Episode Thirty-Eight: 6 Revision Myths that Keep Fiction Writers Stuck
If you’re a fiction writer struggling to revise your book, a revision myth may be to blame. Too many writers have bought into a certain image of revision, or a certain method that was never a fit for them or how they write. If you think that your revision problem is just a sign that you’re undisciplined or bad at writing, I have news, you’re not the problem, your revision plan is.
In this episode, I’m talking about six common revision myths that can derail even the most committed aspiring author. The problem is that most revision methods were never made for people who write messy. Those methods assume your structure is coherent and your story is ready for detailed edits.
Unfortunately, those processes aren’t right for beginners or pantsers but that doesn’t mean your book is doomed. You just need a different plan.
Stop trying to make faulty revision methods work for you and instead try a method that’s actually designed to be efficient and effective for writers with rough, rough drafts. Listen for the myths and stay tuned for a revision plan that you can actually make work for you!
Here are the resources mentioned in this episode:
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.
To listen to Episode 37: Why Revising Fiction Sucks So Much (but doesn’t have to…), click here.
To listen to Episode 2: Your High School English Teacher Lied - Let's Talk About It (which talks about all the ways high school classrooms get revision wrong), click here.
You can listen in your favorite podcast player here.
Watch on YouTube here.
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 is hard. At least it is for most of the writers that I meet.
And I think that there are some valid reasons that revision is more difficult than other parts of the writing process. However, I think some of those difficulties are rooted in revision myths that people are stuck on. There are things that people are trying to do in revision that just aren't helping them move forward. So my goal in this episode is to dismantle some of the revision myths, keeping you stuck so you can revise more easily, more efficiently, and ultimately more effectively. Let's get started.
Welcome to episode 38 of the Better Writer Podcast. Today I'm talking about the revision myths that keep people stuck. And I said this in the intro at the beginning, but revision is hard. There are absolutely things about the revision process that make it difficult. And I talked about a lot of those in the previous episode when I talked about the reasons why revision sucks so much. So go find the previous episode, episode 37, if you want to hear what makes revision difficult.
This week I am going in a different direction. And I'm going to talk about the myths, the things that are making revision harder than they need to be. Because while there are absolutely valid reasons why revision can be difficult, and you know, honestly, there is just a lot of work that goes into revising, but there are also ways to make that work less efficient and less effective. And those myths, those things that you believe that you need to do that are not serving you, they are holding you back. So let's talk about six myths that you probably believe about revision, even if they're unconscious, so that you can start making better decisions in your revision process right now.
Alright, myth number one is that revision is just about making small surface level changes. And you might not even think of them as surface level. You might think that nailing your description of the main character on page one is absolutely essential. And that is going to be an important editing task. However, it is not revision.
Figuring out your main character's exact eye color and whether the love interest is going to describe it as turquoise or blue-green, that is an editing question. And while that might have other implications for your story, that's fine. it's just not something that you need to be tackling at the revision stage in the process. And so if that is the first type of question that you are trying to address in your first draft,
You have already started your revisions on the wrong foot. I'm so sorry, but I just have to be honest, if you are starting your revision by trying to perfect your prose, you are not starting your revision in the right place. You are focusing on the wrong thing. And I'm gonna be totally honest with you, if you rewrite your entire book looking at eye color and trying to make your dialogue super witty, and you are ignoring the structure and conflict and all those high-level things that actually make a story work.
Your first revision never happened. You never actually revised your first draft. You edited your first draft. You polished your first draft. That was not the job of revision. and so that is what leads to someone coming to me with draft five for developmental edit and they get feedback as if I am still looking at their first draft because there are structural issues that need to be fixed at a foundational level. There are conflict issues that are going to require thousands and thousands of words of rewriting. And that all could have been avoided if they had approached their first draft revision in the right way. So I'm really starting off myth number one is a real zinger. and this one gets people all the time because I've said this before and I will say it again. You were not taught how to revise in school. You were taught how to edit at best or you were taught to turn in a piece of writing and never look at it again. So you really didn't learn how to do either very well.
So, this is not your fault if you believe this myth. So many of us believe that revision is just the act of reading through our story, making surface level changes, making sure that it looks pretty and coherent and that our sentences basically make sense, and then we turn the thing in. And unfortunately, when you start writing fiction, when you start trying to write in a publishable way. So it doesn't even have to be fiction. This is true if you are just trying to get published. If you are now writing for an audience that you expect to pay you, revision is a whole different ballgame. And you have to learn those skills. Even if they weren't taught to you in school, you have to learn them now so that you can get your story ready for readers. And that means tackling the high-level elements of your story that are operating beyond the page level. We need to fix those things first, then we can publish the story when we are actually working on you know, going from second draft to third draft.
Alright, myth number two goes hand in hand with number one. And that is this idea that your revision has to start with you sitting down and reading your story cover to cover. And that is a technique that can work for a lot of writers. However, it tends to work for writers who are more experienced. Their first draft is coming out with a basic structure intact. They already know how to shape conflicts and character arcs from the beginning. So they are not doing massive structural rewrites that require them to hold the entire story in their head. Most of the people who use that technique effectively are also plotters. And they are good at plotting. And that is a very important distinction because you can be a plotter and your initial outline can be a structural hot mess. So people who are good at plotting, who actually are able to figure out their entire story from the start and make sure it is structurally sound and then they actually follow their outline.
They are going to be the type of people who tend to benefit from just sitting down, reading the story cover to cover. They are already ready to start thinking about scene level edits. And I want to be clear: if you are the person who threw out the outline halfway through, you are my people. You are exactly the type of writer that I love working with because you are the type of writer that needs to revise more strategically. And you are not going to start by sitting down and reading your book cover to cover because that is going to be a recipe for disaster or despair, or at
Best, even if you enjoy the experience of sitting sitting down and reading your story cover to cover, most likely the issues that are going to jump out at you are those surface level ones. You are going to see the places where your description of a character fell flat or where the conversation is not sparking off the page. And you are going to want to go fix those things. And you will eventually, but the very first thing that we need to do is fix the structure. We need to check in on the overall conflict, the overall plot structure. We need to check in on how your character arcs are developed.
Before we ever worry about how exactly your characters are being described on the page. So it is an order of operations thing, and we need to start with the high-level stuff before we move on to editing. And unless you are 100% certain that all of those high-level things are already solid in your draft from the start, we do not want you to just sit down and read it cover to cover. You will get there. You will get there, just not with your first draft. All right. So you really need to know yourself and know what is going to work for you or not.
All right, and then myth number three is this idea that revising is all about checking off some generic set of boxes, tasks, things that all books must do, and they are generic and they apply to everyone. And that is not true. Yes, there are certain fiction principles that apply across the board. We want to show more than we tell, or at the very least, we want to show in the right places and tell in the right places. That's probably the more accurate way to say that.
There are some basic things. All of our stories are going to need conflict. All of our stories are going to need characters in some fashion. However, there is no one standard for what works across all fiction genres. They are all so completely different. A conflict that is perfectly acceptably high stakes in a comedic YA novel, like tripping in the cafeteria is going to be completely unsuspenseful in a thriller. Your main character can trip and fall and you could have an entire chapter, possibly an entire book, could be spawned from just that incident of tripping in the cafeteria if obviously you need other things to then happen spawning from that incident. That could be the beginning of your story and that could be your inciting incident. Like we trip and your lunch tray goes flying and it hits the school bully and now he is after you.
That could be the story if you are writing YA comedic fiction. If we are talking about an adult thriller, the high school bully is not big enough or strong enough or murdery enough, hopefully, to you know initiate an entire conflict. That adult, if they trip in the cafeteria while visiting their son's school.
A high school person, you know, a high school student is gonna beat up your Jack Reacher. No, that is not an appropriate conflict. That could be a subplot, potentially, but it's not going to be the whole conflict. So there is no one standard. When we say that your story needs high-stakes conflict, it has to be high-stakes conflict appropriate to your genre. When we say that your character needs an arc, it needs to be an arc appropriate to your genre. Your thriller character, your Jack Reacher, might not change very much, if at all. And that is perfectly acceptable in that type of story. Versus in a YA coming-of-age story, we expect a lot of change to happen in our main characters because it is just appropriate for that type of story. So, in order to revise successfully, it is not enough to just know fiction. that was in the air quotes. If you're just listening to this podcast, it is not enough to just know fiction in general. It is not enough to take the generic writing class.
You also have to study your genre. You have to study the expectations for your genre. You have to know what is appropriate for your genre. And if you are in a critique group with people who write in various genres, you need to make sure that you are very in tune to the expectations of your genre versus the expectations of the genre that the other people in your class are writing, because you need to make sure that they are giving you feedback that's appropriate for you and not just feedback that is appropriate for them. So there is no one set standard.
There is no one size fits all because fiction genres are so different. And even within genres, there are different subgenres that are so different. And it is super important that all of your decisions in the revision process are filtered through what you are writing specifically.
All right, myth number four is going to sound strange coming from a pantser, but you cannot make up revision as you go along. And I think some people believe that you can just wing revision the same way that you do when you are discovering your story. And I don't want you to think that I am saying you need to force your story into a rigid box or that you are going to have to come along in revision and force your story into a certain structure framework or anything like that. There is still so much room for freedom and creativity in the revision process.
However I think that as pantsers, especially, this is where we need to be a little bit more methodical and bring in a little bit of that planner energy after we have discovered the draft. And again, we are still leaving room for creativity. However, I do think that you need to, at some point in your process, check in on structure, check in on conflict, check in on character arcs, make sure all of those things are working at a high level, and then we can go back to fun and freedom. and the way that that works for me is that I teach reverse outlining.
I love reverse outlines, you take your story, you are summarizing just what is there on the page. We're not using the outline to plan, we summarize what's on the page. We revise the outline first, then we go and apply that in the draft. And the real beauty of that process for pantsers is that you are removing the decision making from the time when you're trying to be creative. You are going to set the strategy first. You were going to plan all of your revisions. Then all you need to worry about when you're actually rewriting your story is implementation. And we can still bring in all that fun and creativity and day-by-day discovery. It's just you're giving yourself some guardrails, a framework to work within that you have created yourself. It doesn't have to be a specific structure framework, but we do need to be strategic and we do need to at some point check in on all of those things that readers care about.
That they may not consciously say they care about, but the things that are actually going to create a great experience for your readers. I've said this before, I will say it again, I overuse that phrase all the time. but readers should never be able to tell that you pantsed your story. When you finish your book, readers should not be able to distinguish between a book that was written without an outline and one that was.
Being a pantser does not give you, you know, this free pass to just tell a story that does not make sense. The structure and the internal logic has to come in somewhere in the process. And if you are truly a pantser, that part of the process tends to be a revision. That is why I call pantsers revision heavy writers. And if you are not ready to be a revision heavy writer, then you better start planning more so that you don't have to do as much revision, because that is just the reality. If you do not have a plan when you go into writing your story, if you are making it up as you go along, you are going to have subplots that appear randomly. You are going to have subplots that disappear into the ether. You are going to have scenes that do not belong, characters who change midway through to be a completely different person and not in the fun character arc way, but in a totally random and implausible way. And all of those things are fixable in revision, if you do the work of revision. So we need to bring in that strategy. We need to take the time to really parse out all those things, make sure they're working, so that the book is eventually ready for readers.
And that brings me to myth number five, which is very, very closely related. And that is the myth that plotters and pantsers can revise the same way. And they can't. They cannot. And I think that this myth comes from the fact that a lot of writing teachers are plotters. They tend to have a system that they can sell in a way that pantsers just don't, because it's really hard to sell “I sit down and ideas just come out of me.” That's very hard to explain to other people who do not kind of naturally function that way. So I think a lot of writing teachers are plotters and therefore they teach revision as plotters. And so for a pantser, you gotta find another pantser to teach you how to revise, or you at least have to figure out how to adapt plotter methods for yourself.
I already said this earlier that this idea of sitting down and reading your first draft cover to cover, that is a hundred percent plotter, plan heavy energy. If you are a pantser, your story probably is not ready for that. And you need to start one step or like 10 steps back, where first we would need to decide what kind of story is this, because I think for a lot of pantsers, that can shift along the way in a way that it might not for plotters. so we need to figure out like what is this thing, who is it for, what are we actually trying to create. Then we need to figure out what's actually in the draft, and that is key. When you do not start with an outline, we really need to take the time to figure out what we actually wrote. I love doing that through a reverse outline. That is what I teach. I think it is the most effective method for getting clarity on your story because you are taking that big massive thing that you created and you are condensing it down to just bullet points, or maybe a spreadsheet version if you're into that kind of thing. I offer both options in my course, and you know, different people just gel with one format or the other. But the key is you are focusing your story, compressing it into just 10 pages, or maybe 50 lines on a spreadsheet. And that is going to give you the ability to see your entire plot at once in a way that you just can't in your full draft. It is, I won't say it's impossible because I think it could absolutely be done, but it's so much harder, it is so much harder, it's so much more time consuming.
It is so much easier to miss structural gaps, conflict gaps, character arc gaps when you were looking at the whole 500 page draft versus when you were looking at 10 pages of bullet points. so that is what I teach, and I think for a plotter that might be overkill, those structural things might already be in place, they might not need that. I think for pantsers it is really important, even if you don't use a reverse outline in exactly the way that I teach it as a pantser, you need to make sure that you are doing those big structural revisions, that you are actually rewriting your story, rethinking your ideas, because if they were not gelled and solidified before you started writing, they need to be solidified after.
And that is going to be more work on the back end than it would be for a pantser Nope, backwards for a plotter. That is going to be more work on the back end than it would be for a plotter. And there is absolutely nothing wrong with that. That is why I call plotters plan heavy writers and why I call pantsers revision heavy writers. Plotters are doing that work up front. The story is in a more solidified form when it is first drafted than it is for a pantser who does not create that plan up front. They are solidifying their ideas and doing the bulk of that work in revision.
And both of those are perfectly valid pathways. You just need to know which one is right for you. And if you wrote a messy draft, that decision has kind of already been made. If you want to make that draft work, if you want that story idea to be the one that you actually get to a publishable level, that work has to happen on the back end. And it may be challenging, but it is not impossible. And it could even be fun. I love revision. I love taking raw ideas and shaping them into something that is even more beautiful than the original thing that I you know that I envisioned. So I think revision can be so much fun, but it is also work and it is work that has to happen.
All right. And then the final myth, myth number six, is that revision should happen solo until your draft is super clean. And I'm gonna be honest, this is actually a myth that I myself subscribed to when I first started editing and working with writers. And I used to say that you should take your draft as far as you can on your own before hiring an editor.
And I think when we're talking about developmental editing specifically, because it is so expensive, because it is usually something that people are doing one time only, I think that there is some truth to that, that you really should, at the very least, fix everything that you know needs to be fixed. If there's an issue that you already know is there that you can see in your draft, fix that thing before you send it to an editor.
Because if you leave it in there, most likely we're gonna notice the same exact thing and you're just gonna waste your money having us tell you something that you already told yourself but maybe didn't have the energy in the moment to fix, I would say just take your time, fix the thing first. Even if you need to take a break, then send it to an editor. So absolutely, if there's a fixable problem that you have already identified, fix that first before you get feedback. Because again, you don't want to waste your money having someone tell you the same thing that you had already discovered. we could potentially discover a different issue, but again, I would just recommend fixing that thing. However, then there is the the other side of this.
And I think that there are a lot of writers who wait too long to get feedback, especially writers who are less experienced and don't know what they don't know. And I am not saying that you as a beginning beginner writer should get a developmental edit on your first draft. I actually would not let you spend that money with me. I'm just gonna be completely honest. If you're a beginner writer and you have a first draft that I can tell just looking at it as a first draft, I am not accepting you as a developmental editing client. And that is a newer policy that I'm really going to be enforcing going forward because I just don't think it's appropriate. Me commenting on your draft when there are still fundamental craft things that you need to learn is not going to be the best investment of your time or your money because money does not grow on trees, and I want you to get the best support for where you are in the writing process. If you are just starting out, you've never taken a writing class, do that first. Get feedback in a lower stakes environment, and then go and get a developmental edit when your story is ready. Master the fundamentals first, especially those scene-level things that it is not worth your time to have a developmental editor pointing out that you have summarized every scene in your novel. Don't do that. to yourself.
Instead, take a class, learn the basics, rewrite those things first, then we can move into editing. That is why I think coaching is excellent for newer writers. I talked about that a couple episodes ago when I talked about why I'm shifting my business toward coaching instead of editing. And I really think that for beginner writers, you don't need feedback on your draft at a static point in time. You need ongoing feedback that's going to help you learn how to write and master the fundamentals of fiction. And if you are someone who's already finished a draft, I want to say you are already miles ahead of so many people, but
If you have not taken the time to learn how to write fiction. So I'm saying anyone who has never read a craft book, who has never watched a YouTube video on writing, who has never taken a class, if you have not learned how to write, that has to happen at some point. You can do that in the context of a coaching relationship way more than you can in the context of an edit. I'm trying to try not to talk about this too much because I already did a whole episode on this, but the myth that I want you to stay away from is this idea that you have to get your draft polished first.
And it goes back to myth number one, this idea that you should start by fixing all those surface level things. I think sometimes when people are so focused on my draft has to be clean, it has to be coherent, then I'm gonna send it to an editor, you end up polishing those surface level things that don't really matter at the revision level. And then a developmental editor comes along and says, actually, this entire section of your story doesn't belong. We're gonna cut 50,000 words that you just polished, that is gonna hurt more than, hey, these are 50,000 words that you haven't polished yet that need to go or need to be reworked. you know, I'm never gonna say just cut 50,000 words.
We will always talk about you know what needs to be there, what's happening, but those kinds of conversations are so much easier to have and are so much easier to accept when you haven't polished your story. So if a beginner writer, or for anyone really, do not worry about getting your draft perfect before you start getting feedback.
Honestly, the best way to start is to get feedback on a reverse outline or your outline if you were a plotter. get feedback on the outline first. Get feedback on just the plot and the structure and the conflicts and the character arcs so that you know that your foundation is solid. That was gonna be way cheaper if you're getting feedback on a 10-page outline versus a 500-page draft. Start there. Then you can get feedback on the story as a whole when those things are solid. but you do not need to wait until all of your ideas are perfect, until all of your story is polished. Get feedback along the way as best you can from beta readers from critique groups from writing classes get feedback on an outline which is going to be so much less expensive than getting a full developmental edit. There are so many ways to get feedback along the journey so that you are getting feedback on different elements of your story and not just that final polished version that you are maybe going to be a little bit resistant to changing because you already polished it. So you don't have to wait until everything is perfect.
You should not wait until everything is perfect. Get feedback on your ideas in progress so that you can make changes along the way instead of waiting until you have already written five drafts by yourself to figure out that there's a fundamental plot issue that you did not see because you were too close to the manuscript. It'd be much nicer to figure that out with draft one and not draft five.
So.I personally made that mistake as a writer. I worked in isolation for so long because I wanted to show people the best version of my book. I was like half convinced that they would be like, no, it's perfect. You are ready to publish. That is not what happened. It is of course not what happened because I had gaps in my knowledge. I had things that I could not see because that is simply how writing works. You are too close to your own story. You know too much about your characters, your world, your intentions. You need feedback from other people in order to truly see your story. And you don't want to wait until draft six to actually see your story for what it is when that could have happened with draft two or draft one. So do not wait too long to get feedback. Obviously you do need to be careful about who you're showing your story to when it is rough. Make sure it's not someone who is going to completely destroy and deplete your confidence. Show it to someone who's going to be supportive and encouraging and help you get better. But don't be afraid to show the imperfect in progress version because that is how you're actually going to make your story better.
Do not wait as long as I did because that was a mistake and I should have gotten feedback earlier and it would have made my life so much easier. It would have taught me so much more. So do not be afraid to show the rough, rough drafts, especially to someone who is trained to help you with them.
All right. Those were six revision myths that are keeping you stuck and keeping you from revising in the most efficient and effective way possible.
If you are interested in learning a revision method that is going to help you avoid all of these myths at once, I have a free revision checklist. It is going to walk you through all four phases of the revision process that I teach my students, starting from how to set a vision for your story so you actually know what you're trying to accomplish in revision through to getting through the rewrites without totally burning out and starting to hate your book. So you can download that free checklist wherever you are listening to or watching the show. And I hope you'll check out that resource because I really tried to capture the entire revision process so you can see what you need to do, but it's still super flexible so that you can make this process work for you and your book. I am not about rigid systems or one size fits all. And that checklist hopefully reflects that as well.
All right. Thank you so, so much for listening to another episode of the Better Writer Podcast. If you enjoyed this episode, please share it with a friend so they can find it too. Have a wonderful week. Keep writing. Keep getting better. One word at a time. See ya.
