cron's book Wired for Story. she says, the regions of the brain that process the sights, sounds, tastes and movement of real life are
activated when we are engrossed in a compelling narrative. That's what accounts for the vivid mental images and the visceral reactions we feel when we can't stop reading. Okay, that's magic. It's absolutely magic that someone is reading your words and their brain chemistry is changing in a way that we can physically see on an MRI. Think about it. If someone is in that machine getting scanned, we would see the impact of your writing.
on their brain in real time.
mind boggling and it's so cool. Maybe I'm just a nerd, probably am, but that power is objectively incredible. And I think it's something that we should not take lightly, that we should appreciate and honor in our work. And that kind of brings me to why I edit and why I do what I do for writers.
because in the quote from Wired for Story, our brain is activated when we're engrossed in a compelling narrative. The studies that I mentioned earlier had a common theme: they found people became more empathetic if they were emotionally transported by a story. So all of this magical
brain hijacking power that I've mentioned, this ability to change people for the better, to make them feel what you want them to feel, to transplant images from your brain to theirs. Those powers only work if your story is actually engaging to your readers.
A poorly written book is not going to change someone's life. And I know that sounds really harsh. And I don't mean for that to shut you down or make you doubt yourself. But it is just the reality that if you want your book to have this power, if you want your book to change someone's life or make them more empathetic or simply take them out of their crappy day, it has to be good. Good is not one objective standard. I want to make that very, very clear.
But you have to write a book that is compelling for your target audience. If you want to write romance, you have to write a good romance. If you want to write fantasy, you have to write a good fantasy. Otherwise, you are not going to have this power. And as an editor, I help people harness the magic. I help them take all of their weird and wonderful ideas, all the things that they are super excited about. I help them take the story that they want to share with the world.
and I help them produce it in a way that is going to be compelling to readers.
bridge the gap between vision and execution so that you can accomplish whatever it is you want to accomplish with your book and...
I have been so incredibly lucky. I have gotten to work with some amazing writers who have incredible stories to tell and I am so excited that I get to help them make sure their story resonates because I am working with a lot of writers who are imagining fantasy that are
different from the norm that are going to start undoing some of the harm that fantasy has caused in the past. I'm so excited to do that because if those books don't work on a technical level, then those writers are never going to have the opportunity to share that story and change the narrative. And I think that is why I edit. I edit so that people who have really powerful stories to tell can share them with the world and change readers' lives.
And that's also why I chose the name, The Better Writer Podcast, because better, I think, is not just about the technique, it's not just about the craft, it's about creating books that make the world better, that make people's lives better. And I'm really excited to keep doing that. I'm excited to help you as a podcast listener do that. Even if you never hire me as an editor, I hope that I can help you get closer to your goals just by listening to the show, and I'm excited to be part of your journey. So.
To recap, if you are listening to this podcast and you have ever doubted whether your story matters, I'm here to tell you that it does. No matter who you are, you have a unique perspective. No one has had the unique set of experiences that you have had, and that means you have a story to tell. If you have ever
worried that your story doesn't matter because you're writing a romance that is light and fluffy and fun. If you have ever worried that your fantasy isn't important or that your mystery isn't important because it's not literary fiction, it's not going to win the Booker Prize, your story matters because it could help someone get through something difficult. It could help someone get past a hard day at work. And that has value.
Finally, just know that even if you're writing fiction, even if your story is totally removed from the real world, fiction can make people more empathetic. Reading fiction can turn us into better people, which means your book could be having a real world impact, even if it's indirect and something you don't get to see. So no matter how you look at it, your writing matters, making your writing great matters, working on it matters, and I hope you will keep going and keep striving to write the best book you are capable of writing and that you will keep working to share your story with the world because we absolutely need it.
And I will be over here rooting for you to write better books and to change the world one reader at a time. All right. Thank you so, so much for listening to the very first episode of the Better Writer podcast. If you've stuck around to the end, I'm so grateful and I hope you'll stick around for the next episode. This is a brand new show and I could really use your help getting the word out. So as many writers as possible can find it. My dream is to help as many people with the show as possible.
So first off, if you could please leave a review wherever you were listening to the show, I would be so grateful. Reviews help me get found by other writers and I would really value your feedback, your opinion. Let me know. Do you like the show? Do you hate it? Whatever you want to say, I appreciate you. Second, if you have a writer friend who could really benefit from this message today, someone who is doubting the value of what they're doing, please share this with them. Send them the link. that would be super helpful and you'll get to be the hero because you shared it with them. And then finally, if you are willing to, even bigger than that, snap a screenshot on your phone, share it in your stories on Instagram or post wherever you tend to hang out. Just let people know that you're listening to the show, that you enjoyed it and that you think they should check it out. I would really appreciate you helping me get the word out to as many people as possible.
Thank you again for listening. Have a wonderful day. Keep writing. Keep getting better one word at a time. I'll see you next time