The First Step of Revision Isn’t Changing the Words
Asking the right questions can accelerate your editing process
Authors may tell you there’s no more daunting part of the process than staring down a blank page. That the hardest part is getting started, or reaching the finish line of that first draft. Maybe, maybe it’s true for them. But in my experience, both as an author and as a writing coach? To borrow from Holes[1], the first hole is the hardest. The second hole is also the hardest.
Some people can write first drafts in something like a fugue state. Others (like myself) trudge through the work, holding their breath until drafting is over and revision can finally start. No matter your feelings about the process, though, eventually you reach ‘the end’ for the first time and you come up for air.
You set it aside for weeks or months so you can get a fresh perspective on what you’ve written (you do, right? You should). Then you are ready to step back and see what’s actually on the page. This part of revision is humbling, but it can also be full of hope.
First, get the whole picture
The best bet, once you reach the end of those weeks without working on your project, is to read it. Just read it. Put it on an e-reader where you can’t make edits; grab paper and pencil, a notes app, or your laptop; and get ready to take notes. At this point, we don’t want to change the text. If you’re thinking about whether you should use ‘looked’ or ‘watched’ on page three, or if that comma is necessary, you won’t be able to see the story for what it is.
Instead, read it as fast as you possibly can. And I don’t mean fly through the pages and read with poor comprehension. I mean, set aside as big a chunk of time as you can manage and marathon-read your book, trying to get from start to finish with as little down time as possible.
See, writers don’t have the option of walking away and viewing their mural from across the street. We can’t get up in an airplane to look down with a 30,000-foot view at our city plan. It’s impossible to consume the whole thing at once, but we need to get as close to that illusion as possible.
This is my first step with every developmental edit I complete for a client, and it’s my first step whenever I finish a draft for myself, too.
Think like an evaluator
My friends tease me that I’m so organized that even my spreadsheets have spreadsheets, but honestly, even organization is iterative for me. And when I’m doing an evaluation? I make an absolute mess first. You should too. Brain dumping has proven to be an effective way of initiating the decision process. The adage ‘you can’t edit a blank page’ applies when deciding how to edit, too.
While I’m reading — as quickly as possible — I keep a notebook and a pen nearby so I can scribble down anything I think. I note whenever a new chapter starts, but otherwise my thoughts are completely disorganized. I write just enough information that Future Me won’t read the note and turn into a confused emoji, but nothing else. ‘Does this go anywhere?’ ‘In the fight with Adrian, I don’t believe Sara’s motivations and what she’s saying.’ ‘The logic doesn’t track.’ ‘Wait wasn’t it winter in the last chapter?’ That sort of thing. I don’t even go back to check if it was actually winter in the last chapter or if I misremembered.
I also write down what I like. What wows me, and what I’m excited about or surprised by. ‘WAIT WHAT ADRIAN IS THE KILLER?’ ‘The rom-com vibes I’m getting from this banter are *swoon*’ For myself, I might include something like, ‘Wait, who wrote that sentence?? It’s actually good???’
Whether I’m editing for myself or others, though, it’s helpful to know what got a visceral reaction from me on this first read.
When I get to the end, I have pages upon pages of notes of my first reactions to things. They’re not solutions — they might not even be problems. All I know is what’s there, what I liked, and what I’m dissatisfied with.
This step is essential, but going straight from this read-through to trying to edit is like deciding you’re ready to leave for a road trip because you have Google Maps open. Have you packed? Do you know where you’re going? Where you might want to stop along the way? How long you’ll be gone? The same sorts of decisions need to be made as you prepare a revision map, whether you do it intentionally or not. I highly recommend intentionality.
Asking the right questions
Most likely, what you’ve completed at this point is both more and less than you thought it was. You can see potential from farther away that surprises you after working word by word for a whole draft. But with distance comes problems, too. Probably a lot of them. And the biggest problem of all is often not knowing what to do with all these problems.
Therefore, the next goal of revision is not to fix things. In fact, you can’t fix things yet. If your notes are anything like mine, they aren’t enough to go off of to revise.
Instead, it’s helpful to break up your notes into something more organized, and more comprehensive too. When making this list, though (and, honestly, in life, too, but that’s tangential), it matters how you frame things. Making a list of problems isn’t going to motivate you to fix them. Instead, word them not as problems, but as questions.
Not ‘This scene is boring,’ but ‘How can I up the stakes and tension in this scene?’
Not ‘The dialogue is unrealistic’ but ‘Is this how Jane would speak? What sort of metaphors would she use? How can she avoid saying exactly what she means here?’
Not ‘I can’t picture this’ but ‘They’re at a monastery, right? What does it look like? Can you describe the scenery? How would Jane describe the view from the biased place she’s in right now? What would she focus on?’
You get the idea. In asking questions instead of listing problems, you’re playing a psychological trick on Future You, who will read the question and start brainstorming answers — whether you intended to or not.
You don’t know what you don’t know
The hardest part of this revision trick is that you need to be asking the right questions to make your mind think in directions that will solve your problems well. There are some composition issues that can’t be solved until you know how to look for them, and learning to ask the right questions can take years.
Maybe you noticed that in the examples I gave above. When I was new to writing fiction, I wouldn’t have thought to ask, ‘How can Jane avoid saying exactly what she means here?’ if the dialogue sounded stilted. I would have only asked, ‘Does this sound natural? Maybe I need more ums.’ Likewise, it’s only in the past few years I’ve thought to ask, ‘How do my character’s biases and current emotional state affect the way they explain the scenery?’ when it felt a bit like talking heads.
But these questions are teachable and, as a bonus, you don’t have to be the one to ask them. Critique partners, betas, and paid editors are all resources that can guide you when you’re starting out. So can the buckets and buckets of books and online resources about self-editing already out there.
What you want at the end of this process is a list of questions. It can be organized in myriad ways, and how I organize it often depends on where I’m at in my total revision. My first read will often result in a page (or several pages) full of plot questions I need to answer before I do anything else, and the next several pages of my journal I’ll devote to brainstorming them. In the book I’m currently revising, I am done with major plot work, and working on the flow of scenes. For this draft, I’ll read each scene and write a list of questions to keep in mind while I revise it.
How can your revision process be improved by introducing questions?
[1] An absolute masterpiece of a book that Louis Sachar recounts completely rewriting no less than five times.