Revision is all about prioritizing. Prioritizing the story you want to tell, the readers you want to reach, and the craft elements you choose to focus on while revising your book.
If you prioritize the wrong things in your first draft, you can end up with a revision that pushes you further away from your goal instead of helping you create a book that you’re proud to share with the world.
Now the question becomes, what are those incorrect, wrong priorities? In this week’s episode I’m sharing two: word count and mass appeal.
Do we want to hit the word count for our genres? Yes.
Do we want to appeal to as broad an audience as possible? Yes.
But should we prioritize those decisions in our first draft revisions? Nope.
Find out why in this week’s episode of the Better Writer Podcast!
Looking for even more help?
I'm running a masterclass on November 17th, 2026 called Fix Your First Draft!
You'll learn what first drafts really need, how to manage every stage of your revision & editing process, what to focus on in your first draft, and most importantly, you'll map out your best next step in revision!
Fix Your First Draft is just $17 until November 4th, then it's $27.
Learn more and enroll here: https://oliviahelpswriters.thrivecart.com/fix-your-first-draft/
Happy Writing!
Thanks for listening, keep writing, and keep getting better one word at a time!
You can listen to this episode in your favorite podcast player here or watch on YouTube here.
Thanks for listening, keep writing, and keep getting better one word at a time!
Transcript
Please note, this is a lightly edited transcript and may have errors.
Olivia (00:00)
Where your focus goes, you go. And when we talk about revision.
The things that you choose to prioritize define the draft that you end up with. And if you choose to prioritize the wrong things when you're revising your first draft, you are going to end up with a second draft that still isn't working for readers. And even worse, you could end up with a second draft that is actually further from your goal than your first draft was. And I don't want that to happen to you. So let's talk about what you should not be prioritizing in your first draft so you do not make these mistakes in your revisions. Let's get started.
Welcome to episode 49 of the Better Writer Podcast. I am so excited. One away from 50. We are about to get there. And today I'm continuing my series about first draft revision mistakes. so these are the things that I sometimes see writers do in their first draft revisions that do not help them or may even hurt them. And it is very appropriate that I'm talking about first draft revisions right now because my masterclass, Fix Your First Draft, is coming up on November 17th. So if you're listening
To this episode on the day it comes out, that is one week away. And I would love to see you there to talk about what you should be doing when you revise your first draft. The class is $27. It is going to be a two-hour live masterclass. Then you are going to get lifetime access to the recording as well. So you can come back, revisit anytime. You'll get the workbook. You get to keep that. So you always have it as a reference
If you come to this masterclass, you are also going to get early access to my Black Friday sale for writers and an extra $50 off coupon. I have to say this is one of the best Black Friday deals I have ever run. It is my first Black Friday deal in a long time. And normally I don't want to deal with Black Friday, but I'm really excited about this deal. I think it is going to help a lot of people. I'm excite about what I get to share. Um and I'm being very mysterious right now. But if you come to the master class, you will get first dibs. And like I said, the class is twenty seven dollars, but it gets you a fifty dollar coupon. So that's a great deal because you're getting an amazing master class already. Um and then just, you know, a little extra Black Friday surprise to sweeten the pot.
So Come to the masterclass, it is on November 17th. Of course, if you can't attend live, you will get the replay as soon as it's ready. And I would just love to talk to you about what you should be doing in your first draft. We are going to talk about what you should prioritize, what you should be looking for at a craft level. And I'm also gonna give you an overview of the entire process that you're going to go through with your draft. What are we doing in that first round revision? What comes after that first round of developmental revisions, which a lot of people don't know. What do I do with my second draft? and then we're also gonna talk about what happens when we get to the editing phase, when are we ready for the editing phase? Um and all that good stuff.
Obviously, I'm not going to teach you every single thing that you need to know to revise your novel in two hours. Um but it is going to give you a really strong start and is also going to put you in the right headspace to prioritize the right things instead of the wrong things. Which brings us to the topic of today's episode. What should you not prioritize in your first draft revisions? Obviously there are a lot of things that we could prioritize that are wrong. I've already talked a little bit on this podcast about the difference between revision and editing. We don't edit first drafts.
We revise them. That is a really important distinction that sometimes I think people just use the word editing and revision interchangeably. I would like to start changing your mindset in that regard because they are separate phases of the process, especially when we're talking about something as complicated as a novel.
If you are writing a super short story or you're writing an essay. You might be able to mix those phases without costing yourself a lot of time or a lot of heartache. And that just isn't possible in a novel because it is so much longer. It is so much more complex. You really need to separate out those two phases. that is the first thing. Do not start prioritizing editing tasks. but I'm not gonna focus there today because I've already touched on that.
So today I have new things for you to not prioritize. Um, and first one is word count. Do not, do not, do not, do not worry about word count when you're revising your first draft. Now, let's address the elephant in the room. Word count does matter. If you are planning to pursue a traditional publishing deal, word count does matter, and it matters a lot. However, it is not a first draft concern.
You will at some point need to make sure that your word count fits your genre, but do not sacrifice story development in your first draft in order to hit that word count goal. And here's why that is so dangerous for first drafts in particular. When you are hyper-focused on word count, you are going to underdevelop key parts of your story. And often the parts that we think we don't need are parts that are actually essential. And I don't know what it is in our writer brains. I think it's it's partially because we know too much. We know our stories inside out. We make connections that our readers fundamentally cannot. So we tend to cut things that are actually really important context, or we cut things that are really important to develop character arcs or other parts of the plot that don't feel important because we've been told like it's conflict conflict, plot blah plot.
And I know I'm partially responsible for that because I talk about the importance of conflict all the time. But there are other things that need to happen in your story, and you might sacrifice them if you are solely fixating on word count.
For example, you might be writing a romance, or you're writing a story with a strong romance subplot. And if you're hyper-focused on word count, you might cut the mushy bits, you might cut the emotional scenes, you might cut conversations that are absolutely essential for actually making your characters fall in love. You might skip over the entire romance plot in the name of keeping your story concise when really you need those things to be there. Another way that I see this show up is that people start summarizing key events because they are getting too wordy. And instead of getting the action-packed, exciting conflict happening on the page, all we get is the bland summarized version. Um, one example I will never forget: it was a book with dragons, and it was a book with people training to be dragon riders.
And right at the pivotal moment when our main character, she's been training and training and training, the moment when she gets to ride a dragon for the first time was summarized. Summarized in a single sentence. and that is gonna be so crushingly disappointing to your readers who came here for dragons. They want to see your character experience being on Dragon Back for the first time. Um, and that is just one example.
I see this all the time where we get a summary of a pivotal argument between two characters. We get a summary of a harrowing escape or something like that. and of course, there are going to be situations where maybe your characters have already been on Dragon Back 15 times. We don't need to do it again. You can summarize the 16th Dragon Ride if you must. unless, of course, something exciting is gonna happen in ride number 16 and we need to see it.
If your characters are talking and arguing about the same things over and over again, use narrative summary to capture that feeling. but if it's the first time, if it is a big pivotal moment, even if it is going to take a lot of words to describe, put it on the page because readers are going to want to see it, then let's cut the boring stuff that somehow... it's so funny because writers will do that where we cut the dragon riding but then we think that we need to show our readers how your character walks from point A to point B instead of saying one sentence, we walked from point A to point B. Um, I think sometimes there's also that psychological fear where it feels much more intense and scary to, you know, actually describe the action packed scene and then we we choose the easy stuff, but so there's another element there, but I do think part of it is we prioritize the wrong things, we think we need to overexplain certain things that people will take for granted, and then we skip past the big exciting thing because we think it is going to be too many words and we don't need it, but we do. So if you are prioritizing word count, I think that just exacerbates the problem. We start trying to be concise instead of writing a really good book. And that is the first requirement.
You can have a book that perfectly matches the word count for your genre, but if it's not good, it doesn't matter. It does not matter.
Again, I'm not going to sit here and tell you that as a debut author, trying to get published for the first time, word count does not matter. It absolutely does. But your book has to be good within that word count. Otherwise, that is a non-starter. Your book can hit the word count, but if it's bad, it does not matter. It has to do both. And we start with a good book, then we make it shorter, not the other way around. Okay.
What should you actually be doing in your first draft? You should be focusing on fully developing every element of your plot. Then we worry about cutting later. And that could mean cutting entire scenes. But more often you can trim down your book so much just cutting at the sentence level, at the line level and you don't even need to lose any scenes. You can have all of your plot points remain intact and we just cut unnecessary words.
I have cut 15,000 words just at the sentence level, not a single scene lost. Went from one fifty to one thirty-five. That is still a very long book, but it just goes to show that you can do a lot of trimming without losing any plot points, without losing any character development. We just cut at the sentence level and that can work wonders. So in your first draft, don't worry about word count. And I know that might be really hard, especially if you are one of those people who had be concise drilled into you in school.
Our job is not to be concise as fiction writers. we don't want to be overly wordy. We don't want to over-explain things and make our sentences redundant, but your job is not to just be concise. You are not trying to fit your descriptions into a column in the newspaper. Word count still matters at a macro level, but your job is to bring the story to life for readers, and that is going to take more words than the factual newspaper description. That's not what you're doing. You're bringing it to life with detail, with sensory descriptions, all that good stuff that makes fiction different from just narrating the basics of what happened. All right, that is mistake number one.
The second thing that I see people mistakenly prioritizing is that they are trying to make their book work for everyone.
And that is never going to happen. You are never going to create a book that is universally beloved by every single person. Every famous book you can think of, every book that is a household name has haters. Every single one. Whether you are Dr. Seuss or Dan Brown or anyone else, there is someone out there who hates that person's books, who will never read them, who will look down upon the people who do, etc., etc. It does not matter who you are. So.
We are not going to try to write for everyone. And I think that is especially problematic in a first draft because when you are starting with a first draft, those are gonna be some of your rawest ideas. Not all of them are going to be good ideas, but those are going to be…those are the original ideas, the ideas you started with. And I am not suggesting that you hold on to all of them, but I think they are a very important indicator of what's important to you and what you're actually trying to get across to your readers. And if you start watering down your story with draft one, it's gonna be really difficult to bounce back from that. We don't want to make our story blander or safer because we are trying to write to an imaginary audience. Obviously, we then need to write for our specific audience. We need to figure out who those people are what we are going to deliver for them. ah But we can't start from a place of trying to water down everything that makes us us.
And rather than trying to create a book that appeals to everyone, which ultimately will become a book that appeals to no one, you need to figure out what do your people love, what do they want from you. And you are going to need to embrace those things, especially when you're revising your first draft. Because especially if you're a pantser, which many of the people who work with me are.
You are going to start off with a draft that probably has contradictory ideas, the ideas that are just not meshing. You are gonna have parts of your story that went off in another direction and just no longer fit. And you're gonna need to decide which ideas get to stay, which parts actually work. And you need to choose the ones that are best for your specific readers. And if you just choose the ones that are safest, blandest, whatever that you think are gonna appeal to everyone, you're probably gonna make the wrong decisions, or you're at least not going to make informed decisions about what is going to work for your readers.
So we need to lock in on a specific group of people, embrace that specific group of people we really need to decide on the things that are going to enhance what is special about your book, what your future readers are going to enjoy. Um, I recently had this experience with a client who originally came to me saying that they wanted to be the next Sarah J. Maass and then I started reading their book, which dealt with climate themes and philosophical themes and was just plain weird. And I literally put that in the uh editorial letter that I sent this person. I said it's weird in a good way.
And if you try to aim for Sarah J. Maass level, fame, and fortune, you are going to destroy everything about this book that makes it good.
Instead, we want to lean into that weirdness and make these things work for your readers. And there were things that needed to be worked on in that manuscript. It was not perfect as is. It was not going to be a Sarah J. Maass style book because it just wasn't even in that genre. And that's okay because it had so many other wonderful things going for it. It had humor and amazingly deep themes and interesting characters in such a unique setting.
And all of that would need to be destroyed to create a copy of Sarah J Maas that probably still wouldn't work for those readers because that is not who this author is. That's not who they're writing for. That is not what their book is meant to be. So rather than trying to appeal to an imaginary broad audience and destroying everything about yourself and your work that is unique, embrace who you are, find your core people, and then they're going to start suggesting your book to people who would never think to pick it up. And some of those people will love it, some of them won't. Some of them will love it though.
And that is how books spread beyond the original audiences they were meant for because they delighted the people that they were meant that were meant to read them and then other people started spreading the word and suggesting it. And just to be honest, some genres have a smaller audience right now. Some genres have always had smaller audiences and that's okay because you can still find readers. You can still find success in that in those niches.
Every time I have ever gone to a writing conference, I have met or been in sessions led by best-selling authors that I had never heard of. Never heard of them, but they're still making good money because they found their readers. I'm not one of them. They're not a household name, but they're still making good money. Um, and that is something to keep in mind as well. That you don't need to be Sarah J. Maass famous. You don't need to be Rebecca Yarros, who literally has people tracking her flights, which is creepy. And I don't think I would want that.
You don't have to be at that level to be successful. So we do not need to aim for an audience as broad as that in order to make it. And I've said this before, um, I will say it again. Fourth wing. There are people who hate it, absolutely hate it. And honestly, the more people who love it, the more people are gonna hate it because they've heard of you. Um, so do not try to make your first draft into something that is going to work for everyone because you will fail and you will end up with a book that doesn't work for anyone. And we don't want that.
And I think the other thing to keep in mind is that when we're talking about creating a book that works for readers, it's not just about voice, it's not just about marketing, it's not just about the finishes. That happens at a plot level.
To go back to my example from earlier, if you're writing a romance, your romance readers want the romance scenes. So if you cut all of those boring bits that you've been told that conversations are boring, that introspection is boring, that feelings are boring, if you cut all those things because you think that the broad audience wants action, action, action, you won't have written a romance. You won't have given your romance readers what they want. And romance, there are so many romance readers out there who want the feelings and the emotions and the conversations, and they want to see those characters fall in love.
Yes, plot things need to happen, that is important, but mostly we need to see the characters fall in love. On the other hand, if you're writing a thriller and people do want action, action, action, but you say, oh
I'm gonna tap into that giant romance market by creating this intricate romance plot where the characters are gonna have deep conversations while the bad guys are off bombing people. That is not gonna work for thriller readers. We have to decide. And there is a genre that crosses over romantic suspense, which is gonna be a blend of the two. So there is a way to merge those things if you want to, but don't go around calling your romantic suspense book a straight thriller because you're trying to tap into the Dan Brown market. because that's not going to work. You cannot write a book that is for everyone. You have to write a book that is for a specific group of someones.
Really create a book that is perfect for them, and then we branch out from there. Um, or we stick with our core group and there are enough of them that we find the success we're looking for. Um, and that is what I want you to just embrace above all. Embrace the things that make your book special, that make you special. Do not tone yourself down unless you find out that that is something that is not going to work for the people that you want to write for. And the other thing is that you can always change who that group of people is. If you realize halfway through you're writing a different genre than you thought you were, we change our audience. If you realize that you thought you were writing YA, but actually this book is adult, that's totally fine. You can always change the group of people that you're writing for. We just want to keep it specific and we do not want to try to write for every single person in the world because that will backfire.
Alright. Thank you so, so much for listening to another episode of the Better Writer Podcast. I hope this has been helpful and I hope it has helped reframe what you should be prioritizing in your first draft.
And like I mentioned at the beginning of this episode, I am running a live masterclass on November 17th called Fix Your First Draft. It is $27 and I am going to give you an overview of the revision process that your first draft actually needs. Then we're also going to talk about what comes after so you know what's ahead and you know where all of the other pieces of the puzzle fit in. Because like I said, we are only going to do certain things in our first draft. We're not prioritizing everything, but I still want you to know where those other parts fit in so you don't miss them along the way.
This class is going to teach you what to focus on at a craft level. It is going to talk about what you should not focus on at all and what mistakes to avoid with your first draft. and we're going to talk about strategy, how to actually approach your revisions and most importantly, we are going to identify your best next step so that you know what you need to do in revision and you can walk away from that class with an immediate next step that is specific to you.
You will find the link to register for that class wherever you're listening to or watching this show. And I hope to see you there on the 17th or later on in the replay. Alright, thank you again for listening to another episode. Have a wonderful week. Keep writing. Keep getting better. One word at a time. See ya.
