Episode Twenty-Nine: 8 Lessons I’ve Learned Since Becoming an Editor & Book Coach
You’re writing a book and you want readers to love it. But are you using tropes and worldbuilding elements that could harm your future readers? Whether consciously or unconsciously, you may be including harmful stereotypes or tropes in your stories.
In this episode of the Better Writer Podcast, I’m sharing four mindsets that can help you worldbuild & write with sensitivity so you can avoid limiting your audience prematurely or accidentally falling into your own misrepresentation trap.
Let’s dive in!
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Thanks for listening, keep writing, and keep getting better one word at a time!
Transcript
Olivia (00:00)
Welcome to episode 29 of the Better Writer Podcast. Today I'm going to be sharing eight lessons that I have learned since I started this business as an editor and book coach. And the reason I wanted to take some time and do this this month in particular is because June is full of milestones for me. My birthday is in June, I just turned 31. And June is also the month when I started this business.
I officially went live with my website on June 27th, four years ago, and in June 2024, I officially went full time as an editor when I quit teaching. And now I just want to take a moment and look back and reflect and share the biggest things that I have learned that I think are helpful for writers to know. If you're listening to this and we have not met yet, my name is Olivia.
I'm a developmental editor and certified fiction book coach, and my entire mission in life for the last four years has been to help genre fiction writers create the best books possible. I do that with my editing services, I do that through my course Reader, Ready, Revisions, and I do it through this podcast and through everything that I try to put out into the world. It's all dedicated to helping you create better books.
So this list of eight takeaways was actually something that I originally shared with my newsletter right after my birthday. So if you want these insights shared in your inbox every Tuesday, make sure you subscribe to my newsletter. You will find the link wherever you are listening to or watching this show. Alright, let's dive in with the eight takeaways from four years of being an editor and book coach and helping writers just like you.
Alright, number one. Every writer, almost without fail, needs to turn up the dial on their conflict by at least 10%. You need to make the conflict in your book at least 10% more intense. For many people listening to the show, you actually need to go above 10% and you need to ration it out by 50% or 100%.
It will vary. But I have identified issues with conflict development in almost every single manuscript that I've edited over the last four years. I've worked with about 50 writers. Almost every single one has issues with conflict. They show up in different ways, but I have almost never told someone that they had too much conflict.
Almost universally, writers are holding back or they are not taking things far enough or they are not making their conflict intense enough or meaningful enough. So we just need to take that dial, turn it up. If you think you have enough conflict and it is your first draft, you probably need more, ⁓ unless you are like that very rare one percent of people who went too far already. ⁓ but almost universally.
You need more conflict because conflict is what hooks readers, conflict is what makes readers want to read your book, and conflict is most often what is missing from the manuscripts that I edit.
All right, takeaway number two. Note that I specifically said turn up the intensity of your conflict. I didn't just say add more. I didn't just say add different conflict. Make it more intense. Take whatever it is that you have already put in your manuscript and then just make that stronger. Because most people have conflicts on the page. They have started to create conflict, but then right at the moment when things should go horribly wrong for your character, you pull back. You bring in a mentor who saves them. You have a coincidence that just kind of magically makes that conflict go away or your character experiences 50% of the possible consequences or the possible ways that things could go wrong for them when you could have just gone a little bit further and made things a little bit worse for them. So I am not sitting here telling you to have a bunch of bombs go off in the background of your story or to, you know, just start killing characters randomly. Those things could potentially make your conflict more intense, depending on your genre. But really what I want to ask you to do is go further.
Go further down the road that you have already started traveling on. So if your main character has a social conflict, let's say they are a teenager and they have insulted their best friend, they've caused this huge rift. Do not have that best friend come in and forgive them the next day. Have that best friend make a viral video shaming them. Have it go as badly as it possibly could and then make your character work to fix things from there. Do not hold back. Do not soften the blow.
Make whatever it is that you've already done more intense. All right? That is my my best advice to you. As an editor, it is something I see over and over and over again. Just make your conflict a little bit more intense, make things a little bit worse for your characters, make them suffer a few more consequences before you let them save the day.
And I know we love our characters. We don't want them to suffer, but it's your job as an author and you can still give them their happy ending. Just make sure that they have really truly earned it.
All right, takeaway number three. Your first draft is likely going to have many good ideas, and it will likely have a few great ideas. But those ideas are rarely going to be in their best form. They are rarely going to come to you in a form that is ready for someone else to read and enjoy. And I think that there are two groups of writers who struggle with this the most.
On one side, we have the writers who want their first draft to be perfect. And they are putting so much pressure on themselves to write the perfect first draft that they never move forward. They might get a chapter in or two chapters in or even three. And then they realize that the vision in their head is not what's coming across on the page. And instead of pushing forward just to get the draft done so they have something to work with, they stop, they freeze and they believe that they are failing.
For those people, if you are one of those writers, your first draft does not need to be perfect. It is not the be all, end all It is not the thing we were going to share with readers. You have this whole other step in the process where you get to revise and refine and make those ideas work, even if they don't come onto the page the way that you want them to. And you will learn so much more by just finishing the draft than if you keep trying to perfect the first chapter or your first draft. If you just keep moving on to a new project in hopes that this will be the time that you create a perfect first draft. That day will never come. No first draft will be perfect. There might be one writer in a billion who you know that is possible. And I think even that person is likely going to need to revise in some fashion.
So do not put pressure on your first draft to be perfect. It's not going to happen. Then for that second group of writers, where you are the person who just things feel like they have flowed, you're in the zone as you write. And then you come back to your draft and somehow, what you thought was happening as you drafted, all this perfection is nowhere to be seen. And I think for those people, what's often happening is that you are writing with a certain set of assumptions in mind. And you think that you have perfectly captured your vision on the page because it was so clear as you were writing it that you didn't realize that you actually didn't describe things, you didn't narrate things.
Your dialogue is not even formatted properly because you weren't paying attention to that because the ideas were just flowing. And I don't want you to think that that flow is a bad thing, but you need to realize that that is not the end of the process. That no matter how good drafting felt, and sometimes it is a like kind of an inverse relationship that the better drafting feels, the worse the actual draft is. And you know, I often see that those writers who are like the draft just came to me have a draft that is missing some fundamental pieces because you were just focused on the ideas, your vision, you were not thinking as much about the craft, and that is totally fine. I love working with pantsers, and that is the group that most often has that experience.
But if you are a pantser, I've said this before, I will say it again: you cannot revise like a plotter. If you are a pantser, you need to be prepared to rewrite every single word in your manuscript, probably multiple times because all of those things that you were not thinking about as the story flowed into your head and onto the page, those things still matter, and those things matter when it is time to share your work with readers. So again, hear me loud and clear. It is not a bad thing to have a first draft that is a total incomprehensible mess. I have been there. That is just a step in your process, but then you need to make sure that you are ready to revise on the back end because just because it felt magical as you were writing it does not mean it was going to feel that way for readers, unless you do the work to bring in all of those technical aspects that may not have been part of your first draft process.
And there are likely writers who are somewhere else on the spectrum in between those two extremes that I just described. And again, no matter who you are, your first draft does not need to be perfect. It does not even need to be good. It just needs to exist so that you have the raw materials to work with as you go on to the next steps in the process, actually getting that book ready for your readers.
And that brings me to takeaway number four, which is that most beginning writers are severely underestimating the work that it takes to take a book from first draft to final product. There is so much that happens to get a book to a professional publishable level. Multiple rounds of revision, multiple rounds of feedback, sometimes from multiple different people.
If we are talking about a traditionally published book, that writer probably has critique partners or beta readers. If they have a literary agent who is giving them feedback, then the editor of their publishing house gives them feedback. There are multiple people involved at multiple steps in the process. So if you are a first-time writer and you're thinking one round of revision should do it, think again. You are probably going to need to go through a couple rounds of revision at least to get your book to the level that is ready for readers. And then it's time to actually edit it. Line editing, copy editing, etc. Yes, revision and editing are separate parts of the process.
And again, I'm talking solely about multiple rounds of revision. That doesn't mean you failed. It's just the nature of this work, especially if you're a beginner and you don't even know what you don't know right now. Your first book is going to be such a learning process. And maybe you have to go through eight rounds of revision with book one. But maybe book two will only need four or five or six. It doesn't matter. Maybe you will always be a person who goes through multiple rounds of revision with your books, that's okay, but do not underestimate the work that it takes to take a first draft and get it ready for readers. And don't think that you are the only one revising multiple times. You're not. I can guarantee it.
Writers who want to be successful revise multiple times. They revise as many times as it takes to get that story ready for readers, even to the extent that I think Patrick Rothfuss says that he went through two hundred rounds of Revision with the Name of the Wind. ⁓ which I think is a little bit excessive, but that is the one that I always come back to when I'm trying to help writers feel better about how long it was taking them. If you are under two hundred drafts, you're good. You are solid. You are doing the work and you are doing it more efficiently than at least one person. So I am not trying to advocate for hundreds of drafts, but do know that it is probably going to take you more than one. And if it does, you've not done anything wrong. In fact, you're doing something right. You are committing. You are investing time and effort in your story. And what more can we ask of you?
Alright, takeaway number five is that debut authors can get book deals in the traditional market. If that is what you are going for, do not self-reject, because it is possible. I have watched my clients get literary agents and get book deals. It is one hundred percent possible, even if you were not born in a quote-unquote literary family, or if you have no ties to the publishing world. Obviously you are going to want to start networking. You're going to want to start building connections, but you can absolutely get an agent and a publishing deal from a cold query. It is still possible, even in today's market. You just need to be savvy. You need to be strategic, and you need to be committed to getting your book ready for that step.
And that means a lot of work, a lot of revision, making sure it is polished, and still accepting that there just might not be a fit between your book and the market right now. So there are factors outside of your control, but again, it is possible. I've seen it happen with my editing clients, and it is possible for you too. ⁓ I will say there are some things that are harder or easier sells right now, so it does really depend on your genre, whether you're trying to write a series or if your book can stand alone. so I'm not going to promise that every single writer can get a trad deal for every single book. That would be a lie. Anyone who is promising you that you will be an overnight best seller, literary success, get a deal, you know, they are lying to you. ⁓ it definitely there are things that are going to be a harder sell. You are going to need to get your writing to a certain level first, but it is possible.
And if that is what you want, do not self-reject. Do not tell yourself that it's impossible without even trying. Because then you are guaranteed to fail. And that is what I really want you to hear with this takeaway. ⁓ is not that you have to go after a book deal or that it's guaranteed, but if you want it, if you are willing to put in the work and maybe make some of the sacrifices to your vision, etc., to make it more marketable.
You can absolutely do it. It is not impossible. And I don't want you to kick yourself out of the club before you've even asked to be invited.
All right, and that brings me to takeaway number six, which is if you're not interested in traditional publishing, then don't worry about it. Indie publishing is the first choice for so many authors right now. And I think there are so many benefits that people are finding in indie publishing that you don't have to worry about gatekeepers. You don't have to worry about fitting into the box of what people
Are predicting is going to sell because that's what traditional publishers are really doing. They're making predictions about what they think will sell, and they don't always get it right. And I think with indie publishing, you get so much more control, so much more freedom. And the stigma is really going away. I think there are so many indie authors out there totally killing the game that the people who still stigmatize self-published authors, the people who still look down on them, I think they are kind of going extinct at this point and maybe I'm wrong, maybe I'm just on the wrong corner of the internet and I'm not seeing that anti-self publish ⁓ you know, conversation. But I genuinely believe that there are so many people out there who are doing amazing things as indie publishers. They are really embracing the publisher identity and they are forming great businesses that are successful and they're doing a lot of really exciting things. So if you are someone who thinks that you are only going to be a quote unquote real author.
If you get a traditional publishing deal, that's just not true anymore. And don't, you know, you don't have to wait for someone to say yes to you to get your book out into the world. Please be careful. That doesn't mean you rush to market with a book that is not ready. It just means that you don't have to get someone else's validation before deciding that your book is ready for readers, especially if you're writing something that isn't seen as viable right now. I think I hear that a lot with, you know, for example, sapphic romance. People are saying it doesn't sell, but then there are amazing indie authors like Sacha Black, who writes under the pen name Ruby Roe, who are obviously proving that there is a market for sapphic romance if people want it, even if the traditional publishing market doesn't see that, which is just sad and it's their loss.
Alright, takeaway number seven is taking us back to the craft. And that is that characterization is not about physical attributes. I think this is one of the biggest mistakes that I see beginning writers make is we will get a character who's introduced just as a series of physical attributes. And that honestly, I mean, like obviously your character needs to look like something.
But that has nothing to do with who they are as a person. It has nothing to do with their characterization. Characterization is not their occupation or their height or where they went to high school. It is none of those things. Characterization is about personality, it is about values, it is about beliefs, it is about who they are at their core. So until you start asking those kinds of questions about your characters, you will not know them and you will not be able to effectively write them.
So if you are someone who starts off with those little character bios and says, like, this person is 20 years old, they work at Macy's whatever, we don't that doesn't matter. You can add that in later. You, I mean, sometimes the job will be important for story purposes, but those things are just the window dressing. They are not the substance of your character. So go deeper first. Figure out who is this person, what do they value, what do they love, what do they care about, what motivates them, what scares them, what is going to deeply, deeply affect them.
What are their childhood traumas, their triggers, the things that they wish they could forget, or the things that they want to remember forever? Those are the kinds of things that we want to know about our characters. We want to know them on a deep level. That is how you write emotionally impactful fiction, not by filling out a LinkedIn profile for your character. All right, and then finally, takeaway number eight, and I think this one is the most important. This is the one that gets me up in the morning and drives me to do what I do. And that is that every person.
Every writer, if you have been called to pick up a pen and write something from your own brain, not using AI and pretending to be an author, because I'm not even gonna go there today. But if you have been called to write something, it is because there is a story that only you can tell. It is going to come from who you are as a person, what you value, what you believe, and you need to write it.
And I know I talk a lot about putting readers first and you know doing everything you can to make sure that your story works for readers. And that is all true. I do think that if you want to publish, it really is important to make sure your books are as great as possible so that readers can enjoy them. But before we get to any of that, I want you to know that your story matters. Your voice, your spin, your unique take. It doesn't matter if you are writing a story with tropes that have been used a thousand times. There is a version of that story that.
Only you can create. And that is special. And that is why I love helping writers. This is why I do what I do every day. I see so many unique ideas come across my desk that really could only come from the hearts and minds of the authors that I work with. And I love seeing all those weird and wonderful ideas come to fruition. I love seeing you share them with readers. I love seeing the joy that comes from readers finding a book that.
Touches something in their soul. And I really think that no matter what happens with AI, with technology, with anything else, humans will always gravitate toward other humans. We will always want to connect with other humans. And you, as a human, as a writer, are special. And that makes your story special. And that is why it is such a delight to work in this industry because I get to work with people like you who are creative and intelligent and passionate. And that is what makes my life so much fun. It is what makes me want to do this work no matter what is happening in the world. And I am so grateful that I have been able to do this for four years. I'm so grateful that this has been my full time job for two years. I think my past teacher self would never have imagined that I would get to have so much fun ⁓ at work and that I would actually get to do it in my sweat pants, either so.
Thank you so, so much for listening to this episode. Thank you for being part of my world, my community. Even if we have never met, thank you for being a writer, for sharing your stories with the world. Even if you haven't published yet, you will get there someday, and it's going to be amazing. All right. Thank you so, so much for listening to another episode of the Better Writer Podcast. If this episode touched you in any way, please, please, please share it with a friend, post it on social media. It would mean the world to me. I'm trying to reach as many writers as I can with the show and anything you can do to help is appreciated. Alright, have a wonderful day. Keep writing. Keep getting better. One word at a time. See ya.
