Revision process details?

My advice (summarized)

1) Let it fester in a drawer (or on your hard-drive) until after Christmas.
2) Read it through, beginning to end, making all the notes you want but not editing. Focus on story and plot, not writing "complement" where it should have been "compliment."
3) Fix the story and plot problems
4) Go through and do your first "edit," cutting unnecessary adverbs, changing "complement," cleaning up icky passives, etc.
5) Get it to some betas to see what they think of the story
6) Make the changes that you think are necessary based on beta feedback
7) Hopefully have a critique partner who can line edit the crap out of it for you.
8) Make all your CP's changes.
9) Print it off in a different font or put on an e-reader or read it in some other format than you've been looking at it in for what seems like forever.
10) Make the changes you see are necessary based on that.

If everything went reasonably well, you then have a MS. If you are like me after your first novel, the next step is: Sit down and stare at a blank word document and start a completely different book. If you do better than I did, you're ready to query it.

The part that sucks the most (Or: getting from first draft to something that isn't a steaming pile of shit)

Warning: May contain sarcasm. Consume at your own peril.


1. Open file. Cry.
2. Ignore file for 3 months.
3. Open file. Cry.
4. Email copy to beta.
5. Apologize to beta for writing drivel.
6. Compare notes with beta on what needs to be fixed. Cry.
7. Fix things and email to beta again.
8. Compare notes again.
9. Fix more things until novel has become a blur of festering word-abuse and highlighting an error takes an entire page down with it.
10. Shove it in a drawer and start something new.
11. Open file. Realize you've gotten almost everything and now it's down to the nitty-gritty.
12. Cry tears of relief when it actually becomes difficult to find the mistakes.


All joking aside, this is an accurate representation of what I do. It helps me to have someone reading it at the same time I am and having a little conference while everything is still fresh in our minds.

I'm on step 10, btw. *points to sig*


ETA: See EMaree's post below if you don't fix it as you go. Slight amendment.

Little Anonymous Me said:

Warning: May contain sarcasm. Consume at your own peril.


1. Open file. Cry.
2. Ignore file for 3 months.
3. Open file. Cry.
4. Email copy to beta.
5. Apologize to beta for writing drivel.
6. Compare notes with beta on what needs to be fixed. Cry.
7. Fix things and email to beta again.
8. Compare notes again.
9. Fix more things until novel has become a blur of festering word-abuse and highlighting an error takes an entire page down with it.
10. Shove it in a drawer and start something new.
11. Open file. Realize you've gotten almost everything and now it's down to the nitty-gritty.
12. Cry tears of relief when it actually becomes difficult to find the mistakes.


All joking aside, this is an accurate representation of what I do. It helps me to have someone reading it at the same time I am and having a little conference while everything is still fresh in our minds.

I'm on step 10, btw. *points to sig*

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This is great, but I'd change it to:

1. Open file. Cry.
2. Ignore file for 3 months.
3. Open file. Cry. Edit the living daylights out of it.
4. Email copy to beta.

Unless your first drafts are unusually polished and coherent (some writers can do this, but it usually takes practice and/or an 'edit as you go' first drafting method) you don't want to send your first draft to a beta reader.

1. This is just me, but I'd say work really, really hard at not thinking of your book as a baby. That sort of thing just doesn't help. It's a book. You're going to try to sell it. You'll lop things off it if agents want you to, add other bits, change it around here and there, and then send it out to strangers to see what they think. You wouldn't do that to a baby, would you? If they like it, and if you're lucky, they'll stick it up on a bookshelf or up on the web where perfectly random strangers can see it, handle it, examine it buy it or reject it without a qualm. Also, they'll critique it. You wouldn't want your baby critiqued by strangers. (Reminds me that when my firstborn was about a week old a little old lady stopped me in the street and said "Oh you've had the baby! May I look?" and spent a good minute ogling in silence, withdrew her head from the pram and delivered the immortal line "What a lovely pram. Is it new?" But I digress)

2. Accept congrats for finishing first draft. After that

3. (I would) let it lie for a little while, and then re-read. What happens next would depend on how well it read. It might be beta-ready, or it might be second-draft-ready. You'll know.

Congrats again! Finishing the first draft is a terrific thing

EMaree said:

This is great, but I'd change it to:

1. Open file. Cry.
2. Ignore file for 3 months.
3. Open file. Cry. Edit the living daylights out of it.
4. Email copy to beta.

Unless your first drafts are unusually polished and coherent (some writers can do this, but it usually takes practice and/or an 'edit as you go' first drafting method) you don't want to send your first draft to a beta reader.

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My first drafts are very clean, so I am the weird exception to this rule. I never knew how clean they were until I saw a few other people's. I never remember to make an correction to my revision list lol!

Personally, I think you need to find a good beta reader. Both one who's compatible with you and who will focus on what needs work.

IMO line edits are crap. Every time I've had a beta do line edits, I've ignored about 90% of them. If you're competent (and I know you are, as I've read some of your SYW) you can do that stuff for yourself. I also find that betas who focus on line-level problems completely miss the forest for the leaves.

You need someone who can read your novel as it's meant to be read, but pause often enough to write down notes that they can be helpful to you. Are the characters interesting? Do you have gaping plot holes? Are there bits that go by too fast, or too slowly? That sort of thing.

I may muse more on this later, but I just saw the time.

Of course, the answers will vary greatly depending on the individual writer. This is the way I do it.

I'm not one of the writers that write too much and then have to prune. I'm the opposite. So I usually have to go back and fill in and flesh things out better. I am also a pantser and write out of order.

However, I am a slow writer because whatever I write, I'm thinking how it'll affect not only the chapter but also the entire story (continuity/believability/etc.) I try to catch plot holes immediately so that it doesn't snowball into a monstrosity. I also leave my inner editor on pretty loud. Not full blast, but loud enough to get my attention.

Following Mooky's format, my steps:

1) Re-read the story, checking for flow of storyline. Make general notes if I see any, but I don't fix them yet. I'm more concerned that things are happening in the correct order and checking transitions between scenes/chapters. Basically this step is to check that the story is indeed finished and that there aren't any plot holes and that everything makes sense. I use Yarny to write. I use epub to re-read the story.

2) Fix anything I find from Step 1.

3) Now I go in line by line and expand on details, especially sensory (show, don't tell). Tighten up sentences.

4) I re-read the revised version on Word and mark it up with comments. I am checking the story flow and make notes of where things need fixing in regards to the plot and characters. If I see spelling and grammar errors, I will mark them up too, but it's not my main concern at this time.

5) Fix anything from Step 4 onto Yarny.

Now that I'm supposed to have a true complete story, I print it out on hard copy. I am old school and mark that paper up with scratches, additions, arrows, notes. It's a mess. But I catch the most mistakes with a hard copy.

6) I go through line by line for grammar, spelling, punctuation errors. I am also checking the story flow again. This time if I catch anything, I redo the sentence/paragraph right then and there.

7) Transfer corrections to computer.

8) Re-read story on epub for final check. Make any corrections if any.

9) Send out to betas.

10) Repeat steps 1-8 with comments from betas.

Drachen Jager said:

Personally, I think you need to find a good beta reader. Both one who's compatible with you and who will focus on what needs work.

IMO line edits are crap. Every time I've had a beta do line edits, I've ignored about 90% of them. If you're competent (and I know you are, as I've read some of your SYW) you can do that stuff for yourself. I also find that betas who focus on line-level problems completely miss the forest for the leaves.

You need someone who can read your novel as it's meant to be read, but pause often enough to write down notes that they can be helpful to you. Are the characters interesting? Do you have gaping plot holes? Are there bits that go by too fast, or too slowly? That sort of thing.

I may muse more on this later, but I just saw the time.

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Part of our difference of opinion here could just be the product of me being spoiled. My CP is a full-time editor, and her line-by-line is anything but crap. On the flipside, there are glaring errors in her work (not many, but they're there) when I edit for her. I don't care how good you are at editing, there comes a point, when you're reading a sentence for the thirtieth time, that your mind will fill in blanks, literally including words that are not on the page or omitting others.

Knowing I have someone who will find every questionable usage or error in my work also allows me to treat betas as something wholly apart and distinct from a CP. The only thing I want to hear from them about is the story, the plot, the themes... basically whether they liked it and why, what they didn't like and why. So, I agree betas shouldn't be doing line-by-line, but it's also nice to have someone else do that.

The process would differ from writer to writer, but mine goes something like...

1. Roll around in the bog kicking and splashing mud happily, squealing, "I finished my first draft! Booyah!!" Take the rest of the day off.

2. Start reading the MS the next day. Take down, in bullet points, what needs changing in terms of plot, pacing and so on.

3. Take a couple of days to recuperate and think about how to address the major issues.

4. Start editing, using the list as a reference. Each time a plot hole is fixed, I cross it off the list and feel really smug.

5. When that's done, I send it off to a beta.

6. Beta comes back with notes. Secretly hate beta because beta wants me to do a shitton of work.

7. Accept that beta is right and stop needling voodoo doll with beta's hair. Start editing.

8. When edits are done, send to another beta.

9. Rinse and repeat four more times. Obviously it's best to first send the MS to the beta who is great at spotting plot holes, reserving the last couple of drafts for the beta who is great at being analz about grammar.

10. Write query and begin the process of having the query be ripped to shreds in QLH.

11. Aaaand done! Query agents and roll around in bog again.

Drachen Jager said:

IMO line edits are crap. .

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Kinda depends who's doing them, doesn't it?

Fizgig said:

So, I've finally finished a complete draft of a novel (yay!)

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Two useful resources:

Holly Lisle's 'one-pass revision process' at hollylisle.com

Browne and King, 'Self Editing for Fiction Writers'.

Fizgig said:

So, I've finally finished a complete draft of a novel (yay!) but now I realize that writing a book is exactly like having a baby. Being pregnant was hard, and I focused intently on the actual birth. It was only after labor and delivery, as I held my little creature, that I realized I'd focused on the wrong thing. Yeah, giving birth was hard, but I should have been paying attention to what came next.

Which is all a long way of saying that I'm now staring at my first draft. I'm working on fixing a major plot hole (which I think/hope I've figured out) but what the hell else do I need to do? I know it needs a line by line edit, but I also want to do larger continuity, flow, etc revision but have no real idea where to begin.

I've found a few older posts about this topic, but thought I'd ask what you all do during the revision stages? I would love to hear broad steps and details of your process if you're willing to share.

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As others have said, let it sit for awhile. The longer the better, because that will help you see it objectively.

Then read it, start to finish. Don't change anything, but take notes about things you think you might want to change.

Fix big things first: plot, character, story. Look for scenes that need cutting, or at least shortening. Fill holes. Put it away again for a couple weeks, at least.

Read it again. Fix what you missed before. Once you're satisfied with how the story flows and resolves, you can start editing the prose.

Here are a few suggestions for that:

Edit for wordiness. Wordiness can manifest in different ways--using more words than are necessary to say something; including too many descriptive details, or irrelevant details; bogging the pace down with stage business, body language, and meaningless choreography.

Edit for clarity. Make sure the right words are used in the right place. Make sure that what you think you've written is what you've actually written. Replace vague, muddy wording with crisp, clear wording.

Edit for prose enhancement. Choose active verbs and vivid nouns. Make sure adjectives and adverbs strenghthen sentences rather than weigh them down. Every now and then use a startling word. Make sure metaphors and similes are exactly right and don't call attention to themselves in a negative way.

Edit for flow. Nothing makes for a better reading experience than good flow. This means that every word, sentence, and paragaph flows naturally, one leading to the next logically and smoothly. There are no bumps, no gaps, no abrupt transitions. And this applies not only to the prose itself, but the flow of emotion and tension in a scene.

Edit for pacing. When things are happening quickly, don't clog up the works with lots of beats between dialogue, or stage business, or internals. When you need pauses, whether to increase tension, to highlight something, or to focus on a moment, that's when you can carefully insert beats, etc., to slow the pace.

Edit for grammar and spelling. Self-explanatory.

mccardey said:

1. This is just me, but I'd say work really, really hard at not thinking of your book as a baby. That sort of thing just doesn't help. It's a book. You're going to try to sell it. You'll lop things off it if agents want you to, add other bits, change it around here and there, and then send it out to strangers to see what they think. You wouldn't do that to a baby, would you? If they like it, and if you're lucky, they'll stick it up on a bookshelf or up on the web where perfectly random strangers can see it, handle it, examine it buy it or reject it without a qualm. Also, they'll critique it. You wouldn't want your baby critiqued by strangers. (Reminds me that when my firstborn was about a week old a little old lady stopped me in the street and said "Oh you've had the baby! May I look?" and spent a good minute ogling in silence, withdrew her head from the pram and delivered the immortal line "What a lovely pram. Is it new?" But I digress)

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Completely, totally agree!

I can't be emphatic enough here. Your manuscript is NOT a baby. Your baby is perfect, because (s)he is your baby. Your manuscript is not perfect.

Congratulations on finishing that first draft. Editing is different for everyone to some degree or other, depending on your writing style.

I do agree with the other posters, take some time away from it. Read a few books for pleasure.

Then go back and read it start to finish. Keep a pen and notebook near you to note scenes you want to take a closer look at, mistakes you want to fix, ideas for fleshing out/paring down etc.Feel great because hey, you wrote a book! Then begin edits. Personally, I print it out for the first pass of edits. There's something about holding it in my hands that has things jump out at me that I miss on screen--but that may be because I'm from an earlier generation.

Some fantastic advice here. I'm tempted to say "agree, agree, agree" and walk on.

But there are a couple of other thoughts which may or may not help. They are poor sprats compared with the killer whales in the rest of the thread, but I'll throw them in anyway.

As I see it, the problem is twofold.

First, very few of us can write perfect copy first time round. We may think that we can, we may fantasise that one day we will be able to, but the harsh reality for just about everyone is that the first draft will need some work. Maybe a lot of work, and that's because of the second problem...

It is hard to disconnect from the job of being a writer to the job of being a reader. When we write, we are transmitting ideas from our heads to the printed word. In many cases, the ideas in our heads are richer and more complete than the words we type out. We rely on the reader to fill in the gaps with their imagination to recreate the scene that we have in mind. But it is hard being a reader and a writer at the same time.

That means that we can get word-blind. We can see the image that we hoped to put down onto the page and not the actual words that we have written. All the techniques from the other posters will help with this. Here are my two little extras:

1. Over time you should notice that you keep on making the same mistakes. You might be an over-writer who crams too much detail in (in which case you need to learn to prune). You might be an underwriter who leaves out vital information (such as how your characters are feeling). You might spell a particular word wrong (I always stumble over 'necessary'). You might over-use a particular phrase. Your female characters might be two dimensional. The list is endless.

As you go through the editing process for more than one book (and preferably with more than one beta) you will start to spot these little issues. You might even be able to deal with some of them in subsequent first drafts. The more we know ourselves, the better the final product will be.

The second point is something that I have developed recently. In the days of typewriters and paper, the only realistic way to edit a book was line by line and usually from page one through to "and they lived happily ever after."

Word processors give us the opportunity to read our books out of sequence. We can hop from section to section, word search for a particular phrase.

For instance, in my current WIP I have a couple of minor characters with small walk-on parts. My wife reading the third or fourth draft said that the accent for one of these guys wanders around a fair bit. At times it seems Glaswegian, then comedy LOTR dwarf, then ... you get the picture.

So I did a control F in the whole manuscript and looked at that character's contribution in one sitting. That's not something that you can do if you start at the beginning of the book and work through to the end. And my wife was 100% right. The accent did meander because I had written different sections at different times. I found that editing it in one go helped to make it more consistent.

I am not saying that this kind of editing can replace a line by line edit. But it can help to supplement it, particularly if it helps you to zero in on a generic problem in your writing style (such as my character's chameleon accent!)

dangerousbill said:

Two useful resources:

Holly Lisle's 'one-pass revision process' at hollylisle.com

Browne and King, 'Self Editing for Fiction Writers'.

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Seconding these recs! I'm going through Holly Lisle's one-pass revision just now and it's really good. (Though I never stick to the timescales, heh.)

There's also a cheaper version, the 7-day crash revision, if your budget is tight but the full one-pass course is a worthwhile investment.

A silly little thing to add, but it does help: I've found that making lists of problems and crossing off addressed ones produces a messy piece of paper with crossed out items masking the few remaining not-crossed items. Index cards are the answer.

TellMeAStory said:

A silly little thing to add, but it does help: I've found that making lists of problems and crossing off addressed ones produces a messy piece of paper with crossed out items masking the few remaining not-crossed items. Index cards are the answer.

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Lists are great. Lists of items to look for (I try to inspect each adverb and adjective to see if there is a stronger verb or better noun or if it's unnecessary), lists of crutch words (always, apparently, and so are three of mine), lists of words I commonly misspell that have homonyms, keeping me from seeing the fact that they are misspelled. A new one from my last MS, searching for characters whose names are also words other than proper nouns to make sure you always capitalized. Never name your MC "Nick."

I'm another list-er - I actually make the lists while I'm writing, of things I'll only really be able to look at on a rewrite (check if a certain scene comes out the way I want it to, stuff like that), or will take too much time away from writing to implement immediately.
I make the list digitally, so it's less a matter of crossing out all the things and more just backspacing. Much less messy

The hardest thing for me to learn was that betas finding mistakes is not a mark of shame worthy of ostracising yourself from society. It always feels to me like I've failed as an author if they spot anything, especially on a characters/plot level! But I know I need to learn to get over myself, and that I'm essentially sending out an unfinished product, and they'd be pretty useless betas if they didn't pick up anything.

Apart from that? The process is write a thing, write another thing. Come back to the first thing, read through the list I made.
Tackle one list item at a time.
When that's done, run another eye over it (and try not to do it half-heartedly; I tend to get a very misleading swell of self-importance at this stage).
Give it to betas. Work on something else, either writing or editing.
Get feedback. Maybe cry just a little bit. You can't prove that I ate all that chocolate. I'll own up to all the cups of tea, though.

Then make another list. From here, it's quite rinse-and-repeat.

Oh, and try not to get distracted by the new shiny plot.
Also try not to give up on the book in a fit of petulant pique. Although if I do, don't delete anything in case I get over myself later.

Little Anonymous Me said:

1. Open file. Cry.
2. Ignore file for 3 months.
3. Open file. Cry.
4. Email copy to beta.
5. Apologize to beta for writing drivel.
6. Compare notes with beta on what needs to be fixed. Cry.
7. Fix things and email to beta again.
8. Compare notes again.
9. Fix more things until novel has become a blur of festering word-abuse and highlighting an error takes an entire page down with it.
10. Shove it in a drawer and start something new.
11. Open file. Realize you've gotten almost everything and now it's down to the nitty-gritty.
12. Cry tears of relief when it actually becomes difficult to find the mistakes.

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Yeah, this has totally been my process. Except I'm not really a crier. But sometimes I want to. Badly. And the 3 months from step 2 is more like 2 years, but hey, who's counting?

Currently on step 7 (making edits, have not emailed again to beta yet).

MookyMcD said:

My advice (summarized)

1) Let it fester in a drawer (or on your hard-drive) until after Christmas.
2) Read it through, beginning to end, making all the notes you want but not editing. Focus on story and plot, not writing "complement" where it should have been "compliment."
3) Fix the story and plot problems
4) Go through and do your first "edit," cutting unnecessary adverbs, changing "complement," cleaning up icky passives, etc.
5) Get it to some betas to see what they think of the story
6) Make the changes that you think are necessary based on beta feedback
7) Hopefully have a critique partner who can line edit the crap out of it for you.
8) Make all your CP's changes.
9) Print it off in a different font or put on an e-reader or read it in some other format than you've been looking at it in for what seems like forever.
10) Make the changes you see are necessary based on that.

If everything went reasonably well, you then have a MS. If you are like me after your first novel, the next step is: Sit down and stare at a blank word document and start a completely different book. If you do better than I did, you're ready to query it.

The part that sucks the most (Or: getting from first draft to something that isn't a steaming pile of shit)

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This is so true and funny!

Here's my steps:
1. Write book
2. revise a little bit, but not much at all
3. Look at it! Get overwhelmed....
4. Look at it again, Get overwhelmed.... Maybe some crying
5. Some minor changes.
6. Send to editor...

Right now, I'm trying to shove in all of the Chekhov's guns and characters from a new Act III into Acts I and II. It's like trying to stick a new layer in the middle of an onion.

I never let my finishes WIP sit. I'm not sure what that accomplishes. Are you trying to forget what you wrote so you can look at it afresh? I have ADHD. By the time I type "the end" I've forgotten everything already. So as soon as I finish, I run the spellcheck, then print the entire thing out and read it through once.

I'm just reading for flow and continuity. I'm a bare writer so I'll make notes on what needs to be fleshed out. If I need foreshadowing. If I need to add scenes because some scene transition didn't make sense.

Then I take my printed copy with notes, open the file, and make those changes.

After that, I have a list of words I happen to use too much, like but and that, so I search for those and rewrite those sentences.

One more read through and then I send it off to an agent (after I've written a query letter and summary).

mccardey said:

1. This is just me, but I'd say work really, really hard at not thinking of your book as a baby. That sort of thing just doesn't help. It's a book. You're going to try to sell it. You'll lop things off it if agents want you to, add other bits, change it around here and there, and then send it out to strangers to see what they think. You wouldn't do that to a baby, would you?

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<eyes baby, lops off surplus fingers and toes, trims points off ears, docks horns and tail>

Now if I can just do something about the fangs...