Revision is not just about tightening sentences or making the language flow better. I mean, that is part of it, but only a small piece. So repeat after me. When it comes to revision, pretty writing is going to be dead last on our list of editing concerns. Welcome to the Write It Scared podcast. I'm your host, Stacey Fraser, a formerly repressed creative soul, turned fiction writer, story editor, and author accelerator certified fiction book coach. At Write It Scared, we tell the truth about why writing a novel is so hard by acknowledging that most writers grapple with two stories: the one they want to put on the page to the best of their ability, and the often subconscious internal story that prevents them from doing it. This show is designed to help you identify and rewrite the internal narrative holding you back while you discover and write the story you want to tell and learn all the tools to help you do that successfully. Join me each week for a new episode where we'll talk about writing to deepen our understanding of the craft and of ourselves as writers. Writing a novel is an inside job that we do not do alone. Welcome to Write It's Scared. I'm glad you're here. Let's dive in. Hi, writer. Welcome back to the Write It Scared Podcast. I'm your host, Stacey, and today is a solo show. We are going to talk about some common revision mistakes to avoid when you are revising your novel. I'm just beginning the revision for my young adult suspense. So this is as much of a reminder for me as it is for others, because we want to ensure that we don't make these mistakes because it's really easy to just get ahead of ourselves and want to dive in and start fixing things. But what we really need to do first is get a good grip on what the story truly needs. That's where we have to begin. So when we finish a first draft, we usually get really excited. And I hope so, we should be, because it's an incredible milestone. And typically we feel really motivated to just dive in and keep going and get the rest of it done. And a lot of times we're kind of twiddling our thumbs, we're like, oh, we have this built-up energy and we're used to doing the work. And so we feel like we're ready to dive back in. But I want to caution you and encourage you to take a pause before you go back to the book. Take a breath, come up for air, and think about what it really means to revise, especially if this is the first time you've ever done it. Revision is not just about tightening sentences or making the language flow better. I mean, that is part of it, but only a small piece. So repeat after me. When it comes to revision, pretty writing is going to be dead last on our list of editing concerns. Writing a novel is a lot like putting together a 2,000-piece jigsaw puzzle. It is not a fast process. And drafting kind of feels like shaking out all those pieces onto the kitchen table. It's very messy. Some of those pieces land right side up, some of them go off the table, and most of the pieces land face down. And if you're lucky, there's a few components that are already connected in the way that they should be. And then revision is the process of turning all those pieces right side up and evaluating how they could work together. So in a puzzle, you might start by organizing everything into shapes or colors. And then you might start with the edge pieces first and work your way towards the middle. And sometimes you'll get it wrong. And sometimes there'll be big chunks of connected segments that do fit together, but you don't know where they go yet. But after many passes, it will all connect and it will create a beautiful picture. So to make putting our novel pieces together more efficient and a more enjoyable process, let's cover these three mistakes that we want to steer clear of. And again, I'm putting this out into the world, yes, to help others, but also to remind myself to go through the revision work using a systematic approach that actually works instead of doing what I instinctually want to do, which is just dive in and start making changes. So the first mistake is not resting adequately after finishing the first draft. Completing a first draft, again, is a major accomplishment. So please be so proud of yourself. This is huge. Many people say they want to write a book. Very few of them do, and even less take it all the way to a polished novel. So I don't think the importance of celebrating your creative milestones can be overstated. Writing a novel is a marathon, not a sprint. And if you want to create a story that others are going to read and enjoy, then you're going to need to put your pen down and walk away for a bit. Go celebrate. Go fill your creative cup because you've earned it. And if you fail to slow down and acknowledge your wins, that can become a recipe for burnout. Trust me, I know. So please don't blaze past your goalposts and not acknowledge them. Take a look in the mirror, recognize your efforts because it's really hard to continue to build upon the success that you don't acknowledge, and it's equally as difficult to build a fulfilling and sustainable writing career if you don't do that. So resting and celebrating will give you three essential revision tools: objectivity, a renewed perspective, and equally as important, stamina. Revision is a long process, and oftentimes it's going to take you longer to revise the book than it did to draft it. Revision is also a very analytical process, which can be tiring. So when we rest, it allows us to downshift into this more analytical mindset where we can approach the work with a fresh set of eyes and be better able to spot big picture problems. The second mistake is not reading the draft without making changes to it. Some people call this a cold read. And this is one of the hardest steps for me to do. The revision process truly begins by making an assessment of what you have on the page, not what you think you have, not what you want to have, but what is actually there. And it's crucial that you take this inventory before you start making changes. And again, some writers like myself, this is really hard for us to do because I'll just speak for me, but I want to skip this initial auditing step because it hurts. It's painful. I know that rough draft is a mess. And I tend to be in a hurry to want to improve it. But I also know that if I just jump in and attack my draft without getting a grip on the bigger picture, what I'll end up doing is just making superficial adjustments on the sentence level, and those will not fix a broken story. So instead of rushing it, what we need to do is read the manuscript as if we were a reader and try to experience it that way and read it all the way through. Don't take notes if you can stand it. And I'm not gonna lie, I do take some notes, but I don't do it in the manuscript because I would never find them if I did that. But I do jot them down really quickly in a notebook. Reading the manuscript all the way through is gonna give you the feel of the shape of the story and allow you to experience it like a reader would. And it's going to help you refresh yourself with what is actually going on in those pages. Because if you're like me, you've forgotten. And to make this a little easier to do, I recommend that you don't do the cold read-through in the same document that you wrote the book in. So push it into a PDF and then upload it to your Kindle or print it out, or at the very least, change the font so it looks different. I actually don't know the science behind that last one, but I have heard that it works. Do your best to just read your entire book as a reader, not a writer. And I know this is easier said than done, but try really hard to just take off that critical thinking cap and just experience the story. Make notes, mental or physical ones, on what you like and how it feels, and just your experience of the book in general. The final mistake I want to talk about is thinking that revision means you will edit the manuscript from the first page to the last page in order. I have made this mistake, and I have learned that revision is not a linear process. Sometimes it's a circular process, always it's an iterative process. And sometimes it's just a messy process. And if you make the mistake that I did of approaching it by beginning on page one and working line by line to the end, again, the risk here is that you are just going to make those sentence level changes, which, yes, might result in prettier prose, but they will be inside a story that is structurally broken. The manuscript will still have fatal flaws, like missing or lopsided character arcs, absent story logic, trouble with structure, pacing issues, all because you didn't see them because you were down on the sentence level. The other part is when you make your words pretty, it only increases your attachment level to the work. So don't make anything pretty until you are certain that the scene has earned its place in the story. After your first read through, then it's time for that structural assessment. And so that means you're gonna read your book a second time. And when you do that, you're going to be looking at those big story elements. You're gonna be looking at the narrative arc and the character arcs, the plot, the conflict, the turning points, the world building, the pacing, the narrative drive, how those elements fit together. And you'll be thinking about what needs to change to make the book better. So the structural edit is going to require a writer to elevate themselves above the lines. And some people call this getting a 30,000-foot view. And the point is to see what's working and not working in the story as a whole. And one of the best tools to get this high-level view of the story is a scene-by-scene outline. So as you read the story through a second time and you're taking notes on what you're catching that needs to be fixed, you will also make a scene by scene outline, which is just one or two sentences to describe what happens in each scene, why it matters, and how it moves the story forward. And you'll also want to keep track of your timeline and your point of view characters while you do this too. And then you have the ability to look at your story at a glance and track the character development and pinpoint where the major conflict occurs and where the turning points are or where they're lacking. And you'll spot the plot holes and be able to grasp the general flow of the story. And you will come to places where you're like, oh man, that scene is totally flat. It does nothing, it doesn't move the story forward, it has no point, it holds no logic, and that is totally normal. You're gonna notice places where your character doesn't act the way that they need to act in the story. This is what you're gonna find when you read a first draft, and that's all normal. So if you find those things, good job. You did it right, you wrote an imperfect first draft, it's exactly what it needed to be, and now you're going about the process of making it better and shaping it into what you want it to become. Just remember, revision takes patience and perseverance, and for most of us, it's going to take a lot longer than drafting did. And I'm reminding myself of this fact today. So instead of rushing into revision and racing towards a finish line, we are much better served if we take a metered approach. So once you've completed your first draft, go take a creative rest, celebrate. And when I say rest, I mean walk away for at least three to four weeks. Longer if you can stand it. The longer you can stay away from the story, the more objectivity you will have when you come back to it. So take that creative rest because it's going to help you develop that fresh perspective and enhance your objectivity. Then come back, do a full cold read-through of the book just to get a feel for the shape of the story, and then reread your book again to create that scene outline, which will allow you to start your structural assessment and see what's missing and uncover where the manuscript breaks down. Remember, revising a book is like putting together a gigantic puzzle. So it's okay to slow down and use a systematic approach. Read, reread, then outline, and that will help you see your story as a whole and identify the fatal flaws that keep good books broken. If you would like more guidance on revising your novel, I have a free workbook and resource guide for revising fiction writers that will walk you through a self-editing process. And it comes with a self-editing checklist. The workbook is called Revision Clarity, and you can find it at writitscared.co forward slash revision hyphen clarity. And I'll also put a link in the show notes to make it easier for you to find.