Episode Thirty-Seven: Why Revising Fiction Sucks So Much (but doesn’t have to…)
I love revision, but I know that most writers don’t. In fact, for many writers revision sucks so much that it keeps them from finding the book they poured their heart and soul into while drafting.
Today, I’m talking about what makes revision suck so we can normalize the struggle AND tips for helping you manage the process so you can confidently create your second draft (or beyond).
If you want my full revision checklist - a step-by-step overview of the entire four phase revision process I teach my clients - for FREE, click here.
Thanks for listening, keep writing, and keep getting better one word at a time!
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Thanks for listening, keep writing, and keep getting better one word at a time!
Transcript
Please note: This transcript was automatically generated and only lightly edited.
Olivia (00:00)
Revision gets a bad reputation. And unfortunately, I think it is where a lot of writers give up on their stories. They have put hours, weeks, maybe months into drafting their stories. They love their stories, they care about the characters, they want that book to be successful. Then they realize how much work is ahead in revision, and everything falls apart.
It's understandable and honestly for a lot of people revision just sucks. But it doesn't have to be that way. And there are ways to make it manageable and even fun. So today I'm going to talk about how to make revision suck just a little less so that you can persist, make it to the end of the revision process, and create an amazing book that you are proud to share with readers. Let's get started.
Welcome to episode 37 of the Better Writer Podcast, where I'm talking all about why revision sucks so much and how we can make it not suck as much. And I know that that is kind of a ridiculous statement, but I really think that revision is where things fall apart for way too many people. And I think that is especially true for anyone who falls toward the pantser end of the spectrum. I have talked before, in that I don't really see pantser versus plotter as like an either or situation, I think it is a spectrum.
And in my mind, the people who are on the pantser end of the spectrum, those who write without outlines, who create novels without planning them in advance, they are on what I call the revision heavy side of the spectrum. And people who plan, who plot, who are plotters, are on the plan heavy side of the spectrum. Now here's where the problem happens. If you've only ever heard the phrase, you know pantser versus plotter, or if you don't even know those words, if you that is totally new to you, you're just like, well, I wrote without an outline. So what does that make me? If you're on that end of the spectrum and you don't know that you are going to be on the revision heavy side of things, then revision might come to you like a bad surprise.
And that is totally normal, especially I have said this before, but we are not really taught to revise in school. It's just not what we do. We turn in the assignment, we never look at it again. But if you are someone who is trying to write something as complex as a novel without planning everything in advance, which is totally valid, not all of us can plan in advance, you have to revise. And you are going to have to revise more than someone who did have a plan. Again, totally fine, but it is going to be more work and it's work that needs to get done.
And I think some people they think that drafting is gonna be the hardest part. They think that just getting the words down is the hardest part. And I'm not saying that part is easy, but it is often easier than actually revising. And I think people who have never written before or who have never tried to publish something that they've written before, they come to the revision process and are shocked that it is actually often more difficult than the drafting was. They are not prepared for all of the work ahead. And I do not want to scare you about revision what revision is going to be like. But I think that that misunderstanding, that misconception of what revision is and how it is often more difficult than than drafting is where the problem starts. But I don't think that's it. It's not just that mismatch of expectation versus reality. There are things that make revision hard.
And today I want to talk about what those things are. And then what we can do about that so that revision is not the thing that stops you from creating an amazing book.
And I think the first thing that makes revision difficult is that it really forces you to rethink what you've created. And again, that's not what we do in school. In school, we turn in the assignment and we never look back. We got an A or a B or a C or whatever we got, but it doesn't matter because we are never looking at that paper again. And revision forces you to go back and ask yourself if your first ideas were actually good ideas or if your second ideas were good ideas. You have to stop and rethink everything that you've already done in order to create a better version. And that can be really uncomfortable, especially if you are someone who is used to doing well in school, where your first draft was good enough for so many years of your life. You wrote the paper, maybe you revised a little bit.
Maybe you searched for typos and things like that and you called that revision because that is what we were taught was revision back in the day. But that's not it. And when you're writing a novel, that is simply not good enough. And that is so uncomfortable. and again, it's not that you've done anything wrong. It's just that you are doing what you were taught, and you were not taught that your ideas were not good enough the first time around. That is a super uncomfortable thing to come up against when you start writing. So that's number one. Revision makes you face your work. And look for ways that it's not good enough. And that is hard all by itself. But that's not it.
Unfortunately. revision is also the point in the process where you are forced to shut start thinking of your book as a product. You have to start thinking about your book in the market. You have to start thinking about readers. And there is the fun side of that where we get to imagine all of the people who are going to love our books and read them and enjoy them. But we also have to start thinking about selling to them and actually creating something that is worthy of them. And that is a lot of pressure.
And it's especially difficult when we realize that something that we loved or thought was great just is not translating to our readers. Sometimes that means that we need to rethink who we are writing for or what kind of book that we are trying to or you know, what genre we're labeling our story as. Sometimes the the it's simply a mismatch between who you thought you were writing for and who you're actually writing for. But sometimes the problem is happening at a craft level. Sometimes it's happening at a story level and we actually need to change our ideas in order to make our book sellable. And that is not always fun. It is not comfortable, especially if you are really attached to your ideas, especially if you've been working for a long time in isolation, if it took you a long time to draft, it can be really uncomfortable to then all of a sudden start thinking about how do I actually make this book good enough to sell as opposed to how can I just create this thing that is fun and exciting for me?
And I'm not saying that you need to completely change your story to be marketable, but if you want to publish and that is your goal, you may have to make some sacrifices. You might decide that those sacrifices are not worth it and you're not gonna make those changes. That's totally fine. No one is forcing you to publish. No one is forcing you to have big publishing dreams. But if that is where you're headed, you might need to make some changes that don't feel comfortable at first. And that is hard. And that is what revision is.
And I'll also say that sometimes this is also where we can start self-sabotaging because we are afraid of our success before it even comes. And I know that sounds so strange, but once we start thinking about publication, we start thinking about like, my goodness, what is my neighbor gonna think if I become a big famous author? What is my mother-in-law going to think if she reads my book and sees what's in here? you know, all those people I went to high school with, everyone is gonna find out that I decided to be an author. And we start thinking about those things and we start watering down our ideas, or we start getting afraid of you know what happens if this is successful. And all of those little voices can crowd in because now we're thinking about actually moving this book into the world. And so we really have to watch out for all of those mindset things that can happen in revision because
It's so easy to start going down that road and start worrying about things that are not even possible yet because you haven't actually finished your book. And yet we're imagining what am I gonna do if I get a seven figure book deal that's gonna wreck my taxes? Like that is not the thing to be worrying about when we revise. And yet we can sometimes go down those rabbit holes in our brains. and you know, may may we all have to deal with a a changing tax bracket because of our our earnings from books. But you know, if you're going down that rabbit hole of thinking, you know.
You're going too far too fast in your own brain. And that can be so frequent and so insidious for us as writers. All right. The other reason why revision can feel miserable is because we tend to put so much pressure on ourselves to get things right in revision. Because you know, even if you're the kind of person where you have fully embraced the shitty rough draft, you may then believe that your second draft has to be gold.
That the first draft was allowed to be a hot mess, it was allowed to be bad, but now we are revising, and this is where we have to get it right. And that is so much pressure to put on yourself when you are still learning and growing as a writer, especially. But for anyone, your second draft does not need to be perfect. Your second draft does not need to be ready to hit the shelf tomorrow.
That is not a realistic expectation, especially for someone who is just starting out. But it doesn't matter if you're just starting out. Even if you are an experienced writer, it is most likely going to take you more than one draft to perfect your story. Because we have to do our high-level revisions of the plot, the character arcs, all of those things. Then we have to line edit. And that is where we are going to sharpen up all the prose and all of those things. Then that is before we even get to copy editing and proofreading. So your book does not need to be polished up perfection just going from draft one to draft two.
And if you are putting that much pressure on yourself, if you are trying to perfect your plot and your scenes and your sentences all at the same time, it gets to be overwhelming. And I think that's where a lot of the misery comes from is people thinking that they get one shot in revision. But if you got the opportunity to be messy and explore and create things in drafting.
Why then does that suddenly change just because we're going to draft two? It doesn't. Draft two is still an experiment in what is going to make draft one better. And then you have the opportunity to continue experimenting in draft three. Obviously, we do want to make real changes. We do want to improve our story from draft one to draft two. We don't want to be endlessly revising. But the goal is not perfection. The goal is not to be done in a single second draft. That is unrealistic. And if we can remove that pressure from ourselves, you are going to be so much less miserable in revision.
And you're probably also going to get more done because you're going to take more chances. You are not going to fixate on creating the perfect solution. You are not going to sit there spiraling and second-guessing yourself because you are trying to come up with the perfect solution. Instead, you are just going to be trying to come up with a solution. And you are going to understand that if that solution doesn't work, you will try something else in draft number three, and we will continue on. And again, the goal is not to lower the bar for yourself. I am someone who encourages writers to hold themselves to a high standard, hold yourselves to a standard that readers are worthy of. But I always do so with the mindset of we can be compassionate and gentle with ourselves when it comes to the process as we move toward that excellence. It does not need to happen going from draft one to draft two or even draft two to draft three. Give yourself the number of drafts you need and it might end up only taking one draft. That is completely possible. I'm not that person, but just don't put the pressure on. Don't tell yourself that draft two has to be perfect. Take that pressure off and just make decisions based on the information you have, ideally with a revision strategy behind you, and then we can keep improving from there.
All right, I alluded to this earlier, but another reason why revision is so miserable is because it isn't taught. We are not taught in school to revise. And so most of us, when we start writing fiction and we realize that we need to revise, are doing it in the wrong way. We are either starting in the wrong place, which means maybe you're starting by reading through your draft cover to cover, and you're trying to identify plot level issues without actually looking at your whole plot at once.
Or maybe you start trying to polish your chapters. You try to go fix all the typos, fix all the line level issues, because that is your vision of what editing and revision is. That's what you did in school. You went through with your red pen if you revised it all, and that was it. And neither of those are the right way to start a revision, in my opinion, especially if you are someone who writes on the messier side of things. I always recommend starting with a reverse outline. That could be a reverse outline you created solely for the purpose of revision. It could also be an updated version of an outline you used to plan. But start there, look at your plot in isolation, look at your character arcs, look at the conflict you're developing, then make sure those things are working. Then we can go on to actually reading the story once you've done that.
But I think for most people, just sitting down and reading through your draft, just sitting through and trying to line edit your entire story while also looking at plot issues, that is a recipe for complete overwhelm.
And more importantly, it's just unlikely to work. You are unlikely to actually make changes to your story if you were going through line by line at the start. Obviously, that part will need to happen. You will need to do line edits on your story or hire someone to do line edits on your story. Whatever that looks like for you, that's fine. That does need to happen. However, we need to edit the story first. And oftentimes that means taking a step back, looking at the big picture, revising the big picture, and then moving forward with the line level stuff. And if you polish your story too early.
One of two things usually happens. Either that is a ton of wasted time where you have just polished things that end up getting cut, or you have polished things that end up needing to change completely from a story perspective. Or by the time you get feedback that your story isn't working, you are so set in what you have because you polished it that you are unwilling to make those changes. Those changes never get made and your story never gets improved. And we don't want either of those things to happen because. Then you're just going to have a version of your book that is not the best it could be. Even if the sentences are pretty, if the story isn't there, it's not going to live up to its full potential for readers.
All right. So again, those are reasons why revision can suck. It is overwhelming. We are trying to do too much at once. We are not prepared for what revision really is. And maybe we are starting our revisions in the completely wrong place to begin with. So what do we do to make it suck a little bit less, or maybe ideally suck not at all?
And I would say the first thing that you need to do is get clarity on your vision and your goals for your book. And I said at the beginning that, you know, people often put too much pressure on what revision needs to be, or they start getting really uncomfortable with the idea of I have to market this book, I have to sell this book, I'm gonna, you know, have this book out into the world and people will be able to judge it.
And I think when you can get so rock solid on why you are writing the book. What you want that book to do in the world and who you want it to be for, that is going to help you battle that mindset issue in revision. If you know why you are passionate about the story, if you know why the story matters, if you know who you want to reach with the story, that is going to give you the confidence that you need to face any public scrutiny that can happen as a result. And I think a lot of the writers that I work with have very important messages that they want to get into the world.
Even if that message is coming across through the lightest, happiest, coziest romance, there is something that they want to share with the world that is important to them. Also, with a lot of people who are writing about darker themes and they also have messages that they want to share about justice, about what it means to be a person in the world, even if they're doing it through through fantasy or through genre fiction. And that message is not going to get out there if you don't finish the book, if you don't revise it, if you don't get it ready for readers.
And once you lock into that passion, why your story matters, that can carry you through every step along the way. I think setting a vision for who you're writing for, what genre you're writing, what you want it to be, that also helps take out some of the overwhelm because you don't need a book that does everything under the sun well. You don't need a book that is great at every single literary technique out there ever because that's just unrealistic, but also different genres come with different priorities. So if you know your genre, if you know what matters to your readers, that gives you a narrower focus that is going to help you revise without getting completely overwhelmed and bogged down in the millions of different things that you could do with your story because you are going to just be laser focused on what exactly you want to do with your story.
And then the other thing that is going to make revision less overwhelming is to actually learn how to revise. And again, that sounds funny because it's like of course, but again, so many people have this idea in their heads that they know how to revise because they revised in school, they wrote papers, whatever it was, but I'm gonna tell you, most likely your English teacher did not actually teach you to revise.
You read through your papers once, maybe you corrected some grammar. maybe you used spell check and you know, you use the Google Doc spell check and you like maybe you accepted all of their things without even thinking about it if you're anything like the kids that I used to teach. But most likely you never sat down to think about questions like, does this work for my target audience? Because in school your target audience was your teacher who was under caffeinated, overwhelmed, and probably didn't want to read your essay any more than you wanted to write it. sorry, not sorry. It's just the truth. They all start to look the same pretty darn quickly. But you never thought about your target audience because you didn't really have one. You never thought about why you wanted to write the paper because you didn't. You wanted to get a grade. You never thought about whether or not your writing was entertaining or engaging, or whether you were hitting the right emotional notes in your papers.
Maybe, maybe you did a creative writing course in high school. I don't know. I could be wrong about this, but for most of us, if you were, you know, just doing academic writing in high school, then in college. Maybe you've done some writing in the workplace. It is not the same as fiction. Fiction has a different set of rules, fiction has a different set of goals, and fiction has a different set of requirements for revision. And so you need to learn a process of revision that works for fiction.
You need to learn how to revise strategically as a fiction writer so that you can create a book that people actually want to read. And of course everyone's revision process is going to look a little bit different. There is not one right way to do it. There is not a one size fits all method. There's a method that I teach that I think works pretty well and so have my students so far. but I personally think that it can still be flexible. I teach starting with a reverse outline, starting with a clear vision for your story, analyzing that outline, making plot level changes, then we move into scene-level revisions based on the eight elements of a scene. and then we move into rewriting the story.
So we go step by step from having a clear vision to knowing exactly what is going on at a high level in the story to then implementing that high level vision scene by scene as we rewrite. And that is a strategic approach that helps reduce that overwhelm because instead of trying to tackle the whole entire thing at once. We are going step by step by step. We are locking in on that vision, making sure we know why we're writing, who we're writing for, what we need to do. We are figuring out our priorities because we don't need to do everything perfectly. We need to do some things perfectly for our genre. Then we start analyzing, figure out exactly what is going on. We make a plan. Then we go scene by scene, putting that plan into action without trying to conquer the entire mountain in one jump, because that is impossible. And that is why revision sucks, because we're trying to do too much.
But if we take it step by step, if we make it strategic, if we don't try to conquer the entire mountain at once, it is going to be so much more enjoyable when we are just hiking along, not trying to leap up the mountain. and then finally we need to figure out what works for us. So even within the method that I teach, it is not one size fits all. I want people to come in and adapt it to the way that works best for them. So you are gonna figure out what format works for you for reverse outline. You are gonna figure out what works for you when it comes to writing and rewriting scenes. You are going to figure out what your scenes look like for your genre, for your style. You are going to then figure out what works for you in terms of a day-to-day writing process, what works for you. When you are going through that reverse outline and rewriting scenes. Do you go chronologically? Do you bounce around? Do you work backwards?
You do whatever works for you by testing and experimenting and figuring out what works for you as a writer. And that can change over time. It might change when you're writing one genre versus another. There is no one size fits all. There is no one right way to write a book. But there are things that we can do that will make revision more overwhelming, there are things that we can do that will make revision less overwhelming. So that was my little introduction to why revision can be miserable and what we can do. It really boils down to avoiding the mindset traps that get people stuck. If you believe that you have to get things right in one round of revision, you are going to make yourself miserable.
If you decide that your second draft is just as much an experiment as your first draft, it's just an experiment where now you know more. You have a better hypothesis of what will and won't work, and you are going to test it out in your second draft. That's the way that I want you to think about revision. When you are thinking about getting your story out into the world, that is scary. But it's not happening tomorrow. If you're just starting a revision, it's not happening tomorrow. All you need to worry about right now is what is gonna make this story the best possible thing for readers. Then you can worry about actually finding them or not. Or you because you don't even have to actually end up publishing it. You can decide that you're just gonna write the best darn book that you can. And then maybe you'll publish it. Maybe you won't. Maybe that's just what you need to tell yourself to not let that fear overwhelm you. You can just tell yourself that up until the very last day, you can always pull the plug and not publish if that helps you get it done. We just need to take things one step at a time.
Work through the strategy and revision is going to be less overwhelming. It's going to be it's just gonna suck less. That's the goal here is to make revision suck less, or maybe even make it fun. And I think that done right, revision can be just as creative and fun as drafting if we take the overwhelming parts of it away, if we stop trying to get the entire draft perfected in one go, if we stop trying to hold the entire story in our heads instead of stepping back and looking at the plot first, if we are trying to fix story level and sentence level things at the same time. That is all going to make it overwhelming.
But if we step back and we work step by step with a strategy, we can make things so much easier for ourselves. And we are going to make sure that revision is not the part of the process that breaks us. and that's what I don't want to see. I don't want to see your book end up in a drawer when it's aren't even fully drafted. I don't want revision to be the thing that makes you give up on your story when it is so doable. If we have the right approach, the right mindset. So
I hope this has maybe inspired you a little bit. and more than anything, I hope it has normalized those thoughts. If you're like, I am not the only person who's ever started calculating how much how much taxes I would owe on a 7 figure book deal, even though I haven't even finished my draft. definitely have been there, done that. You know, it's a thing. It's a good procrastination tool if you're into that kind of thing. But all of those thoughts, all of those fears are normal.
Is then what we do about them and how we navigate through them and how we figure out how to keep moving forward so that our books get done and so that they can find their readers.
Because I truly believe that if you have a book on your heart, if you have been compelled to write this thing, there is a reason and there is a reader out there who needs it. And it is your job now to finish, to get that book revised, to get it ready for that reader. and that is what I like to help people do. And it is 100% possible. It might not be easy, it might take a lot of work, but hopefully we can make that work feel doable and not like you were just in a pit wandering through the swamp of despair. So hopefully we can avoid that. and next week I will be back talking about some revision myths that also keep people stuck, which is very closely related. So stay tuned for more on how to make a revision less sucky and more enjoyable so you can get your book done and get your book ready for readers.
All right, thank you so, so much for listening to another episode of the Better Writer Podcast. If this was helpful, but you want something that's a little bit more concrete, a little more tangible, I have a free revision checklist for you. This is gonna walk you through all four phases of the revision process that I teach with specific tasks that you need to complete at each phase of the revision process. So I'm gonna start off showing you what exactly needs to go into that vision you set at the beginning. What do you need to do to create a reverse outline and analyze it?
Obviously it is a PDF checklist, so it is not going to take you through every single possible permutation or thing you might need to find in your draft, but it is going to give you a really solid head start and at least give you an idea of how to approach the revision process. So download that checklist. It is completely free. You will find the link wherever you are watching or listening to this episode. So if you want revision to feel a little bit more tangible and a little more doable, download that free checklist. It will definitely help.
Alright, thank you again for listening. Have a wonderful week. Keep writing. Keep getting better. One word at a time. See ya.
