[00:13] Rachel: Hey, writers. Welcome back to Story Magic, the podcast that will help you write a book you're damn proud of.
[00:18] Emily: I'm Emily.
[00:19] Rachel: And I'm Rachel.
[00:20] Emily: And today we want to talk about starting a revision.
[00:25] Rachel: Yay.
[00:25] Emily: So we're both in revision stages, right? Or almost in revision stages right now. So tell us what you're working on, Rachel. Tell us where you're at.
[00:36] Rachel: Yeah, so by the time this podcast comes out, I'll definitely be in the process, but as of right now, it's the end of May, and I'm finishing up a draft. I have most of it. It's, like, written, but my process is I go back in and I reread and add in more layers. So that's what I'm currently doing. But I mentioned that because I've already started taking notes and writing down ideas of what I might do during the revisions process, but I have not jumped in. We're going to talk about why that is, but finishing up a draft, and then once I finish that draft, I will take a break, and then I'll actually start the revisions process.
[01:21] Emily: That's awesome. I'm sure people are curious, because I'm curious. How are you taking notes? How are you organizing your revision thoughts?
[01:31] Rachel: Some of it is like I write in Scrivener and I leave comments on specific passages with like, I want to change this later, or this needs to be worked into earlier pages because I'm writing. I think there were a few notes I left where I was, like, writing an idea in act three that I could implement into act one during revisions, or if I'm I was reading The All Is Lost last night and I had a bunch of thoughts of, like, okay, I might need to rethink my story point because of these all is Lost this argument that they had or this falling out that they had or I might want to change some of their behaviors in the first couple of scenes based off of how it's really coming out that their flaws are and also taking idea notes of like, I want to double check this when I'm doing a read through again. I want to make sure that this thing makes sense. So I leave comments in the margins of my Scrivener doc, and then I have a master doc of revisions notes that I just throw ideas in. Love it. Yeah, love it.
[02:43] Emily: Organized chaos.
[02:45] Rachel: Pretty much. Yeah. Right now for right now, once I finish the draft and jump into the revisions process, I will make a plan, because we have some processes for how you might make a plan, like suggestions that we'll talk about during this episode.
[02:59] Emily: Yeah. And what about you? This will be your second draft, right?
[03:03] Rachel: You're about to finish your verse. In my head, I'm thinking about it more like the 2.52.5 I love.
[03:10] Emily: It gets so messy, especially in those early stages when you're, like, messing around. You're like, what draft is this?
[03:15] Rachel: Yeah, this is my first time writing this version of Act Three, but I've rewritten act two twice. I've rewritten act one, I think, three times, and I've moved scenes around a bunch. So if you're just thinking of, like, has this been the first time that I've written the last scene, then that would be draft one. But that's definitely not like I've redone act two a bunch, done a lot of movement. So, yeah, I'm thinking about it more like draft two, two and a half. So when I work on the next one, the next draft, it'll probably be draft two and a half or three. Who cares?
[03:52] Emily: I love that, though. Yeah, well, because it's important, though, because I think a lot of times people feel like they haven't finished a draft because they've rewritten lots of pieces of their story, or they feel like they have to finish a draft before they can go back and revise stuff, which isn't necessarily true.
[04:12] Rachel: Right.
[04:12] Emily: Revisions can we're going to talk about how they come in layers, but they also can come in, like, weird phases where you're, like, redoing Act One for a very specific reason, or you have to reach your midpoint and redo the first half of act Two. So it doesn't have to be super linear.
[04:29] Rachel: No, I'm going to write that down as one of the myths that we're going to tackle.
[04:36] Emily: Love it.
[04:36] Rachel: Linear versus do you need to absolutely finish a draft that you don't love the direction of before you can start.
[04:42] Emily: Making changes to, all right, we're pinning it, we're coming back.
[04:46] Rachel: Come back to it. But tell us about you because you're doing something super fun.
[04:50] Emily: Yeah. Is it it feels like chaos. No, it is fun. It's labeled draft four in my document, but it's probably draft like seven, if I really were to think about it, of my story, which I just got an agent for, which is very exciting. So I'm in this weird spot of, like right, last winter, I cleaned this thing up as much as I could right before I went on querying. And then my agent had notes, and they were great notes, and I'm really excited about them, but they're big. They're kind of changing some fundamental stuff while also I need to cut 20% of my word count, which is nuts.
[05:43] Rachel: Yeah. So yeah.
[05:45] Emily: So I'm entering this new revisions phase of implementing feedback that I've gotten that's both deep and, like, the surface level line editing stuff. So it touches multiple layers, which we're going to talk about the layers of revisions in a bit, but yeah, and I'm on deadline, so there's a timeline to it and a bit of urgency, which is different and fun.
[06:11] Rachel: Yeah. I think one of the things that I want to talk about when we get to talking about process is I think because you're on draft seven or whatever this official whatever it is, whatever.
[06:25] Emily: It is, who knows?
[06:27] Rachel: It's working for you to do a lot of this at the same time. But if a client had come to me and I had given them notes about a book with a first draft in my brain, I would be like, don't worry about cutting word count until your structure is great. Don't worry about taking all those things out if you're just going to completely redo what scene goes where and how you would change. I know yours is dual timeline, so in your case, changing the first timeline, don't cut your scenes or don't cut your workout until you've done that because otherwise you're just doing work that might not make an impact later. But for you, it's a little different because this is such a familiar draft and such a familiar story.
[07:06] Emily: It isn't. It isn't. I mean, I'm having to do this weird I mean, part of it is also the timing of it, right? So I'm trying to be as efficient as I can, but that's meaning, like, embracing the layers because I'm having to deepen one of the notes that I got is to deepen the romance. So I'm adding a lot of romantic stuff while I'm trying to cut word count. So it's this weird balance of like, okay, I'm going to cut as much as I can and then I'm going to add some stuff, and then I'm going to see where I'm at the end of Act One. And do I still need to cut more stuff or can I push forward? Is my word count on track? So it's this weird kind of back and forth where I read through and took notes on Act One and then revised that line edit stuff just to see how much I could get it down. And then I deepened some stuff and now I have to go back and see if I can line edit some more. So it is still in layers, even though it feels a lot like I'm moving, like I'm doing a lot of things at once.
[08:10] Rachel: Yeah, I think this is a good segue into talking about when you are looking at your story, when you finish your draft and you're planning what changes do you want to make for your next draft, you've got to hold a lot of different things in your head at once. And there is a flow to this process, and some of it might be cyclical, some of it might interweave with other topics. But generally you're going to follow a path going from what we call high level revisions topics progressively down to low level topics. Like, for example, if you didn't have this plan or if you were just starting to cut words without knowing the general direction of where was your story headed, it's really easy for writers to hyper focus on, like, cutting words. For instance, line editing. The line editing when like, actually, we don't start with line editing for a very specific reason. Yeah, we start with high level topics like story point, story structure, character arcs, and then move on to low level topics like line editing. Kind of last or just in this flow. You want to go high to low. Because it doesn't make much sense to do line editing work when your story structure is completely off, when you have to move scenes around, when you need to completely redo a character arc or string through another plot thread. But you're so hyper focused on, like, which sentence works well here, it's a waste of time and energy.
[09:52] Emily: It totally is. And there's a reason I'm doing that on draft seven.
[09:56] Rachel: Right, exactly. That was my point earlier. You're at that spot now where that is the flow that you need at this moment. We're on draft one. You'd be spinning wheels.
[10:08] Emily: Yeah. And it's interesting, right, because I'm on draft seven, and I'm still doing deep developmental stuff. Right. So it doesn't work as linearly as the hierarchy might say, but I think maybe a better or not better, but a clearer illustration would be kind of what are you planning to do once you hit the end of your draft? Because this is like draft 2.5, and then you're going to have a full draft, and you're going to analyze, I assume, the whole thing. So how will you start to work through kind of the levels? Maybe we could walk through what they are, given how you'll look at it.
[10:45] Rachel: We use a term called the hierarchy of editing. This isn't something we made up. This is a real thing. There's a hierarchy to this process, and there's also a difference between revising and editing. So let me just start there for a second. So revisions are like when you're taking the story itself and questioning, is this the story that I want to tell? Is this how the story should flow? Are the characters making sense? Where you're making those really big picture changes that's revising? And then when you get into, is this the right word choice? Does this comma go here? What's a dialogue tag? That's editing. That is editing. So there's a difference between looking at are my character arcs making sense? And does this sentence, is it grammatically correct?
[11:40] Emily: Do I need it?
[11:41] Rachel: Do I need it? Should I cut it? So to give some clarity there, I'm definitely starting with revisions. So the hierarchy in my brain is that we start with the idea of story point. Is my story point clear? Is the message? Is the takeaway clear? So I'm going to read my draft with that question in my mind, that's kind of the first place that I'm going to start. Once I finish this draft, I'm going to reread it completely through and ask myself a bunch of these really big picture questions. And that's the very first one, because I know the answer already is no, it's not going to make complete sense. I meandered, I moseied around. I switched directions, knowing that. And then once I got to my all is lost moment, it took a little bit of a nuanced and more specific and refined shape.
[12:38] Emily: And that's super common, very common for folks out there.
[12:41] Rachel: Yeah. So I knew that absolutely going into it. That's why it's the first place I'm going to start is I'm going to ask myself, okay, is this still the message that I want? Did the message that came out when I wrote the book match what I really wanted to say? Or do I need to kind of go back and rethink some of these things and asking myself at the very end of this book, can I see the change in my characters? Can I see that they have learned this lesson? So I start there. I'm also going to be looking at speaking of character arcs, those same things. It's like, do my characters go through a change? What are the major points of their change? Are their internal obstacles clear? Are they making sense? Do they still reflect what I had set out to do? Are they making decisions that align with their flaws, that are flawed decisions? And then once they go through, the all is lost transformation, are they making better decisions? Are those decisions making sense? So I'm kind of asking a lot of clarity questions when I do my read through to get a sense of those answers. And then I'll take those to look at the structure of the story. Do my characters have strong goals? Are there goals coming through in each scene? Do their plans make sense? We've talked about pivot point plans on the podcast before. Do those make sense? Is the direction still aligned? And this is what I changed majorly about act two was those big questions, the structure of two. So I start to look at that and make sure that it is still aligning with my story point and the character acts that I have written onto the page. I already have marked down, like, three or four scenes that I know I either want to completely cut or go back to the drawing board on. And I'll probably start there because my gut instinct right now is that I like the structure so far. I like all the beats that I'm hitting. I do think I'm hitting the major save the cat beats that the characters are pretty much in line with that. But I'll need to double check. So that's where I'm going to start. And that's probably going to give me a lot of thoughts, a lot of work to do. But then I take that and I look at each individual scene and I'll decide how I want to change those scenes. I already have a couple of ideas of those three or four scenes that I know that I want to change, what I'm going to do with them, how I might shift them around, or what new scene might take its place. So I've got ideas about that, and I'll write those scenes, I'll insert them in there, take another look, do another evaluation, and from there, then I can get more to is the romance making sense? Is the heat level there where I want it to be? Is the tension there where I want it to be? So I'll do all that, and then, like, last, I'll cut I'll I cut words because I I know I have words that I want to cut. My draft is probably going to end up about around 100,000 words, and I'd like to get it around 90, but I'm not super concerned about that right now.
[15:59] Emily: Love it.
[16:00] Rachel: I think that's super helpful.
[16:03] Emily: Yeah. I did that with my second or third draft of mine.
[16:10] Rachel: I did a very similar thing where.
[16:12] Emily: I was looking at those big foundational pieces of the story, the message, the arcs, the pivot point plans. That's a big one, I feel like, because that's how the arcs show up in the story on the page. And that was when I ended up deciding that I needed it to be dual timeline, I remember. Which was a big decision because essentially what I was doing was I was taking what was Act One and spreading it throughout the story, which meant I didn't have an Act One anymore, which meant I had to restructure everything from the foundation. And that was a really big moment that made my story so much better. But I think it's one of those moments, right, where we look at a story and we're like, oh, my goodness, I have to basically rewrite this whole thing. I mean, I basically rewrote it.
[17:08] Rachel: Yeah.
[17:09] Emily: And there were pieces that I kept. Of course, there's always so much you can keep, but it really was like tearing it down to the bones and rebuilding it. Should we move into the mindset of that? Because I think that that's one of the biggest hurdles in the revisions process, because it's so emotional and it's rooted in this very problematic hustle culture, like perfectionist, belief. I think that a lot of writers carry that. If you have to do that, if you have to rip your book apart and start from the foundations, that you've failed in some way.
[17:50] Rachel: Yeah. And that's not true. Not at all. I was about to say, obviously not true. But it's not obvious. No, it's not. It's a thing that a lot of us carry. Many of us carry that any type of major change you make to the story means you failed. It's not right. You didn't plan it right. You didn't do something right. And it's a waste of time. And I think that the fear of failure plus the waste of time is, like, one of the biggest reasons why people give up in this process and why they just kind of go to a new story, why they don't push through it. But a strong mindset is that there is no failure in this. You can't tell the version of the story that you want to tell that you need to tell without putting it on the page in its imperfect form. I don't even love the word imperfect.
[18:44] Emily: But, like, I know getting it out.
[18:46] Rachel: There raw, raw, unpolished it's raw form, and then it can take shape. But if you don't do that, it's never going to hit the version that you want it to hit in your head. And it's also not a waste of time. It's never a waste of time to do this work. But a lot of writers carry this timeline expectation that they need to finish.
[19:11] Emily: That's the tricky part, and I think it's rooted in, I think, one of the hardest parts about it. And this is I went through, like, the phases of this right when I realized it needed to be dual timeline, is that it blindsides you. Blindsides? Like blindsides? No, blindside. Blindsides inherently, it's going to blindside you because we don't enter a story being like, I'm going to write it this way because I know it's wrong.
[19:38] Rachel: Yeah, right?
[19:39] Emily: We're like, okay, this is my best guess for how I'm going to write this. My best guess was chronological order. So I wrote my story in chronological order, and I was like, this is my best guess for how I'm going to make this story work. And it wasn't until that draft was done and I had already revised Act One that I realized it needed to be a different way.
[19:58] Rachel: And it feels like you get hit.
[20:00] Emily: By a huge freaking truck because you're like, oh, my God, I was on this path, and I had this deadline. Right. You have a vision for when you want to finish your project, and I had a vision for when I wanted to finish my project. And that was the hardest piece to untangle emotionally, was, like, to do this book the justice that it deserves. I'm not going to meet that deadline. I need another year. That's, like, a huge thing to swallow, right. To admit and to accept. And I think you literally go through a grieving process of grieving what you thought your timeline was going to be, grieving what you thought the story was going to look like. All in service of making the book the best it can be, but that doesn't mean it's not really fucking hard.
[20:44] Rachel: Yeah.
[20:45] Emily: And that's where a lot of people give up, I think, is having trouble processing that part of the process because it just feels so left field, and it feels like you failed even though you didn't at all.
[21:00] Rachel: Yeah. I mean, there's a lot in Western society tied up in the idea that time equals money, and the longer time you spend doing something somehow equates to a less amount of money that you're going to earn. And so there's all sorts of trauma and drama as our book coach, Nicole would say, or I'm sorry, as our money coach, Nicole would say about money, and we carry a lot of pressure with that. So anytime that your timeline gets reevaluated or changed or pushed back, it feels like you are no longer worthy of this. It feels like you're not going to make as much money, and it feels like if you can't make as much money, then what's the point? And all those things wrapped up in external validation. But in my experience, personally and with clients, revising always takes longer than what you expect it to. People give themselves ridiculous deadlines and expectations that are so unrealistic, but they don't.
[22:08] Emily: Know that, especially when they're just starting out.
[22:12] Rachel: Yeah, this is a lot of brainwork. Writing a book is not simple or easy or quick. Takes a lot of time. And if you decide also, I want to clarify, there are lots of very successful self published authors that do this process really fast. There's not just self published, but lots of authors that do this really fast and that they decide once they finish with draft two or draft three, they're done. That's okay, too. If you just look at a draft and you're like, I'm finished with this. This is as best, this is where I want it, and I'm ready to put it out in the world, perhaps knowing that it's not like, the most perfect version that they would ever work on. That's perfectly okay. I have a client who's published four books, and that's her process, where she gets it to where it feels really good to her, and then she's ready to publish it, and she has great expectations for how short that period of time is for her, and it works out like that. But there's also, like, a writer like me where this is going to take me probably at least six months to a year to get it to draft three, four, five, and then be like, oh, is this where I want it to be? Like, I'm not, at this point, not putting a deadline like that on myself.
[23:32] Emily: Yeah.
[23:34] Rachel: Because I want to see what I feel when I'm done. Maybe I'm finished with draft 3.5, and I'm like, that's amazing. Boom. But all I want, yeah, maybe you finish your draft and you're like, actually, I feel like I need to take this to draft seven, or I need to take this even further than that. Further than that is still so, so normal. Like, there's drafts, like, 1020 by the time a book comes out, especially in traditional, it's been through draft 50, like, forever.
[24:07] Emily: And you just don't know.
[24:08] Rachel: You don't know what you don't know.
[24:11] Emily: What'S going to happen when you finish a draft. I think that's the part that writers don't expect. It's almost like you want to expect the unexpected, because at least that's what I'm learning, is, like, whenever I finish a draft, my eyes open and I'm like, oh, my goodness, this is a way it could be better, right? And my agent was able to help me with this draft seven, but previously, each draft, it's like, oh, I could do this big, make this big, fundamental change. And if you are hit by something like that, for me, the biggest moment was the dual timeline piece because that was, like I said, ripping it apart to the foundations. And it hit me like a chuck. And I was like, very uncomfortable and very painful. But I knew it was right. Like, deep in my gut, I knew it was right. I messaged my CP, and I was like, oh, my God, if I did this and she was like, Are you having a mental breakdown? Should we take a minute, make sure this is what you want? And I was like, yes, we could take a minute. I'll take a few weeks and think about it before I do something rash. And I was like, But I knew in that moment that it was right. In my gut, I was like, I'm going to have to do yes. And if that's how you feel about a change, grab on to that, because that's your anchor in the storm of the grief and the disappointment and the recalibrating of your process and all your dreams for the book, because knowing that it's right and wanting to do it will pull you through. But, yeah, that doesn't mean it's easy.
[25:52] Rachel: No. And it also doesn't mean that you didn't carry fear for those changes. I think that there's a difference between making revision changes because you're afraid of something, but then making revision changes because you know it's right. But the process of implementing that is scary. There's a difference. There's a huge difference between those things. Knowing that something feels right, but being anxious or nervous about how to execute is different than having no idea what changes to make. So you're making decisions out of fear and then being vibrating with anxiousness because.
[26:33] Emily: You have no choice.
[26:35] Rachel: Did I make the right choice? Yeah. There's always going to be some of that, but that's where you learn to own your decisions. And we talked about that in one of our earlier episodes. It was like an early one, where we were like, you making a decision that you later change does not mean that that was the wrong decision. That's like owning your choice. But if you're afraid, that was the right decision and you can never let it sit and you can never let it stop poking you in the gut and being like, I'm over here, don't forget about me. That's an anxious choice. But if you come back later to change that thing, that's not wrong. That's again, part of this process.
[27:15] Emily: Yeah. I also think it comes down to, can you articulate how the choice you're making is better for the story and the vision you want to share? Versus any kind of external reason because people will like it better, because it will read faster, because it will fit the genre better. All those external reasons. If it's just external reasons that are driving, why you should make a revisions decision what voice you write it or what point of view you write it in? Are you going to change your whole book from first to third just because you're afraid of something that someone else is going to say? Or because it's common in the genre or something like that? Or are you doing it because deep down you're like, oh, it's the right decision to change this to first? Right. Those are different. And it takes a time to learn to trust the difference of those reactions in your body, but it's worth getting to know them for sure.
[28:18] Rachel: Yeah. One of our myths that we have up here is this whole idea, but if you plot or draft or do anything well enough before you get to revisions that you don't have to do revisions. And that's not true. It's not true at all. You always need to make, gosh, I wish it was true.
[28:40] Emily: I know my inner child is like, please, could that be true? But it's not.
[28:46] Rachel: It's not even close to being true. Perfection doesn't exist. But even if you think of yourself as like, the most perfect plotter in the entire world, there's still going to be changes that you'll need to make. And on the flip side, too, okay, backing up. I wanted to be a plotter to reach to attain this, but that's just not how my brain works. So I know and I now accept that I probably will have a decent amount of work to do in rewrites and in revisions because I have to go through this process of exploring all my options and putting it on the page and seeing how it feels and letting my characters go on tangents and come up with ideas and have circular thinking. I have that. So I have to let my characters do that. And I can't force myself to plot or to draft well enough. It's impossible. But I also can't do that because that's not how my brain works.
[29:44] Emily: Yeah, my brain doesn't work that way. And I did plot my book, and I still blew it up. I still had massive curveballs, train wrecks all the things right after the draft. And so plotting whether you plot or pants has nothing to do exactly with whether or not it's just how you approach things.
[30:04] Rachel: Right.
[30:04] Emily: A plotter and a panther are going to approach revisions differently. It's the way that you look at the story and the way you tackle different changes and advances and all the things versus like, yeah, it has nothing to do with whether or not you're going to have to revise.
[30:23] Rachel: Yeah. Which really, if you've ever questioned what the right way to write a book is, I want. You to relisten to this part and sit with that because there's no right way and there's also no right way to do revisions. It just is one step in front of the other, and eventually you finish it.
[30:41] Emily: Yeah, exactly. And the only guidance we can truly give you is to start big and then go small. Start with the big foundational things because it will save you time. There's no point in line editing something that you might blow up later if you know you're going to blow it up later. Right? Like, if you already know you need to change your character arcs, then why are you don't be line editing. Go do that first. I just line edited the crap out of my book in January to get it ready for querying. I thought I was done right that stage, and I needed to line edit it. That's where I was at the end of that revisions process. But I'm still blowing it up now. So that doesn't necessarily mean that you won't go back and do that or that you can prevent it in every case that you're not going to waste time line editing when you need to be working on something else. But if you haven't thought about the big picture stuff, do that first. That's really the biggest guidance we can give you.
[31:45] Rachel: Yeah. And I can tell you from personal experience that the reason why I would always go to line editing first was twofold, one. It felt like I was making progress. It felt really good. Like, when I finished my very first draft of my very first book, I would go through it with, like, a fine tooth comb, making sure that all the line editing was right. But it made me feel like I was doing something to the story to make it better. And then the second piece is that I didn't know what else were you supposed to do? I didn't know how to go from high level to low level. I didn't even know what those things were. I didn't know what story point was. I didn't know what character arcs were. So if you catch yourself or if you find yourself in this place of, like, I feel like I'm spinning my wheels because I keep looking at my scenes and I have no idea what to do to change them to make it better to start revisions, that's where I had to go back and learn. I had to learn this craft stuff that I didn't know so that I could evaluate story point. I could ask myself those clarifying questions. I could ask myself, do my character arcs make sense according to this plot structure, according to the internal obstacles that I've developed? But if you don't know a story point or you haven't tried to develop character arcs, then you have to start there. You still need to go back to those things, but it might take some learning. It might take some polishing of those craft skills so that you don't just spin your wheels on word choice, thinking that you're making a really big difference when really to match your vision, you do need to go to character. You do need to go to story structure.
[33:33] Emily: Yeah, that's brilliant. I think that's really helpful because so many writers end up in this place where they're like, I know my book isn't where I want it to be, but I have no idea why. And so I'm just going to keep moving, commas and changing words right. And cutting sentences. And I think learning is like the biggest first piece of that. But I think the second piece that I would add to that is get feedback. If you do have a foundational understanding of craft stuff, and you've taken your book as far as you can and you find yourself in that comma pushing space, get feedback. Because that is where oftentimes we will get those ideas. The curveballs, the reframes, the train gut hits right? Of big changes we can make to achieve our vision. Sometimes they come from outside eyes. Whether that's an editor or a critique partner or a writing group, that's another good place to zoom out and get some bigger feedback.
[34:36] Rachel: Yeah, and get feedback from people, from other writers, from people who do know a little bit about the writing space. I'm not saying if you're going to go to a peer for feedback, make sure that they have some skills too. Because what I would do is send my book to all my family and friends, and they would be like, this book is amazing. And I'd be like, Great, I'm done. And then I query it, and it would be like, no, this is a hot mess. You're like, but everybody says they like it. So what do I do now? So get feedback from people who are in the writing space, who have some of those skills and who know the terminology. But this is why clients come to us a lot, to coaches, to professionals. We've worked with plenty of revisions. Client, one of my clients right now, we're planning her revision, and this will be draft five for her. But the difference between drafts one through four, where she was tweaking scene things here and there, and draft five where we're completely restructuring the plot, that's going to be a huge leap in improving the story and in her skills development. But like you said, she needed the feedback to get there. She knew it wasn't right, but she needed to work with the pro to help her see that and to teach her the skills gaps that she was having trouble with on her own. We do a lot of this skills development and progress and discussions in tenacious writing, too. It's not just like our one on one clients that we do this with, but that's where if you're feeling completely in the weeds, totally lost frustrated, confused. I have no idea what to do next, but I know it's not right. That's when I would say you should work with a professional.
[36:28] Emily: Yeah.
[36:29] Rachel: If you're not getting that effective feedback from the people around you. That's right. Be like, you need to search out somebody that can show you those places and that can also help you fill the skills that you need to make those changes.
[36:43] Emily: Yeah. We'll throw our Story Magic one on one coaching program. Link in the show notes for folks in case you are interested, and come chat chat with us about it. We love chatting about it. Okay, what other myths?
[37:03] Rachel: Okay, so this one is when we touched on the top of the episode. Do you have to write linearly? I see this advice which sometimes I fully agree with and sometimes I disagree with completely. So I think it depends. But the advice that no matter where you are in a draft, you should completely finish it before you make changes and sometimes I'm going to say, yes, I agree, but I also just did the opposite of this. And here's how it was different for me. If you are writing, you're writing a draft, you know it doesn't feel right, but you're not specifically sure why, and you also feel good in a mindset place of not in a perfectionist hole, then I would say like, okay, wait, I think let me rephrase because I think I said two conflicting things. If you know you're a perfectionist, you tend to get yourself stuck in a perfectionist hole and you cannot clearly articulate what the problem with your draft is. I say finish it. Don't stop, just keep going. Just get it all out. But if you are in a good mental space, you are not letting yourself get stuck in a perfectionist hole and you can clearly articulate what the problem is and how you would change it, then I say you should stop and you should make those changes because that's what happened to me. I got most of the way through Act Two. I was writing The All Is Lost and I knew that it wasn't right that Act Two had not led them to the emotional cliff that they needed to fall off of. In The All Is Lost, I knew that their plans were not correct and I knew that they weren't. The direction that Act Two went wasn't hitting the places that I wanted to hit. So I went back to act two. At that time, I stopped. I stopped the draft. I thought about pushing forward. I thought about do I just finish it and see where it goes? But I knew that whatever I did right in Act Three wasn't going to line up to the vision that I had. I hadn't gotten them to the place that would have reached the vision. So I stopped and I went back to act two and I redid it. But if I was working with a client, and we knew that something was off, but we couldn't quite say what it was. We would need to get those pages down. We would need to get the words out. We would need to see how things fall, how the cookie crumbles. So I would say, keep writing it. Let's see what happens. So that's kind of where I fall on this. I also don't think you need to draft linearly, which was another part of this myth. There is a big value to pushing through, but there is also like, if you know what you're doing, you know what changes you would make. And you're not going to get yourself in a bad mental spot by making those changes. Make them.
[39:53] Emily: Yeah. The one thing I would add to that is if you're at that place where you're like, okay, I can see the changes that I want to make, that I need to make to deliver on my vision, right? I can see it, I can articulate it. Then I think you have two choices. You can say, and both of them depend on looking forward. Do you need to make those changes? Will you benefit from making those changes now in moving forward?
[40:24] Rachel: Right?
[40:25] Emily: So if they are small changes or a subplot needs to be tweaked, or you can very clearly see, oh, I'm going to go plant this McGuffin, or something like that, right? But it doesn't change where you're headed. Just put notes. You don't have to go back and do that. You can keep that for the next draft. But if you're and this is where I was with a client recently. We finished her Act One, and she was like, oh, fundamentally, I know who my character is now and who I've written her to be at the end of Act One is not who I need her to be to move forward. And so we were like, okay, then this is a point where we need to go backwards and we need to establish who she is in Act One the way that you want her to be. Because otherwise, if we write forwards, we're going to get even more lost. It's not going to make sense.
[41:14] Rachel: Right.
[41:14] Emily: And this was the very first draft. So we went back, we did one more passive Act One, and then we were like, okay, we can still see things that we need to change, but we don't need to do those things now to move forward. And so that was that second time we decided to move forward instead of do a third pass. So I think asking yourself, like, do you really need to know it? Or can you just put a note? Can be really helpful in dividing because otherwise we could just get stuck in a cycle forever, right? I can see that change I want to make, and I used to do that. I wrote the first act of this story, like, 60 times, and they were all wrong. But it was because I was afraid to move forward and I didn't know where I wanted to go, and I needed to just finish the draft to figure that out.
[41:55] Rachel: Yeah, well, I think it goes back to that high level to low level, where if you know that you're going to change this one detail, that's a low level thing. But if you know that your character plans are wrongs and their goals aren't leading them in the right direction, that's a structure thing. So you can change that. And I completely understand your client because I'm a very visual writer, where it would be difficult for me to make a jump from a story trajectory, that's one thing, and then change it to be something that I haven't actually seen, that I can't connect the dots to. I need to have the A through F lines written there so that I can go to the next point and I can see the connections, but otherwise, just take the note. That's why I have pages of notes already that I haven't even gone back to revise yet because I've just written down the note. I don't need to make that change. It's not going to change, like, make or break the story for me as I'm drafting right now.
[43:03] Emily: Yeah.
[43:07] Rachel: So you can always go back to your high level, to low level hierarchy, be like, is this a story fundamental thing? Is this a message? Is this a structure? Is this a character arcs thing? Or is it more of a low level, a detail thing, a plot thread, a subplot, something that you can easily weave in later that doesn't drastically change the nature of your story?
[43:36] Emily: Yeah.
[43:40] Rachel: What other myths do we have?
[43:43] Emily: I think the last one is that it will be easier if you revise everything all at once, scene by scene, if you hit all the levels at once. Yeah, I'm so susceptible to that.
[43:58] Rachel: Yeah, well, a lot of people are because I think it just feels like, number one, you're saving time because you're doing it all at once, which we talked about. And number two, it's also really hard to do things one topic at a time when you know that there's loads of things that you want to do. All the things.
[44:18] Emily: I fell for this as recently as last week when I was planning my revision. So I have my agent notes. I know some of the big fundamental things that I want to do. And so I'm like, okay, I'll make a spreadsheet, and I'll have a spreadsheet where the rows are all my scenes and my chapters and the columns are like and there's nothing wrong with this, I'm still using the spreadsheet. But in my head, I was, like, telling myself that if I just had all the different columns and then read through my draft, then I could fill out all the rows with all the revisions that I would need to make while I did my read through. And then when I was done with my read through, I would have exactly what I needed to move forward. Right. That fell apart, like, within four seasons, because I realized that especially with needing to cut 20% of my word count, that I need to kind of do this gauging thing where I go back and forth of like, how much can I cut from these scenes? And then, okay, can I keep this subplot? And what can go and what can stay is an active conversation that I'm having with myself that is not as simple as I'm going to read it through, decide the changes I'm going to make, and then just do them. So it's become more of like, I read through Act One, and then I filled out my spreadsheet, and now I'm making those changes, and I'm going to see where I'm at at the end of Act One and if I need to make more changes or if I can kind of read through up until the midpoint. So it's this back and forth that's not linear at all, but my brain was like, I'll just put all the edits in and then go see. But I even put, like, we have a task manager called Asana, and I even put, like, I mapped out, okay, if I do three scenes a day for this many weeks, then I'll meet my deadline, which was helpful in seeing how much time I had, but I was like, this is useless. This is not how I'm going to do this. But it's like everything tells you, oh, if you just do it linearly, do it all at once, move forward like a factory, then it's all going to come out fine, and then you'll hit your deadline and be done. And don't put yourself in that box.
[46:24] Rachel: Yeah, we just had a writer ask in tenacious writing and express a lot of frustration around revising in our tenacious writing slack about, I have all these things I want to do, and I'm about to tear my hair out because I'm trying to do them all at once. And she was basically asking, am I doing this wrong? Or how do I not get trapped into doing all of the things all at once? That's a really hard question to answer. It depends on who you are. But that's why I really like relying on the hierarchy and why I really like trying to focus on one thing at a time, because it gives you focus and direction and keeps you from falling over the overwhelmed cliff into the unhappy valley where you hate everything I love. It terrible.
[47:28] Emily: I think both of us told her some version of, like, you can only do one thing at a time. Which was very this was like last week when I was going through my spreadsheet and I was like, oh, yeah, Emily, you can only do one thing at a time. Because I was reading through Act One and I started to get overwhelmed because I had all these notes of revision changes I wanted to make and knew I needed to make. And I was like, what if I just make some of these, get them out of my brain, just like, do some of the bigger edits, get them out of my brain, and then start to tackle the next thing, right? I don't have to have a laundry list of every single revision I'm going to make before I start that would paralyze me. So I think it can be helpful to just remember it's just one step at a time, one revision at a time. Start with the top of the hierarchy, bottom of the hierarchy, the big part of the hierarchy. The big picture part, I think of.
[48:17] Rachel: It as like it literally could go either way. But in my brain, it's always an upside down triangle.
[48:21] Emily: Upside down, but it could be the other way.
[48:24] Rachel: It could just be just a triangle. But like, the long part, the big part are those big, high level topics one at a time. I feel like I have to repeat them again because imagine now that it's a triangle, you have your stories take away its message, and then the next layer of the triangle is plot structure or character arcs. I think those two, depending on how your brain works, are about the same or interchangeable in levels. But you get those big things. And then from there, you can look at your scenes and the goals of your scenes and making sure that they're aligning to the structure and your characters. And then you can go smaller to secondary characters and subplots and threads, romance those things. And then go to actual editing, like the mechanics of line level things. The technical aspects of writing don't go out of order unless you feel really like you said, I've got to get something out of my brain. But at the same time, you already knew what changes you needed to make. It's not like you started there. You didn't start at line editing without knowing what the big picture changes you were going to make. Absolutely get tripped up.
[49:48] Emily: Yeah, but I feel like people also, they're like, okay, if I have a revisions plan, then I'm going to know.
[49:53] Rachel: All of the all the answers, you.
[49:55] Emily: Know, all the answers up into that level of subplots and threads. And it's like, no, do the changes for the other stuff first and then worry about your subplots and threads because those are going to support the rest of your story. That's where I get stressed out. I'm like, I'm changing this secondary character. And then I'm going to take this one and move this one forward and then move that one back and then remove this one. And those changes are those are for later, after you've figured out the bigger structural things that you want to do, because that stuff fits in around the bigger structural things.
[50:28] Rachel: Yeah, okay, we've touched on this. But I want to share the process that we use with our clients and the process that I'm using for myself. So this would be once I finish my draft, here's what I'm going to do. I'm going to reread everything, and I'm not going to allow myself to make any edits. So the way that I'm going to do that is I'm going to read this draft in an uneditable format for me. I'm going to put it on my Kindle, or I'm going to put it on a PDF, but I'm probably not going to read it in Scrivener because it'll be very tempting to jump in to add a word here and there, change that dialogue tag. Make this show don't tell more clear. That's very tempting for me. So I'm going to read it in a way that I can't make changes. I can only take notes. Then I'm going to be taking the notes I'm going to be taking are on those hierarchy items. One way to do this is to read through the draft one pass per item, like, per topic. That's very, okay, you'll have multiple read throughs of your draft. You're probably going to get tired of it very normal. That's fine. Or you can be taking all sorts of these high level notes with, like, one read through of your draft. So whatever feels more doable to you. But please just hold in your head that this takes as much time as it's going to take. Don't try to rush through this process because you want to save time. As far as, like, deadline time, that's not what you're doing this for. If your brain would work better to read it multiple times for each of these high level topics, read it multiple times. If it works better for you to kind of absorb it, what are the vibes, what are the feelings? And kind of take a whole bunch of notes at once. Do that. Then after you do that, you have a whole bunch of notes, and you will start to see direction. You'll start to see where you will want to make changes. So I again, go through that hierarchy and be like, okay, what are the changes that I want to make for my story point? What notes did I take? What was I thinking? What was I feeling? And how can I make that message more clear based on those notes? So that's where I start making my plan, where I think about, I want to tackle XYZ first. These are the big things. How can I do that in my scenes? And from there, I'll start to think, okay, if my story point is unclear, by the end of the book, I either want to start for me in the all is last or at the very beginning of the story. And look at what are my characters flaws, how are they going to change? So I answer those questions, and I look at my scenes on an individual basis, and from there, I start jumping in. If you don't have an outline or you haven't outlined this draft that's perfectly okay. You can do something called reverse outlining, where now that your draft is finished, you take the scenes that you already have, and you basically make an outline from that. So you're outlining based on the draft you already have. But doing some sort of an outline is going to give you a summary of everything that happens so you can more easily see where you want to make changes or what's even happening in your book, and then decide, okay, that scene in the debate that I already know that I want to change, what am I going to do about it? And I can make a plan for that. Lots of notes as far as how you pull that off, it can be a spreadsheet like Emily uses. I don't love spreadsheets because I spend way too much time making them, and then I get tired of them, so I tend to just take a bunch of notes. Scrivener has lots of native tools that I'll use in that app for revising. I also use notion. There's all sorts of ways you can keep track of this, and there's not a right way or a wrong way. Just is what's going to keep your brain on track and not leave you feeling completely overwhelmed.
[54:41] Emily: Yeah, and like we said, again, revisions don't have to be linear either. You can start by revising your third act because that's clear to you, and then that will give you some direction for your first act. You can reverse outline just your act one like I did, and then tackle that before you figure out what you're going to do next. It does not have to be all at once. I think if you're starting to get overwhelmed, just take a bite off of something that's in the bigger part of the pyramid. Take a bite out of a piece of your character arc that is clear to you or a piece of your plot that you know you want to change. Just move forward and then keep evaluating the changes that you want to make from there.
[55:28] Rachel: Yeah, I think the last really note that I have is that you are still not aiming for perfect. Revisions don't get you to perfection. And what I don't want you to do is to get stuck on that first scene. And again, spin your wheels where you're now revising act One. Act One's got to be perfect before you can move on. That's an unattainable goal. And specifically about those opening scenes, nine times out of 1099 out of 100 times, you're not going to be able to nail those first scenes in the way that you absolutely love them until you feel really good about the end. So I personally will probably not rework my opening image until I feel really good about my final image about that very last scene, because those opening scenes are usually the last ones to get really good, and that's okay. So just don't be trying to work yourself through into perfection. It ends up just being another draft and then you do this process again. And then another draft, and then you do this process again.
[56:34] Emily: Yes, 100%.
[56:37] Rachel: Okay, cool. Yeah, cool. So we have a couple of links for you in the show notes. We will link to Tenacious Writing, which is our writing program where we talk a lot about revisions. And we're also going to link to our story magic one on one coaching program. So if you're needing help with this, specifically if you are feeling like you're going to tear your hair out because you have no idea what to do, we are here for you.
[57:03] Emily: Come talk to us.
[57:04] Rachel: Come talk to us. We can help you out. Exactly. And we also make it super fun. Yes, this does not very fun. Nail biting process. This can be a really fun thing. All right. If you want to build a successful, fulfilling, and sustainable writing life that works for you, you've got to get on our email list.
[57:27] Emily: Sign up now to get our free email course, the Magic of character arcs. After seven days of email magic, you'll have the power to keep your readers flipping pages all through the night.
[57:36] Rachel: Link in the show notes. We'll see you there. Thanks.
