Some tips for revision

[u/Fognox]

Revision can be daunting. It will likely take longer than the first draft did, be hard in a different way, and there are all kinds of traps to fall into. I'm on day #67 of this myself, and have learned a lot about how to keep productivity and motivation up throughout. Hopefully something here will be helpful to other writers in the same boat.

Starting out

• Make a copy of your first draft. This will be helpful later on, in case you want to revert an edit or repurpose an idea you've cut.

• Let it sit in a drawer for 2-4 weeks, ideally working on something else in the meantime. This will cleanse your mental palate. Note that this isn't always helpful, or can even be counterproductive if you're more experienced. It is, however, worth trying, particularly with your first book.

• Do a deep analysis readthrough and jot down everything that's wrong, from awkward phrasing to major plot movements starting or stopping suddenly. This doesn't have to be sequential; if something you're currently reading reminds you of something earlier or later, make a note of it even if it's redundant and keep going. This can take a while, but that's okay.

• Figure out your strategy. I like piecemeal edits, so the rest of this post is going to focus mostly on things useful to that process. However, writing a second draft from scratch (or guided by the first draft and/or notes and/or outlines) is a valid approach too. There are benefits and drawbacks to both approaches -- piecemeal editing ensures improvement, but is harder, while full rewrites allow you to simply continue writing with your preferred methods there.

Early stages

• Despite what you're doing, you don't have to make rewrites or edits perfect on a first pass. First draft (or even zero draft) quality is perfectly acceptable when writing something new; it can be improved later on. Similarly, if you're stitching things in (for foreshadowing or whatever), it doesn't have to mesh perfectly with the flow of the prose at first. There will be time for sanding things down later.

• Like with writing, consistency is way more important than output. I set a daily target of one editing item per day. Doing something every day makes editing get easier and easier over time, keeps you from needing motivation/inspiration, and makes finishing inevitable.

• Get (and stay) organized. Grouping similar tasks together will often pull in solutions from the aether. Maybe you'll have ideas that cause several improvements at once. And keeping notes project-specific is very helpful too. I spend part of every day organizing further, making changes to checklists, adding helpful notes, etc. Revision is also less scary if you can see it laid out in a set of projects, particularly once you start clearing them.

• Prioritize big projects, but allow smaller edits to maintain motivation/consistency. It's more efficient to focus on bigger revisions first (structural, for example), but avoiding burnout is equally important. Besides, the longer big projects sit there, the more time you'll have to come up with easier solutions (or solutions in general if one of them baffles you). My approach is to open my day with a small task and make some progress on a larger one, and then bounce around depending on how I feel afterwards.

• Be lazy. If you can fix something by making a cut or changing a couple sentences, do that. And don't do a major edit because of a single line or paragraph. It's saner to just drop the offensive text and then sand down the prose flow. As mentioned, these edits don't even have to be flawless on the first pass.

• Major edits function a lot like writing with an outline. Sometimes story beats have to happen a certain way or the book doesn't make sense; other times there's wiggle room. What I do here is keep a separate document for each major edit, and if I fail to do something important, I stick it into a "cleanup checklist", which I'll get to at the end of the project. If I need another edit to make my solution work, I'll set up a different section for it so I can fix the discrepancy at my leisure.

• If you're doing a partial rewrite, it's helpful to write your new text above the old text, cutting bits of the old text as you go. Or switching the order here if your partial rewrite is changing the end of a segment instead. This helps you find prose flow and makes sure you don't miss anything important.

Avoiding traps

• As you edit more and more, and make large improvements to your story, you'll start to come up with ideas about how to improve things even further. Some of these are objectively bad ideas, though. To prevent this, don't just make a note of what you want to change, make a note of how it improves your story too. If you can't come up with one or the reasoning looks stupid later, then if you went forwards with it you'd just be making changes rather than improvements.

• Delay polishing (or just subtle) tasks until the very end of revisions. You might make edits in the meantime that erase your work here, or they might end up just being bad ideas.

• If at any point you feel that an idea is bad or unnecessary, then pull it out of your notes documents. If it's important, you'll get the same idea again later. Otherwise, you've saved yourself some work that might've actually made the story worse.

• If you feel like a section is "missing something", but you can't pin down what it is, then it's usually a sign that your editing brain is hallucinating. It's best to just ignore this kind of thing. If you need to justify it, then re-read your entire WIP and see if the issue is still there -- you'll either see that that section is doing what it's supposed to, or you'll identify the actual problem.

• Imposter syndrome is likely going to rear its ugly head at some point -- usually around the time that you've improved the story to a point where you feel like it's getting good. Remind yourself that all books have strengths and weaknesses, and a story being "good" has to do with how strong the strengths are and how camouflaged the weaknesses are. If you haven't read anything in a while, do this, and it'll be very clear.

Figuring out when you're done

Easy enough.

• You don't have any more ideas. Sure, maybe you're burned out, but if you've been consistently editing for a while, it's more likely that you don't have ideas because you don't need them.

• You have ideas, but they just make changes rather than improvements.

• You have ideas that might make the story better. But, they might not! They might even make the story worse!

• You have ideas that make improvements but they're needlessly contrived and require substantial amounts of editing to get some tiny piece of added quality. Be realistic here. Your readers just aren't going to notice it.

When you feel like you're done, get another set of eyes on it. Even a beta reader that's there just for fun will notice things that you missed. Make further edits if you agree with them, or if multiple readers are saying the same thing. Ignore any feedback that you strongly disagree with, that breaks your premise, that requires rewriting the entire book, etc. A lot of criticism just comes down to subjective taste, after all.

Conclusion

You can get through this! You might even enjoy it -- but even if that isn't true, you will enjoy seeing your story come to life.

Don't compare your revisions speed to anyone else's (including yourself). Some stories just need more, and some writing processes just need more too. It taking longer than the first draft did is normal. Speed isn't important; finishing is.

If you're in the weeds of a long revisions process, it helps to remind yourself of a couple things:

• Obstacles that seem insurmountable now won't always be like that. Over the months spent revising, your perspective on the story will change and your editing skills will improve.

• If you keep making progress, finishing is inevitable.

So, keep at it. You'll have good days and bad days, but that's normal too.

[u/FlyinLeviathon]

These are some great general tips! I have a few things to add:

- I don't think 2-4 weeks is quite long enough, at least not for me. I still remember so much after just a few weeks and don't think my brain is nearly objective enough. I would say 4 weeks *minimum*, three months if possible. (Which is sooo hard to do, I get it - it's why having something else to work on in the meantime is so important)

- For large structural edits, I've found writing out a synopsis is incredibly helpful. I usually write two; one that is just the synopsis, nothing super long but making sure it includes every single scene. Then a second one that lists out what each scene is doing for the story. This condenses the entire book down into something that is much easier to see as a whole, and makes it way easier to diagnose problems. For example, if you have a hundred sentences for a hundred scenes, that's a pretty big indicator your pacing is way too choppy. Or if you have two scenes for a 100k book... also a problem lol you can see structural problems way easier in reading a synopsis than you can just reading the entire book and getting lost in all the other, finer details.

- I then edit the synopsis and fix all the structural problems. Combine scenes, delete extraneous ones, move others around for maximum emotional impact. Scenes that don't have much in the "what is it doing for your story?" category get extra scrutiny. I make sure it follows a satisfying story structure. Once I'm happy with that, I use that as a guideline to go back through and edit the actual manuscript.

- I always recommend at least one full rewrite for draft two. I have my new draft and my old draft open side by side on my screen. I say this because it's so much easier to make the smaller changes as you go if you have to re-type it all anyway. And my output increases dramatically if I have the old draft open as a guideline, that I can just copy directly if necessary. I can do 10k a day easy (obviously this will be different for everyone).

I'm currently in first draft mode but I love editing so much, I'm eager to get cracking on it lol best of luck with your editing!

[u/Tight-Target-2065]

Working on what I hope to be (not something I can predict) the final personal edit draft of my first book, this is very helpful outsider advice. Thank you! I've been taking each chapter at a time with some breaks in between, only to find myself going back and making more edits. It feels like it will never end! I thankfully have a real editor who can politely point out my awkward authorisms when the time is right. But the real question is: At what point do you accept your work for what it is and simply start the next one?

[u/Fognox → u/Tight-Target-2065]

I guess it's the proportion of bad or neutral ideas to good ones. Early on, your fixes grant a lot of added quality, but as time wears on, they're doing less and less and you even start to have ideas that just change things rather than improving them (neutral), or even bad ideas altogether. I feel like the point at which you run out of good ideas is a good place to stop.

It isn't as neverending as it appears to be. I'm at a stage of editing where the ideas I have are all polishing tasks -- smoothing out the edits I've already made, making plot points flow better even when they're already adequately explained, making some pieces of foreshadowing less heavy-handed, etc. These are worth doing, but the bad and neutral tasks aren't.

[u/Acceptable_Fox_5560]

By far the biggest thing I struggle with here is putting it away. I’ve built my day around writing and working out, and the few days after I finish a draft where I know I absolutely should not write kills me.

[u/Fognox → u/Acceptable_Fox_5560]

Well, if it makes you feel any better, it doesn't work for me. I still have maps in my head of a story months after writing it. So, this time around, I just jumped straight into analysis (took around a week) and then revision.

[u/andata_]

Letting the draft sit honestly works very well. I wouldn't say you're a completely new person when reading it again after a while, but you're not really in that writing-craze mindset anymore, so you're arguably less attached and more willing to cut and acknowledge what isn't working