I’ve always had great trouble with the editing / revising phase of writing. I know it’s the hardest part for most writers, especially improvisers like me, but over the years it’s been a real nightmare for me.
I’d write an entire book in 2 weeks … only to delay editing for months as I felt completely unable to even start doing it. I’d have a nice list of notes for the edit, and only implement half of the improvements because I just could not bring myself to do more. It’s probably the biggest obstacle in my current (writing) workflow.
Recently, I discovered a possible reason for this, which also reveals possible solutions.
The way in which my mind and writing style work actively makes the editing phase very hard. In other words, it is not very “editing friendly”.
What do you mean?
I have a hyperactive mind (and body). This means that it wants to connect everything with everything. It always wants to add more to a paragraph, a scene, a chapter, a story. When I write a scene, it tries to accomplish the maximum amount of things at the same time.
For example, I know many writers will develop chapters out of order. Maybe they already know what should happen in chapter 10, but they haven’t figured out the path leading there (chapters 6–9). So, they just write chapter 10 first and do the others later. They’ll jump around in their story, writing the chapter that is “most certain” at that time (or for which they have the most motivation).
This is impossible to me. I tried and I can’t.
Because everything that happens in chapter 10 is tightly connected to what happened in chapter 6–9. Lots of things mentioned in chapter 6 are important in chapter 7. Everything mentioned, small or large, throughout those chapters would lead to some important revelation in chapter 10.
Writing chapters out of order, or even “summarizing” them (and filling in details later), is completely impossible for me. And that’s because I want to connect everything and have each chapter fulfil as many roles as possible.
Partially, this is a general “mistake”. Unless I want my stories to only appeal to people with my exact brain, I have to tone it down. Simplify it, streamline it, have a focus. With each story, I’m learning how to balance my natural instincts and gained wisdom around storytelling for an audience.
But the biggest issue is that it is extremely unfriendly to revisions. You can imagine how difficult it is to edit a book, if a single paragraph in chapter 8 can be the lynchpin for stuff written in all chapters after it. How hard it is to know what to remove or keep when everything can be connected to everything, or not, or maybe sometimes, or whatever combination of that.
And that’s why editing still scares me, even after years of doing so. Because it’s not the same for me as it is for most. I don’t merely go through the story “fixing issues”, or strengthen what works and remove what didn’t, or tighten the prose. Sure, I do that, or at least I try.
But most of all, I am overwhelmed by trying to figure out if every single sentence can be removed or changed without screwing with the thousands of consequences from it that I wrote into later chapters. It’s just too hard, too overwhelming.
How do we solve it?
As stated, this is a property of my writing style. It’s not necessarily a 100% mistake, but it makes editing hard. So hard, in fact, that I would pick a “more revision friendly” writing style over basically anything else.
What does that mean?
- Chapters truly have a singular focus. (Which means that surely scenes, paragraphs, lines have a single obvious focus.)
- Yes, the events are obviously connected. But they’re connected in 1 or 2 clear ways, nothing more. Chapter 8 has some big event, it causes chapter 10, that’s it. No subtle ramifications or thoughts about it littered across chapters 9, 11, 13 and 15.
- Don’t try to put too much meaning into single sentences or paragraphs. Keep them more self-contained, more clear about the one thing they do.
I’m sure some people will read this and disagree. Good prose is all about the subtext, right? It’s all about several interpretations and possible meanings, reading between the lines, and being efficient by having scenes accomplish multiple things at the same time.
What I’ve come to realise, however, is that half the time my old writing did not actually do this right. I gave something multiple interpretations … by just telling the reader all of them. I had a scene accomplish 10 things … which was too many, so it actually didn’t accomplish any of them well enough.
So, specifically, I learned this approach.
- Don’t have all information in your story on roughly equal footing. Instead, make it a hierarchy.
- Have one clear main focus for each block of your story. It’s obvious, it’s clearly explained, it doesn’t deviate or try to connect with too many things.
- Sure, introduce other interpretations, double meanings, extra connections … but these are much lower on the hierarchy. They are more subtle. So subtle, in fact, that you can leave them out or be vague about them without ruining everything.
When revising the story, it is far easier to see if everything is still consistent if you only have to check your main focus or main story blocks. If chapter 8 only focuses on one event and mentions nothing else, you can almost treat it standalone. Edit it on its own, then check if its connections to the next chapters need changing at the end. This is far less overwhelming and less prone to mistakes.
Everything else you try to put into the story is so subtle that it “doesn’t matter” if you make a mistake there or never reference something again. It’s open for interpretation. It was clearly a minor detail or remark. If you forget to update it in the edit, or remove a paragraph that connected to another paragraph, it “doesn’t matter”.
This frees up headspace to focus on what does matter (the main story blocks) and makes editing much easier and less overwhelming.
Again, some might disagree and say any inconsistency or forgotten plot thread is bad. It is! But life isn’t perfect, no story is perfect, and this approach makes it far less noticeable and far less bad, while keeping the revising phase more doable.
A specific example
Let’s say I write a chapter that tries to fulfil 3 purposes. (This is not a real example, I make this up on the spot.)
- A battle between our protagonist and villain.
- Our protagonist declares their love for the assistant of the villain.
- We reveal the villain is the same person as some legendary wizard people thought had died.
My brain would love to weave these three ideas into one chapter. It constantly jumps around between the threads, progressing them all, until the three purposes are met. It puts them all on “equal footing”, giving each the same amount of time and depth.
This is just how my brain works and how I view stories, so I wouldn’t necessarily call that bad. I’ve written chapters like this many times, had others read them, and they liked them too and could follow along.
But having read the rest of this article, you probably see this and think it’s way too much and not focused enough. I’d agree.
This makes editing a nightmare. If we change anything in this chapter during editing, then we need to check for any consequences or mentions of these three different events in all subsequent chapters.
Instead, we have a choice.
- Either split these into separate chapters,
- Or pick one main focus, and make the others clearly less important details.
For the sake of this article, let’s say we pick the second option. The meat of this chapter is “fight between protagonist and villain, which they lose”.
Then that’s 95% of the chapter. You’re immersed in the fight, getting a detailed blow-by-blow, and there no intrusive thoughts or mentions or side-quests as you go. (Of course, it should stay interesting and the chapter should progress, but not by introducing other ideas and making them equally important.)
The other 5% would be a few vague sentences or paragraphs that hint at the fact …
- That the protagonist loves the villain’s assistant.
- And the villain is that old legendary wizard.
They don’t outright state it. It’s not a big revelation, it’s not many paragraphs in which the protagonist realizes this and (re)acts. It’s just a clever description here, a turn of phrase there, that hints at these things.
Firstly, the scene is now focused and less overwhelming. Secondly, you’ve just added subtext and given the reader a more active role (in figuring this out themselves).
But thirdly, you’re allowed to forget about this during editing and it will be alright.
During the edit, you may accidentally remove the literal reveal of the Legendary Wizard … and it’s fine. Those hints are still fine. There are no continuity errors or plot threads left unresolved, because it was just a minor low-priority paragraph here and there.
During revisions, you may decide to cut the sub-plot of falling love with the villain’s assistant, or change it in some impactful ways … and forget to update this part of the chapter. And it’s fine!
The chapter still works on its own and is easy to understand. Later chapters are still connected to it, but you can easily edit (fiercely) without being overwhelmed or being afraid of introducing loads of “mistakes”.
For example, two chapters later, the fact the protagonist battled (and lost) has some consequences. They discuss a new plan to defeat the villain, which they enact a few chapters later. If I ever change this during editing, the connection to later chapters is “obvious”. I won’t forget to change those, and the exact changes they need will be clear too.
I changed the battle to have the protagonist win? Okay, then clearly that next related chapter needs changing (it’s useless to “pick a new plan for defeating the villain” if they already won). Well, it can probably just be cut entirely. No other chapters need to change, for they don’t reference this fight and its outcome literally.
I changed the battle to make the protagonist lose an arm? Okay, same thing. I can clearly see the other chapters with the same main focus, and only need to look inside those for changes.
Conclusion
That is what I mean with making your story “friendly to editing”. It comes close to a writing principle for good writing, but isn’t really the same. It’s more a way of structuring a story that allows imperfections to exist (and they will!) and allows major cuts and changes (which you’ll need!) without ruining everything.
- Don’t place information on equal footing. Have one main focus, everything else gets tiny mentions and vague hints.
- This makes it easy to see the major connections between chapters. So you know that if you edit A, you’ll need to check B and C for changes, but nothing else.
- This allows making mistakes, forgetting something, leaving some bits unpolished, without ruining the experience of the story.
- And you have the headspace and energy to make those core aspects of the story, the ones you really need to get right, much better during revisions.
With this new approach, I hope to make my stories much more “fit for editing”. Which should make me dread the revisions less, so I do them earlier and am less tempted to discard notes or ideas because I really don’t want to edit anymore.
It does dictate the kind of stories I can write and forces me to discard some good ideas. But by now, after years of experience, I know this is still the better choice. Editing is needed for every story, to take it from meh to at least good. So make that step as easy and productive as you need, and the best way to do so is by structuring the original story in a helpful way.
Those were my thoughts for today, maybe I have a completely different view after 10 more books,
Tiamo