When revision feels too daunting...

you have to start somewhere

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Let’s say you’ve written something book-length. A book, perhaps. It could be a memoir. Say you and if you have any other editors have gone through the book and pointed out all the things that are wrong with it. The “editors” could be critique partners, beta readers, your agent, your editor, a developmental editor—anyone really, whose advice you’ve decided to take into serious consideration.

I’m reminded of a story one of my writing professors (Vikram Chandra) told us in class once: he was in workshop and there was this insufferable lady who would just cross out entire pages and write “FIX THIS.” Okay…. not super helpful.

Once you’ve got all the hopefully-more-helpful pieces of input in one place, the thought of FIX THIS might feel like an extremely high mountain that you’re not sure how to climb. How to start. What tools you need. This is how I would consider doing this.

Divide the comments you’ve gotten into things that are clearly articulated or not. Here are some examples.

Clearly articulated: Chapter 4 is too long—cut into to. Vanessa’s character is not well developed enough. The dialogue on page 45-47 is really awkward. I don’t believe that someone would receive clue 2 and not immediately solve the mystery, as opposed to dragging it out till clue 10. Is this how a medic would actually respond to a gunshot wound?

Not clearly articulated: The middle drags. I didn’t find the ending satisfying. I’m not invested in your main character. I don’t believe in this romance.

About the not-very-well articulated stuff: if the person giving you feedback is a writer or professional editor, typically they give you articulated responses. But it is always a good idea to have a beta reader who is someone who reads a lot (especially within your genre) but who isn’t a writer or editor. This is a stand-in for the average reader. These people often give feedback that is valuable but is not written in writer-speak. It gives you a hint at what’s wrong, but doesn’t tell you how to fix it. You might have to question them a little on why they felt certain things. “The middle drags” is almost always an issue of pacing, not enough plot, or things being stretched out for too long. Why wasn’t the ending satisfying…? Well, maybe you set up that there was going to be a huge battle and then there wasn’t a huge battle (Season 2 of House of the Dragon). Maybe you spent a lot of time building up a romance but then we didn’t really get to see the lovers be happy (Helen Simonson’s The Summer Before the War, which I’ve mentioned before). Maybe the resolution of your mystery is a stupid plot twist. If they’re not invested in your character why not? Is this just a reader that doesn’t like main characters who engage in infidelity? Or was your MC boring? Do they make stupid decisions? Odds are, if you have a truly three-dimensional character people will be invested in them. (excepting the odd reader or two who can’t stand an unlikeable character, or someone who does something they are morally opposed to, which I don’t think is most readers.)

Once everything is articulated in a way that makes sense, divide all the problems based on size, biggest to smallest. Here’s generally how you think about it.

It doesn’t matter what the actual labels here are: a structural issue is one that is going to require you looking at the arc of the entire book in order to fix it. For example, you decided to combine two characters into one. You need to go back and rewrite a lot of scenes, but also make sure the scenes where neither character is there to see if they still make sense. In editing my second book, I heavily rewrote one of the two timelines and had to do a lot of work to make sure it made sense, who-knew-what-when, or if what the kids were doing in the less-touched timeline were reflected in the new timeline.

A systemic issue is something that is going to be spread out over the course of the entire book but maybe doesn’t require a close reading of some parts. For example: I write multiple POV, and one thing I tend to do is read all the parts in one character’s POV in one chunk to make sure the voice is consistent, the character is three dimensional, etc. Maybe your book takes place half in Paris, half in Rome, and you want to go back and make sure all the Paris parts really feel like Paris.

A functional issue might be something biggish but fairly isolated in space. Something like “fix the pacing in chapters 15-18.” For example, in something I’m writing, there is a heist of sorts that I described in my first draft. Then I did some research about the particular item being stolen and found out that it would be physically impossible to steal that particular item in that particular way. So I had to rethink about 2 or 3 chapters worth of action so that it made sense.

A spot issue could be something simple, like “fix dialogue on page 57, it’s awkward—something you can knock out pretty quickly.

Actually there’s one level below this I forgot to mention in my shitty diagram, and that is just line editing.

There’s a reason why I’ve broken these down this way. A lot of people when they start editing turn to page one and are like, okay there are 9,000 things wrong that need to be addressed in chapter one so… go! If you think about it, there should be absolutely no line editing before you fix big structural issues. You both can’t and shouldn’t try to fix everything, one chapter at a time.

I was at a workshop and the teacher, Daniel Torday (author of The 12th Commandment) said something about revision that I thought was absolutely brilliant and I still do. Only work on one thing at a time per each revision. Starting with the big structural stuff first. Then you’re saving that file in something clearly labeled. “Great American Novel structural edit” or whatever. So I go back in order to fix my 2015 timeline, I am working in a word file and only trying to fix things that pertain to that big structural issue. ie, when I am figuring out where Maddy is at what time before she gets killed, I am not touching the awkward dialogue on page 45 or even the part where Maddy acts inconsistent with her character on page 100. Here I’m just moving the big jigsaw pieces around. (Actually a lot of a really big structural edit should be taking place outside of your text, like working on notecards or a timeline or something.) So that’s my “ASPD 2015 timeline fix” document. Once I’ve completed that to my satisfaction, I open that document and save a new file name to work on my next structural issue, which is that I’m adding a third timeline that predates the other two timelines: “ASPD 1800s timeline.” This version would add the new first-drafty text for the 1800s timeline—it isn’t and shouldn’t be perfect right now—and would also make sure that in the non-1800s timeline, I haven’t said anything that contradicts the new content.

If you have separate document files, this makes it easy for you to trace when you did what you did, and to also go back and undo things if you want. Then you start to deal with the systemic issues, again, one at a time so you can concentrate on one thing at a time. For example, when I was doing my first book, I went back and reread all the Andre sections together, without looking at any other sections—that’s my “Andre consistency” edit. Then I go back and do all the Dr. Wyman sections.

If you think of it this way, it is very easy to fix all the Paris stuff if all you are concentrating on is Paris, as opposed to thinking about Paris, then thinking about this janky thing about Andre, then thinking about Paris again, then wondering how you’re going to fix this plothole, then more Paris. It’s the difference between CLEAN YOUR ROOM and just “look at this one messy area of your living room.” CLEAN YOUR ROOM is not helpful when there is both ketchup on the ceiling and magazines everywhere. (not sure what you’ve been up to, but okay.)

Then you’re going on to fix the smaller issues— like something that is maybe contained to only one or two chapters.

Then and only then do you do line editing. The reason for this is critical. Line editing text when you haven’t figured out major structural issues is renovating a house when it is an hour away from being tore down. Don’t line edit until you know for sure that that scene is even going to be there.

Similarly, if you have to trim at the line level, don’t do it until you have finished fixing structural things first. If you have very big structural issues related to space that’s a different story. I needed to get A Step Past Darkness from its original first draft of 650 pages to “under 500” with my editor. I would consider me axing two whole chapters as part of a structural edit because I needed to see what other parts of the story were affected, like a web reverberating in one part affecting the other parts. Then I got it down from maybe 530 or just just by surgically editing at the line level (this was one of the most painful things I’ve ever had to do, but there were very few scenes that I could cut whole-cloth). Eventually I called my editor and asked if 499 was sufficiently “under 500.” (It was. The book cosmetically looks to be 440 pages through some chicanery, but really its 499.)

If you consider all your editorial issues like this—top to bottom, one thing at a time—this gives you the space to only think about one problem at a time, and to not worry about a stray thread at the cuff when it turns you are going to be removing the entire arm of the sweater to make a vest instead. I also think working on small issues when there are larger, potentially subsuming issues, is potentially a waste of time. So much of time when you are writer is spent waiting: waiting to hear back from agents, waiting to hear back from editors, waiting for pub date, that you can be sure to try to not waste any of the time you have when you are actively working.

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