The #1 Mistake Writers Make in Revision (and how you can avoid it…)
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As an editor, writer, and high school English teacher, I’ve met writers at every stage of the writing journey—from multi-published award-winning authors to teenagers who would rather scrub a toilet than put their thoughts down on paper for someone else to read. In that time, I’ve seen writers do great things, but I’ve also seen them make mistakes.
This blog post is about the biggest mistake that I’ve seen writers make. A mistake that derails progress, stymies creativity, and keeps writers from achieving great things with their novels.
What is it?
Skipping revision.
Gasp! How could they?
If you’re scratching your head, wondering how someone could miss such a basic step in the writing process, hear me out. It’s actually pretty easy to do if you don’t actually know what it means to revise.
Plenty of authors who make this mistake think they are revising. They polish their prose. They doctor their dialogue. They correct every comma. But they never actually revise their work.
The Difference Between Revising and Editing
This mistake comes from a fundamental misunderstanding of the difference between revising and editing. You’d be forgiven for thinking they’re the same thing. After all, most people (even editors) use these terms interchangeably.
The problem starts in schools. If your English classes were anything like mine, the writing process probably looked something like this:
Paper is assigned
You write the paper
You check the paper for typos because you don’t want points deducted
You turn in the paper
Paper is graded and returned
You never look at the paper (or your teacher’s comments) ever again
For my first few years as an English teacher, I taught students that same process. I didn’t know any better. Then, I started writing fiction outside of school. I learned the methods that professional writers use and realized the way I was teaching my students to write had absolutely nothing to do with the way actual professional writers approach their work.
That realization transformed the way I teach writing. No more one-and-done assignments. No timed, in-class essays. No more relying on spellcheck alone to determine if a paper was ready to turn in. Is it a lot of work? Of course. Is it worth it? Hell yeah!
Too many people are still operating under the assumption that revision is just the process of checking for technical errors in their work when, in reality, revision is so, so much more than that.
A novel is infinitely more complex than the standard 5-paragraph essay you wrote in high school. You can’t expect your first draft to hold together structurally. For your characters to leap off the page like living beings on your first attempt or for your world to come alive with absolute clarity when you’re still building the novel as you generate your first draft.
If you jump straight to line edits and grammar checks after writing your first draft, you could end up with a bunch of pretty sentences that don’t add up to a cohesive story. Even if you get feedback on those story level issues, it might be difficult to let go of paragraphs that have already been polished (especially if you’ve already hired someone to do that work—please, please, please do not hire any kind of editor before revising your own work!)
So, how can you avoid this mistake and ensure that you cover every step of the writing process?
View Revising and Editing as Two Separate Stages
The first step is to create a clear mental distinction between the work that you do in revision and the work that you’ll do while editing. Here are my simple definitions of each phase:
Revision is the process of re-envisioning (see what I did there) your entire story. At this stage, you evaluate elements like characterization, plot, story structure, conflict, and worldbuilding—basically, any element of your story that spans the entire book. Revision is the time when you add scenes, move scenes around, and delete scenes altogether. It’s a chance to make sure that your character arc is coherent and that every cast member is serving a purpose in your book.
Editing is the process of perfecting your prose at the line level, addressing any stylistic or technical issues. This is your chance to hone your voice, make sure your images are crisp and evocative, shore up vague descriptions, eradicate overused words, check that your prose is readable and root out all those pesky typos that slipped in along the way.
There will be overlap between the two stages. Clear characterization requires clear character descriptions (as does coherent worldbuilding). As you rewrite specific scenes, you will automatically make changes that improve the quality of your prose, but that shouldn’t be your focus. Once your story is clear and coherent, you can polish to your heart’s content, confident that every scene you’re polishing belongs in your story.
Get the Right Help at the Right Time
If you’re planning to work with a developmental editor, I recommend completing at least one round of revisions on your own, but don’t worry about polishing your prose before the dev edit. Developmental editors are trained to ignore line editing or grammar issues when we read someone else’s work. Our focus is on the high level elements of your story.
If sending someone an unpolished draft makes your skin crawl, it’s okay, you’re not alone. But know that a good developmental editor will be unafraid to suggest big changes. They might recommend that you remove or add entire chapters, plotlines, or characters. After the developmental edit, you may find yourself rewriting significant chunks of your book. The more time you spend polishing your work before bringing a developmental editor on board, the more time you’ve potentially wasted and the harder it will be to let go of the parts that aren’t serving your story.
Again, that doesn’t mean you can’t tune up your sentences at all—a clear, readable draft is much easier to give feedback on—it just means you don’t need to get to final draft status before you start soliciting feedback.
When you reach the editing stage, it’s time to hire a line editor and/or copyeditor (if you’re self-publishing). Proofreading should wait until your book is already formatted and nearly ready for publication.
Build Your Revision Toolkit
For many writers, editing is easier than revision. At least, it feels easier. Editing is simple—find mistakes, fix mistakes—even if executing that task is tricky. There are rules to follow and lots of technological tools that can simplify the process even further.
Revision is a little stickier. It takes more brain power. It can require us to rewrite. To rethink. To let go of scenes or chapters or even characters that we created and hold dear. You have to take all the complexities and nuances of your novel and figure out what is and isn’t working on a grand scale.
It’s not easy, especially if you’re new to creative writing and don’t have much experience restructuring your work. Thankfully, there are great writing teachers out there paving the way. Here are a couple of resources that can help you get started with strategies and techniques that you can apply at the revision stage:
Intuitive Editing: A Creative & Practical Guide to Revising Your Writing by Tiffany Yates Martin—an invaluable book with techniques you can use throughout the revision & editing process (she uses slightly different terminology than I do but does suggest a multi-stage revision process similar to what I’ve discussed here).
Refuse to Be Done: How to Write and Rewrite Your Novel in Three Drafts by Matt Bell—a collection of excellent strategies for different parts of the writing process (what he calls drafts are essentially three stages of the writing process).
The Seven Day Revision Kickstart—my free mini course for writers! In this email course, I’ll walk you through the process of setting a vision for your novel, analyzing the structure of your first draft, and setting specific goals for the revision process in just one week!
FYI: This post contains affiliate links. If you use these links to buy something, we may earn a commission. For more information, click here and thanks, as always, for your support!
