Episode Twenty-Three: 5 Questions Fiction Writers Must Answer Before Revising
Fiction writers, can you answer these five questions about your book? If not, it’s time to stop, drop what you’re doing and listen to this podcast episode. I’m covering five crucial questions that you should answer before you start revising your book so that you can give your revisions direction and focus.
They are:
Why this book?
What is your genre?
Who are you writing for?
What experience do you want readers to have?
How do you plan to publish?
Need help figuring out your answers to these questions?
The next round of Reader Ready Revisions is officially open for enrollment! Not only will I teach you how to answer these questions, you’ll get my feedback to make sure you’re on the right track and help you shape your revision process based on your answers!
Apply here and get access to my early bird bonuses!
Here are the resources mentioned in this episode:
Listen to Joanna Penn's podcast, The Creative Penn Podcast here: https://www.thecreativepenn.com/the-creative-penn-podcast-for-authors/ (sorry, I couldn't find that episode)
Apply for the next round of Reader Ready Revisions here: https://www.oliviahelpswriters.com/reader-ready-revisions
Grab my FREE Revision Kickstart Guide and join my newsletter here: https://olivia-helps-writers.kit.com/revision-kickstart-guide
Have a response to this episode? Hit me up on Instagram @oliviahelpswriters
You can listen in your favorite podcast player here.
Thanks for listening, keep writing, and keep getting better one word at a time!
Transcript
Olivia Bedford (00:00)
I believe that in a successful revision, 90 % of the work happens before you touch a single word in your manuscript. And that might sound wild, totally off base. But I really believe that when you bring clarity and strategy into your rewrite, everything goes more smoothly. When you know what you need to do, when you know why you are making certain changes, everything becomes easier. And today I'm going to share five questions that I think every writer should know the answer to before they start revising their book so that you can revise with that clarity, that confidence, and just know where you are trying to get your book so you can take the most direct path there instead of getting derailed and sidetracked by random generic advice along the way. Let's dive in.
Welcome to episode 23 of the Better Writer podcast. If my voice sounds a little bit rough, is definitely allergy season here in Rhode Island and I'm just a little bit congested, so I apologize for that. Hopefully it won't affect the audio too much and I will edit out any coughing that happens along the way, so you will not be bothered with that. But today I want to talk about five questions that I think every writer needs to know the answer to before they start revising. And I want to be clear, I am generally speaking someone who is not a big fan of rigid craft advice or overly strict rules. So when I say that you need to know these answers, I just mean that you need to figure them out at some point before you are revising your book in preparation for publication. If you are a plotter, you might go into your drafting process with these five questions already locked down. If you are a plantser you might figure them out somewhere along the way. And if you are a diehard pantser, you may still not know the answers to these questions by the time you get to the end of your draft. And if you're a beginning writer, your answers may change several times along the way as you learn more and more about writing and publication. So there is no wrong or right time to figure these questions out.
But I do think that if you can figure them out before you start revising, you are going to make your life infinitely easier because you are going to be able to approach that revision with clarity and with confidence. Because ultimately, the best way to get to your destination in a timely fashion is to know what your destination is. And that's what these questions are all about. They are about knowing what you want your book to be, setting a vision for your book, and then confidently moving it closer and closer to that goal as you revise.
Before we dive in, I have an exciting announcement. If you are listening to this episode when it comes out, the next cohort of read-ready revisions is officially open for enrollment. So if you want me to guide you through every step in the revision process from setting a vision all the way to rewriting your book, and get feedback from me along the way, find the link to enroll wherever you're watching this episode. Reader Ready Revisions is my 16 week group coaching program that is all about making revision approachable, accessible, and ultimately getting the support you need to revise every step of the way instead of just waiting until you have a finished draft and getting a full edit at the end of the process, which can be great, but honestly, it is so much better to have someone with you along the journey, so check it out if it's the right fit for you. I would love to help you with your revisions. All right, let's jump in with question number one. Question number one is why this book? Why do you want to write this book? And it might seem odd to start here because it is not really a tactical question. This is an emotional or a spiritual or an intellectual question for you depending on how you're approaching your writing process. But I do think it's important to really hone in on why this specific book matters to you? Why is it worth the time, the effort, the stress, possibly other investments of finances, time, time away from your family, all kinds of things that we put into our books? Why is this story worth it? And that answer is going to differ for every person. It's going to differ for different projects that you work on throughout your life. But I really think it's important to know why this specific story matters so that you have something to sustain you when things get difficult. I see so many projects get abandoned during the revision phase because revision is not easy. We have to make tough choices. We often have to redo work that we thought was decent and then all of sudden we look at our work again and realize that it was a mess. And all of those things are fine if you know why your story matters and why your story is worth it. If you are willing to do the hard work,
And you could also realize that maybe this book isn't it. Maybe it doesn't matter as much as just moving on to the next project and starting over with more skills and more abilities. think writers vary a lot in whether they are the kind of writer who is going to do seven different drafts of one book or if they are the kind of writer who would prefer to just write seven different books. I think either of those are fine. You just have to know who you are. And if you're not willing to do the work to revise, then you are going to need to learn how to write cleaner drafts on the front end. Which again, might be a controversial thing to say, but I really think that people are different. If you are a diehard plotter who hates revision, learn to plot well, draft well, and do less revising. If you are a pantser, then you have to get really comfortable with doing, you know, maybe multiple drafts, if that's your story needs to actually work. So I am all about finding out what works for you, but once you figure it out, you do have to hold yourself to a standard. ⁓I'm not going to sugarcoat when it comes to what we actually give readers, which needs to be great, no matter how you got it there. All right, so question number one was why this book? What is motivating you? What is going to sustain you? Why does the story matter enough to do the hard work of revising? Question number two, what is your genre? I talk about genre so much on this podcast, but it is so important for fiction.
We go into the bookstore and we walk to the section of the bookstore that has the books we want to read. We go to the Amazon category with books that we want to read or bookshop.org or wherever you shop for books. As a reader, you know that genre is king. Even if you read widely across genres, usually there is a certain type of book that you're in the mood for. Or maybe that's just me, I am 100 % a mood reader, but I think a lot of people are. You know that
Some days you want a romance, some days you just want strict fantasy, sometimes you want a mystery, et cetera, et cetera, et cetera. And Joanna Penn has actually talked about this on her podcast. And I don't remember the specific episode. I will try to find it and link it if I can. But she talks about the fact that a lot of writers read broadly across genres. But that is not necessarily true for readers as well. And I think that's something that writers sometimes forget or just don't know or just don't think about because it's so natural for us to travel the entire bookstore when we're looking for something to read, but many readers have their one genre. And I think that disconnect is why so many writers struggle with this idea that genre matters so much. Because we will read anything as long as it's good. But readers often have their one thing that they are looking for that they want to enjoy. And if you have chosen to take on that genre label, you need to deliver.
And I think that mindset can actually be helpful. If you think about, you're not writing for someone who loves a billion different things, you're writing for someone who may only like that one genre. And that still gives you so much flexibility because there is a lot of room and space for different types of things. Think of how different books in the fantasy genre are. They're all under that same umbrella, but they can be incredibly different from one another. So I don't say this to limit you or I'm not trying to tell you to write to a certain formula, but do keep in mind that when you take on a genre label, you're making a promise and it's important to keep your promises. ⁓
I've talked about this before on the podcast, ⁓ but I do think it is just one of the first things that you need to know about your book so that you can keep your promises to readers and not disappoint them. Of course, there is also room for genre blends, see fantasy romance, but then you are taking on the promises of two genres that have to be compatible and that is a whole other can of worms I'm not going to get into, but even if you're writing a genre blend, that's still a genre. Often subgenres are just genre blends. So no matter what you're writing, you do need to know your genre and what it entails.
Question number three, who are you writing for? And this goes up there with genre as being one of the most important things that you need to know as you revise. Who is your target audience? And you cannot say everyone, because when you try to write for everyone, you end up watering down your story, watering down your characters, watering down what's included. And ultimately we end up with a story that doesn't really work for anyone. So even if you have hopes that your book will have broad appeal, it still really needs to be for one specific audience. And I talk about Fourth Wing a lot as an example of this, where I believe that Fourth Wing was written for a very specific audience of young women. Not super young, I'm thinking probably, you know, early to mid-20s was probably the ideal target range. Obviously, I don't know what was in Rebecca Yarros's brain, but there are still other people outside of that group who have enjoyed this book, like my fiance, like my fiance's dad's friend, who was literally a man in his 60s who was not the target audience. don't think there is any version of Fourth Wing as a fantasy romance spicy book that was written for adult white men in their 60s. And yet it went outside of its target audience and had a broader appeal. That is not something we can really plan for.
In a sense, it's just something we have to commit to our audience and we have to really make the book great for them. And then when they start talking about it and evangelizing it to the world, other people will get curious and some of them will like it, some of them will hate it, some of them though will like it. So choose your specific audience. Be everything you can be for that one group of people. And then maybe just maybe it will also hit with other people.
And I will be honest, there are strategies for making your book more broadly appealing to a general audience, but I'm not gonna get into that right now because I think ultimately it starts with finding that one specific audience and then you can layer in other elements from there. All right, question number four. What experience do you want your readers to have? And this one is a little bit different. This one is a little harder to pin down, but I think that sometimes, especially for newer writers, we want to be great at everything.
But then if you look at the people who are successful in fiction, they usually have a few things they do really, really well, a lot of things that they are good at, and some things that people routinely say they are horrible at. There are those authors who are getting panned for their dialogue, and yet they continue to sell books because they are really good at plotting, or they are really good at making us fall in love with characters. Every author is going to be criticized for something.
You don't have to be perfect. You need to focus on what are the core things that you need to do really, really well because that is what your readers care about. They care about it because of that genre or they care about it because that is the kind of experience they're looking for. ⁓ For example, in fantasy. I one of the things that people often look for in fantasy is a character that we can root for either because they are heroic or because they are rising up even when circumstances are not good or maybe they're an anti-hero that we can't help but fall in love with because they are doing the kinds of things that we wish we could do standing up to authority or maybe they are someone that we love to hate. They are doing the wrong thing, but somehow they make it entertaining and fun. And I think you have to get that main character right. There are a bunch of different ways to do it, but that is going to be super, super important versus oftentimes with a thriller.
The main character doesn't necessarily have like a ton of in-depth characterization. They're not necessarily going to have a deep character arc. Instead what they have is competence. They have an adventure that they are going on and we trust them to save the day. And that is not true for all thrillers. There are some where it's an amateur thrown into a situation they cannot handle, but a lot of time what we want from a thriller is a competent person without a lot of emotional depth who is going to save the day because that is their job. And that's it. Once the day is saved, we move on. And we're not really interested in their home life or, you know, domestic tranquility or what they're going back to.
What matters is that they went on this adventure, we get to live vicariously through them for some amount of time. think my fiance always refer to Jack Reacher as like suburban dad fantasy, where you get to pretend that you are this big, bad person who takes the law into their own hands and murders a lot of people. You have to really suspend disbelief because he just kills so many people without any judge, jury, anything at all. So it really is not...It is fantasy. It is fantasy just as much, I would argue, as The Witcher because it's ridiculous. But it is that idea that you are taking matters into your own hands, saving the day, as long as we don't think too much about all the people who are getting murdered along the way. But it's fantasy. And that is really what we're looking for. Jack Reacher doesn't change a whole lot, especially I've only watched the show. I've not read the books. But season one, he doesn't change at all. He doesn't need to. That's not the point. ⁓
So we really need to think about what experience we want readers to have, because I think if you are let's say a thriller writer and all you're hearing about is character arc, character arc, character arc. Maybe for your thriller, character arc doesn't matter versus if you are writing a romance and all you're hearing is action, action, action. Actually, the action could be two characters in a coffee shop having a heart to heart and that was appropriate for romance.
And we really, again, it goes back to question two, what is your genre? And then we need to think about what experience we want readers to have. And again, within your genre there are infinite possibilities. You could decide that you want to a thriller that is all about your character changing. And you might have to do a little bit more work to get your genre readers on board, but there are so many possibilities, but you need to have clarity on what you are trying to do when you start your revision.
And that is why I want you answering these questions before you start. You need to know what that experience is going to be so you know what to prioritize. Are you prioritizing the conflict, the action, the characters? Are there three things that you need to do really, really well and really need to focus on revision because you're not going to get everything perfect. And too many writers are listening to all of the writing teachers, listen to all the podcasts, including this one. They are reading all the craft books. They are going to all the conferences, all the summits, and they are trying to do everything. And you need to filter it through your genre, your ideal reader, and the experience you want them to have. And you need to decide what really, really, really matters.
Because I would say my clients who have gone on to get book deals and all those kinds of things, they are wonderful, but they are not perfect. Their books are not perfect. They don't need to be. Their books are great at the things that they need to be great at and readers love them. And that is the point for readers to love your book, not for you to check off all of the boxes on the infinite imaginary checklist of great perfect writing because that perfection does not exist.
All right, finally, question number five. And this is the one that I think is important, but least important of these five. They're all important, but I think this is the one that is like a little bit less, lesser than the others. And that is how do you plan to publish? And I think it's important to have an idea of what you want going into the revision process. Again, so you know how to prioritize and it's tricky because publishing pathways are changing by the year. you start your revision today and you finish in six months, things might be totally different. Again, things are always changing. ⁓ But I do think it's important to have an idea of what your publishing goals are so that you know what to prioritize and what kinds of things you need to focus on.
For example, if you are going for a traditional publishing deal, word count is going to be super, super important because agents are going to have a number at which they will cut you off. And there is both a too long and also something can be too short as well, ⁓ just to kind of fit in the typical range of what is appropriate for your genre. That is going to be different for every genre, so you need to do your research. But if you know that you are up against a strict word count of what is considered typical, what agents will consider, ⁓ I wouldn't bank on being the exception to the rule.
So if you are really pushing the limits, that is something that you need to take into consideration and you may need to make some tough choices about things to cut solely to hit that word count. And if that really pisses you off and you do not want to cut things just to hit some arbitrary number, then self-publish, that's fine. This is the time to kind of think about those things and think about what you're willing to sacrifice or not. The other thing that I've been hearing over and over over again from various stakeholders in industry is that now is a really hard time to sell a series as a debut author. So if your book potentially stand alone and you are trying to go for a traditional deal, in revision I would do the thing to make it standalone if you can. ⁓ Again, it's not necessarily hopeless to query a series, but it is going to be much more difficult than if your book is a standalone with series potential.
And in contrast if you're self-publishing, then you really need to be thinking about how to stand out. How do you make your book as hooky as possible in a self-publishing model where writing a series is actually better. So if you can make your book into a series versus standalone, if you know that you want to self publish, go the series route so that you can start building that momentum and get buy-in throughout that series. It's going to make your marketing easier. I'm not a publishing expert by any means, but I do know a thing or two about the industry and it is easier to kind of build a momentum and get sales across the series. And so that is what a lot of self publishing authors trying to do.
Again, there are ways to be successful with standalone books, but again, two different models of publishing and you just need to figure out what is your pathway? What is going to help you be as successful as possible on your chosen pathway? ⁓ And then you can adjust your revision goals accordingly. Do I think that your publishing plan should define everything you do in revision? No, absolutely not.
But publishing is a business and I think revision is the point in time where we really need to bring some of those business decisions to the forefront. Do I think they should define everything? No, never. This is still an art. It is still supposed to be fun and joyful and creative. But I also think that revision is the time to think about how am I actually going to sell this thing? Whether you are doing that on your own as a self publisher or an indie publisher, or if you're going to try to do that through a traditional publisher. Obviously, traditional publishing has to choose you back, but
That is the topic for a whole other show later on. So just to quickly recap your five questions. Why this book? What is your genre? Who are you writing for, as in who are your readers? What experience do you want those readers to have? And finally, how do you intend to publish? Those five questions need to be answered before you start revising. You may already know them. If you're a plotter, if you did a lot of planning up front, those five questions, you might have been able to rattle off your answers as I was going through the show.
But if you are more of a pantser or a planter, discovery writer, zero drafter, whatever you want to call yourself, you might need to sit down and think about those questions a little bit more before you go back and try to revise your book. And as I mentioned at the beginning, if you are listening to the show in early May when it comes out, Reader Ready Revisions is open for enrollment. The next cohort starts on June 1st, and I would love to help you answer all of these questions and do so much more. I will walk you through the entire revision process.
You will get my feedback on your answers to these questions. You will get feedback on a reverse outline of your story, and you will get feedback on at least 10,000 words of your manuscript or more if you want to upgrade. So check it out. The link will be wherever you're listening or watching the show. And I would love to help you create the best book possible.
All right. Thank you so, so much for listening to another episode of the Better Writer podcast. If this episode resonated with you, if these questions triggered any realizations or thoughts, then please, please, please share it with a friend, post about it on social media. It brings me so much joy to be tagged in a post about this show. It just happened last week and I was literally so, so happy. It was so exciting. So please share it with anyone you think would find this helpful. I really want this show to help as many people as possible. So thank you again for listening. Have a wonderful week. Keep writing and keep getting better one word at a time. See ya.
