[00:14] Rachel: Hey, writers. Welcome back to Story Magic, the podcast that will help you write a book you're damn proud of.
[00:19] Tiffany: I'm Tiffany.
[00:20] Rachel: And I'm Rachel. And today we're going to talk about the art of self editing. We have a very special co host with us today. We are joined by Tiffany Grimes from Virgin Design and Editorial to talk about self editing. This is a great topic. I'm so glad that you brought it to us, Tiffany. And thank you again for co hosting with me while Emily is out on maternity leave. It's going to be such a fun discussion. Before we jump in, can you tell us about you and why we're going to talk about this today?
[00:52] Tiffany: Yeah. Thank you so much for having me. I'm the founder of Virgin Design and Editorial, and I'm on a mission to amplify marginalized voices through unflinching and inclusive book coaching and design. Not only have I worked with hundreds of writers on everything from character motivation to deepening themes, working through mindset, blocks, plotting and more, but I'm a writer too. I write messy, queer characters who take up space, get in trouble, and are already out. I've got an MFA in writing crave stories that delve into the deepest truths and am obsessed with my cats.
[01:24] Rachel: I love it. So you're like pretty badass is what you're saying. Pretty awesome person.
[01:30] Tiffany: So cool.
[01:31] Rachel: I love it. So why self editing? What brought you to this topic and what brought you to I know we're going to talk about a little course that you have sneak peek, but what brought you to editing in general and self editing?
[01:44] Tiffany: So I actually hate drafting, and the editing part is my favorite to the point where I will avoid drafting as much as possible. And yeah, I just really love helping everybody else create amazing books and it's just my absolute favorite part of the process.
[02:05] Rachel: Yeah. Do you think that so I talk with a lot of editors, obviously, like yourself and Lewis and Emily and all of our other guests that we've had on the podcast. I feel as though many of us don't like drafting and much prefer editing. What do you think? Do you think that's true? Just like anecdotally anecdotally that editors just.
[02:25] Tiffany: Tend to like editing better? It's probably true. I know that a lot of editors aren't actually writers like we are, so obviously they don't really like the drafting part. But yeah, the rewriting part is where all the magic happens anyway, so it's just the most fun.
[02:47] Rachel: I love it. So I've been complaining about this, actually, recently because I've been in revisions for my own work in progress and in the middle of them, I hated it. I love editing other people's work 100%. I love my job. I love book coaching, love everything that I do. I hated editing this last job, and we use that hashtag like revisions are where the magic happens. And I was complaining about it so much that I started a contrarian hashtag. Publish first drafts. Just so oh, my gosh.
[03:28] Tiffany: Please don't publish first draft.
[03:31] Rachel: Publish first draft. But I did all the edits. I completed them, and then I read the draft, like, the second draft as it was finished, and it really was like, this is where the magic happened. All of that hard work. I did not love doing it on my own page, but it brought out such a cool version of, like it was so much closer to my vision. It was beautiful. I was so proud of it. When I was done, I read it and I was like, damn, this is a book. Look at me. I did it.
[04:02] Tiffany: So proud of you.
[04:03] Rachel: I know. It all came, though, from editing myself. Self editing it. And I didn't love it while I did it, but when it was done, I could see the light, I could see the beauty.
[04:14] Tiffany: Love that.
[04:15] Rachel: Yeah.
[04:16] Tiffany: Oh, my gosh.
[04:17] Rachel: I think that's, though, if you've ever listeners, if you've ever felt in that zone of like, I hate this, and not quite sure how to bring the magic through that's basically the art that is, the art of self editing is weaving that magic through those drafted pages and bringing them to life in a much more real way. Yeah, exactly. So in self editing, what do you see? Let's just jump right in. So I have a couple of questions for you. I'm really excited to go into this because when I think of self editing, I actually think of you and the teaching that you have. I love all of your direction in this topic. So what do you see as some common missteps that authors take while self editing, maybe practically mindset wise, just in general, what are some hurdles and then how do we start to sidestep them?
[05:17] Tiffany: Yeah, absolutely. The most common mistake that I see, and I'm sure you see this a lot too, is we get to the end of the manuscript, we type the end, we have our little celebratory dance, and then we just jump right back in page one, and we start to tweak the sentences and the grammar and the spelling. And that's not editing.
[05:36] Rachel: Yeah.
[05:36] Tiffany: I mean, it is editing, but it's not the type of editing that's going to make your book better. So what we want to do, since that's so counterproductive, making the sentences prettier at this stage, it doesn't really do anything because we might have to cut whole scenes and chapters when we get further into it, or if we're stubborn, we hold onto them for a really long time until the last possible moment it happens. But what we want to do is we want to begin with a holistic assessment of the entire manuscript. If you want to think of this as like giving yourself an editorial letter, totally think of it that way. But we want to make sure that our characters are well developed and that they change over the course of the manuscript and that they have agency and things aren't just happening to them. They're not just wandering around for 250 pages. We want to make sure that our plot and our setting fit the actual story that we're trying to tell and we didn't just fall into them. And then, yeah, we want to make sure that we are actually creating a book that fits our genre and our audience expectations and whatnot. So when we're drafting, we're totally allowed to forget all the rules and just write. But when we're editing, we have to puzzle the story together so it seems like everything was intentional the entire time. This is where you start to ask yourself, what did I make? How can I make it better? And really tie everything together in a way that feels very intentional and like, you knew what you were doing the whole time, even though you probably had no clue when you sat down to write what you were even writing.
[07:05] Rachel: Yeah. So one of the things that I always struggle with at that stage is overwhelm of reading through that manuscript, seeing everything that I want to change, knowing that, oh, it's not. I really want to get those sentences great, but I can't yet. I have all these other things to do first. How do you coach your students to work through that overwhelm or avoid it or put things in a proper place to kind of manage this process?
[07:34] Tiffany: Yeah, I have several things that we can talk about with this. So I love that you asked this, but the first thing that you're going to do is take a break. And I know that this is like, the most cliche advice that you can get because everybody says it, but how many people actually take a break? Take the break. You have to give yourself time away from the manuscript so that you get that emotional distance and you can see your manuscript with fresh eyes. I know that we have deadlines and everything, so maybe the break is very short, but if you can give yourself a couple of weeks, at the least, that would be the best possible thing. And then approach your draft with a mindset of improvement, not one of fault finding. If you're reading your draft like, oh, my God, this is the worst thing I've ever read in my entire life. You're not really going to have the ability to create change, meaningful change in your manuscript. You're just going to be like, how come this is not as good as that book I just finished reading that was already published and has won awards, and your first draft should not be compared to published books. And then just setting realistic expectations. Like, the average writer takes ten drafts to complete their novel before it's ready to publish, and that's an average. So you could be more than that. You could be less than that. I take around, like, ten drafts myself. So just like, understanding that multiple rounds of editing are often required to produce a polished manuscript is very helpful with kind of setting expectations and then to kind of make the process less overwhelming. I have a little process that I've created. I teach this in revision alchemy, my self editing course. But basically what you want to do is read the entire manuscript in one sitting, if you can, and you want to try to read as a reader, not as a writer. And if you can read it on an iPad or a Kindle or something, that you can't literally get in there and start making changes. You are just reading it, and you're treating it as though this is a book that you picked up off the shelf, like it's already published. And that way you're tricking your brain. You're like, okay, we're going to approach this like a reader, and we're going to note our emotional reactions. Places where we're bored, confused, pleasantly surprised. One thing to note is that I used to think that what I wrote was boring because I had read it too many times, but I rewatch and reread things so many times, and I'm still obsessed with them each time. So that's not true. My stuff is just boring when I feel like it's boring. So don't trick yourself and be like, oh, it's only boring because I've read it a thousand times. And then you want to go through and list out the things that are working. Well, this might be like, I have a really engaging opening, strong character development, killer chemistry between the love interest and the main character. Praise yourself all over the place. We have a negativity bias where we will kind of hone in on all the negative things and forget the positive. So you need to remind yourself what's actually working so that you're not changing those for the detriment of the book later on.
[10:46] Rachel: Yeah.
[10:47] Tiffany: And then you can list the areas that need improvement. Technically, you're doing them at the same time, but this might be like, the pacing is kind of off, or my character is literally just roaming around aimlessly for six chapters in a row. Kind of need to work on that. The dialogue could be a little stronger, everybody sounds the same, and you might even get really specific. Like, the main character's hobby doesn't make sense for this book. So I need to change that. The dog's name changes four times. Yeah, anything like that. Right. And then we're going to create a revision planner checklist. And I think that this is like the ultimate key to help overwhelm and I break this down. I created three stages conceptual revisions, structural revisions, and stylistic revisions. Because not everything has equal importance and should be created equal. You're going to want to pull the things out that have a massive snowball effect on the rest of the manuscript and focus on those first. So if we kind of think about revisions like building a house, the conceptual revisions are the blueprint. And these are things like audience and genre conventions, tone and mood, narrative distance, the narrator and point of view that you choose to tell the story in. And then the structural revisions are the frame of the house, the drywall, the windows, the roof. These are things like plot and structure, character and point of view, world building and setting and conflict and stakes. These are still pretty big picture ideas, but we need to know the other things first before we can change these and make sure they're working. And then our stylistic revisions are the decorations, the furnishings, the vibes. Think of what makes a house a home. And this is showing and telling, pacing, intention, authorial voice and character, voice, and basically the language, what makes the story feel like a story. And so when we follow this framework, we can focus on the editing process in a really systematic way. And then we get to check things off as we go, because when we're revising, we can't use word count or anything tangible. So this lets us literally go through feel accomplished every time we check something off. And the best advice I ever had gotten received was instead of starting and focusing on every single thing in each chapter and going one chapter at a time, focus on one thing for the entire book. Yeah, that way you don't get to chapter five and then completely burn out because you're like, I've been doing this forever and I'm not going further. And then you're not dropping important things that you need to be working on. So this means that you're going to be reading your book 8 million times, but it also means that you're kind of layering each revision over itself and really pulling the entire book together, and you're not missing anything important. And yeah, it all really comes together well.
[13:51] Rachel: Yeah, it does. I mean, that's where I was, where I was doing like a pass kind of for each main thing that I wanted to change. And in the midst of it, it was difficult to see was any of this making a difference. And then once I finished that draft, that edited version, and read the new draft, it was just like, oh, yeah, this made a huge difference. Wow, this is such a big level up from one thing to another.
[14:17] Tiffany: Yeah, exactly.
[14:19] Rachel: I think, too, there were so much goodness in what you just said. And I want to call out a couple of things as, like, my highlights, my takeaways that people can really remember or latch onto. The first thing that you said, which is still so stuck in my head, is that the average draft number, like the average number of drafts that it takes to have a complete polished book is ten. That's awesome. That is a number that I think a lot of people don't know, don't understand, don't put into perspective, because really, it does take a lot. It takes a lot. But you have just described the process. The framework is very much a flow of going from high level things to low level things. And each time that you're doing this process, you may be tackling different things, but it takes a lot of work to get it to that zone of feeling like, this is it. It's polished, it's done. And to get through each of those drafts, we can follow that framework of the I forget your first term. What was the first term of this framework?
[15:33] Tiffany: Conceptual.
[15:34] Rachel: Conceptual. Okay. That's what I thought, but I didn't want to misstate. Okay, so we have conceptual, we have that really high level. Then we have structural, like, okay, let's look at how the story is functioning. And then we have the house furnishing. I love that part of the metaphor. And that's where people get really trapped up and they jump right there. They don't jump to styling the perfect aesthetic. If your foundation is cracked, it doesn't make any sense. Yeah.
[16:02] Tiffany: How many times as an editor have you had someone come to you and they don't even know what the genre of their story is? And they're like, I'm ready to query. And you're like, well, we need to put a container around this book so that we can sell it, because that's kind of what our goal is, that we don't think about a lot, but we have to be able to pitch the book so we can sell it. But yeah, this will really help understand what you're actually writing before you jump into edits, so that you're not changing it for the sake of changing it and turning it into something that it's not. And then when we talk about the ten drafts, I really feel like I need to say this. Stephen King will do three drafts. He's written how many books? Like a bajillion?
[16:44] Rachel: Like 80, 70, 80? Something like that. I mean, that's just published. That's not even, like, unpublished. I don't know. A lot.
[16:52] Tiffany: And so he's kind of got it down to three drafts. And so when he's written all these books and still takes three drafts yes. It's going to take us a little bit longer.
[17:01] Rachel: Yeah. Yes. Perspective, everybody.
[17:05] Tiffany: So important.
[17:06] Rachel: Get some.
[17:07] Tiffany: This is important.
[17:08] Rachel: Yeah. And we have such high expectations for ourselves. And then tie that into the negativity bias that you are saying. And it's really easy to get tripped up into this process and then feel like you're a shitty writer, or you need to quit, or impostor syndrome has a chokehold on your brain, or like, perfectionism won't let you make a single step forward. All of these mindset hurdles get triggered throughout all the writing process, but they can get triggered in editing if you don't have the perspective of, like, this is a step by step process that takes time and that you don't have to rush through. And you can also understand how it works, which will save you a lot of time and energy without just spinning your wheels. Have you ever seen the movie My Cousin Vinny?
[18:03] Tiffany: I haven't.
[18:04] Rachel: Oh, my God. Okay. Well, anyway, it's a great movie. It's one of my favorite movies. I don't know if you know anything about it, but it's from you don't. Oh, my God. Okay, so it's joe Pesci is like a lawyer who is going down to Alabama to his nephew has been arrested for murder but didn't commit the crime, and so he's never won a case. He's a terrible lawyer. And so he goes to Alabama to get his nephew out of prison in a murder case, and it's his first lawyer case. It's really funny. And Marissa Tome is the romantic interest. She's really funny. She's Joe Pesci's fiance. Anyway, long story short, this is not singular to this movie, but it does describe it's a point in the movie how in Alabama, when your tires get stuck, like when your car gets stuck in the mud, one wheel will spin and the other will do nothing, and so the car doesn't go anywhere. And that's like an important plot point of the movie. But that's what editing feels like. This is my metaphor, is that you're stuck in the mud, one tire is spinning, one's doing nothing, so you're not going anywhere.
[19:24] Tiffany: That's a perfect metaphor for this. Absolutely. And then you're just like, am I even making it better or just different? What is the point of all of this? Why did I just waste twelve years doing this for a book that I can't even wrap my head around?
[19:41] Rachel: Yeah, exactly. Okay, so we've talked about our framework, and by following this framework that you teach in revisions Alchemy, we can sidestep a lot of these roadblocks that we see our students, we see writers run into. What other strategies or techniques do you suggest writers employ to make this whole process more objective, less draining? I feel like we've kind of already touched on some of this, but what else are we thinking of making self editing not feel like spinning your wheels in the mud?
[20:20] Tiffany: Yeah, I think we talked about the big ones to zoom out a little bit. I kind of wanted to touch on this, but you know how we you probably hear this a lot, too, but writers will say that they don't want to be influenced, so they won't read other books in their genre.
[20:36] Rachel: Yes.
[20:37] Tiffany: And so to that I say, please, reading your genre. But also art doesn't exist in a vacuum. We have to take what comes before and find ways to subvert or surprise the reader in new and exciting ways. We don't want to write the same book as someone else, so we need to read what comes before us. So we don't accidentally do that. If you follow Elizabeth Gilbert at all, she has this concept where ideas are just floating around and you can just kind of brush someone's shoulder and pass off an idea. And I love it. It's so woo, but it's so real because there's more than one person kind of writing the same idea at the same time because we're all existing in the same world. Yes, the way you write it is going to be a little bit different, but how different? We need to make sure that your book kind of stands out a lot more. And then another thing that I want to add is follow your own process. Don't do something that someone else tells you to do, even me and Rachel, because we're telling you to do it, like experiment and whatnot. But the biggest example I have of this is everybody tells you not to revise while you write. And we've talked about how I literally hate drafting. So the only way that I'm going to get through a draft is when I revise while I write. If I follow that advice, I'll never finish a book ever. So I even trick myself where I'll leave myself voice notes. What am I doing? Like voice to text. I'll kind of outline a scene really fast and then I can go in there with my fingers and I can be like, okay, now we'll flush this out a little bit and then I kind of literally will sit there for a while until I have a decent scene before I can move on. Whereas if I had followed that advice, I would have never gotten further. So I feel like just knowing that you're allowed to experiment is such a big help. So just like, if you take anything from today experiment is what I would like to leave with you and take what works, leave what doesn't. There's no reason to argue and be like, well, that's not going to work for me. Just give it a try first, see what happens, and then if it works, it works. If it doesn't, try something else.
[22:59] Rachel: Yeah, that's one of my honestly favorite takeaways of one on one coaching. I know we're talking about self editing, but anyway, I think just in general, writers, listeners, my friends who are listening to this right now, there is a lot of advice on the Internet that is prescribed as like, this is the answer for you. This is your answer, just do it and you'll be great and you'll fix all your problems perfect. And then it doesn't work great, or it works great for like a week and then it doesn't work great and then you're kind of lost again. Then you go back to the Internet and you're like, okay, let me find another answer. And in kind of all of the work that we try to do at Golden May, we are giving options, but we're also trying to teach the genre expectations, the frameworks, the general structure, because there's so many different ways to navigate within those frameworks. So let's take the self editing framework. There are 1000 different ways that you can evaluate your manuscript for how well your story point message is coming across. And there's all sorts of notes that you might leave that I might take in notion, while someone else might be like, no, I can't take any notes at all. It's just going to hamstring my process. And someone else might be like, no, I need to talk this out with somebody. I need a writing buddy, I need to brainstorm exactly what this is and then I can take away something from it. The execution is unlimited. There's so many different ways, but the framework still remains the same of, like, to save yourself time and energy and to have the most effective self editing process. We still follow the framework, but it can look entirely different for me than it can for you, Tiffany, and for the writers that we work with. So I mentioned one on one coaching because so much of what we do is like experimenting and figuring it out to find the process because that's just part of it. Everybody has to do it. Everybody has to find the process that works for them and that is able to help you overcome when perfectionism starts rearing its little head. And for me, that means I need to complain about revisions to my friends because they get it. Then I can like, okay, I had a minute of telling everybody how much I want to publish my first draft because I don't want to do this. And then, cool, I feel better now, but for someone else, it's going to look different. So, yes, please take what Tiffany is saying to heart and explore. Experiment. Iterate that's my big word. It's been my big word, and I say it a lot, but my process feels like it's constantly changing because I'm constantly experimenting and iterating on it. And something that works for me now might not work for me in four months when my life feels different. So we're just always trying new things.
[25:59] Tiffany: Yeah, a big thing with that is that our brains are really smart and if something's working, our brain is going to find a way to make it not work anymore. And we could spend a whole entire hour, your lifetime talking about this, but let's just dive in. Okay, so rejection feels the same way in our body. That actual physical pain, like if you break your leg, the chemical reaction in your body is the same as when you get a rejection. And so we are putting our heart and souls onto the page when we write a book. And the idea of someone reading it and rejecting us or saying anything remotely mean or anything that's just not this is the best thing I've ever read. It makes us seize up completely. And so our brain is going to be like, how can I stop that from happening? Oh, you found a process that works for you. It's not going to work anymore. So you have to constantly keep changing the process. This is why writers who have written, like, five to ten books will be like, I don't know how to write a book. Like, every time I sit down to write a book, it's not the same as it was last time because it's constantly changing. And a big reason for that is all this mindset stuff. I'm so excited. Rachel and I are going to be talking all about mindset this weekend in a big day long workshop. But the reason we're spending a whole day talking about it is because there's just so much to talk about. And it all ties in to staying consistent and actually being able to finish and follow through and not give up because it's freaking hard. It's painful.
[27:43] Rachel: Yeah, it is. It's painful to go. I get the same even if someone else is not rejecting me, I get the same feeling when I read it and then reject myself of reading that first draft and being like, this is the shittiest thing I've ever seen. I joked about this to our tenacious writing community when I wrote this last draft, the first draft, I was like, this is the best thing I've ever written. This is brilliant. This is amazing. And I finished it and I reread it, and I was like, this is terrible. This is the worst thing ever.
[28:19] Tiffany: I have started tricking myself and where when I finish it, I'll let my body feel like, this isn't the best, but I'll tell myself I'll be like, this is amazing. I'm an amazing writer. And then my like, yeah, we're amazing. And then it just makes me want to show up more. So lie to yourself as much as you need to. That whole fake it till you make it thing. It's very, so true. We need that. And then if you can't do it to yourself, you have to get a hype friend, a critique partner, or just I have a friend who, when I finish writing something, I send it to her. She's not a writer, so that helps a little bit, but she just literally says, like, more, I want the next bit, please. And then one day she made me panic because she was like, it's actually really sounding like a book. And I was like, oh, no, never say that again. I just need you to be just like, I want the next bit. This is amazing.
[29:11] Rachel: I love that. I 100% agree. I think that's the best thing that you can do for any part of the writing process is have a hype buddy, a writing partner, someone who can just constantly this is amazing. I love it. This is so cool. I completely agree with you that fake it till. You make it is true. But what you're doing is building a little bit of self trust. Every single time you are faking yourself into confidence, and then it's real. So you don't need to have this is what people get wrong about confidence is that suddenly you need to be validated and then you're confident. No, you just need to choose to trust yourself.
[29:56] Tiffany: And that confidence is not some big thing that you just wait for. You don't get confident until you actually do the thing and prove to yourself that you can do it. And then the confidence comes.
[30:06] Rachel: Then the confidence comes. So every single time that you're faking it, or every single time you're telling yourself, oh, this is great, I can do this. Oh my gosh, I'm showing up. This is great. Wow, you're building that little bit of self trust in yourself. You're building the belief, and one day it turns into confidence and you're like, wow, I've just proved to myself that I can do it. Oh, my gosh. Nobody just all of a sudden gives me a badge that's like, you can be confident now. That's not how it works. You just are like, oh, wow, I've proven it.
[30:35] Tiffany: That's cool. Exactly. I have a very crazy story. I feel like it dates back before this, but when I was in college, I took a speech class like you do, and I did it at 07:00 in the morning or 08:00 in the morning. I think 08:00 is probably when it started. And my first speech, like, I finished. I didn't look at the class the whole time. And then I finished, I'm looking down at my paper and then I just run from the podium and I feel like before this, I had to speak in front of a small group and like, burst into so, like, public speaking was one of my biggest fears. It's not even a fear anymore. And so a way I got around it was in college, I became a tour guide where I had to in front of groups of people. And I went to college at Flagler College in St. Augustine. It is in this beautiful hotel that's very historical. We had hundreds of people coming through a day, and sometimes my group would be like 50 to 80 people. And I'm not a loud person, and I didn't have a microphone, so I'd have to scream to be heard. And I'm like, at some point I started just saying, if you need to hear me, just come stand next to me. You're just here for the views because I can't talk that loud. But I sort of just made it. What is it, like exposure therapy? I just did the thing over and over again until it became second nature, and now I'm terrified. But I've learned how to make it so I don't sound terrified.
[32:06] Rachel: Yes. Oh, I totally understand. I used to work in customer service and I don't know if you get this listeners from the work that I do, but I have very intense social anxiety, and I don't like being in around groups of people. Actually, last night we were at the mall taking pictures with mall Santa, and I needed to ask the attendant lady a question about our reservation, and I couldn't do it. My husband was like, just ask her. And I was like, I don't want to bother her.
[32:38] Tiffany: She's just doing her job.
[32:39] Rachel: And he was like, she's just standing there. This is her job. Ask her. I'm not going to you anyway. That's my social anxiety. So my husband asked her the question for me. But when I worked in customer service, it was very stressful, and you are involved with lots of people all the time. So that was my first kind of exposure therapy, was talking to people over the phone for customer support. And then I, at my next job, taught mandatory compliance training. So I did lots of health and safety trainings, and it used to terrify me because they were like three hour trainings. It was boring as fuck. Everybody hated it. But I had to do it for my job. So I would put on safety gear. Like, I bought like, a reflective vest. I would put on a helmet and safety goggles, and I started thinking of it as, like, a performance, and it wasn't me. It was just the teacher performing. And so that got me through, like, four years of health and safety trainings. And then one day someone asked me, they were like, how are you so confident doing this? And I'm like, I'm not just showing up. We're just doing it because that's how it works. You just got to do it. And then it feels better and it's not as scary, and you get through it, and then you look back and you're like, holy cow, look at all that I accomplished because I didn't let fear hold me back.
[34:05] Tiffany: Yeah. If Beyonce can have Sasha Fierce, then we can have our persona. Mine's Sawyer, and she's way more badass than me. Her pronouns aren't even she her. They're more badass than me. But yes, creating a persona to get you through writing a book is such a good idea, and I think we should all have them, and especially because when the book finishes, that's not it. So many people will say, my dream is to get my book on the shelf. What after that? So being a writer and author is you have to promote your book. You have to do school visits, if you write for kids, book readings, all of that. Having a persona to help get you through that is just such a little.
[34:54] Rachel: Handy tool, little hack there's. Your technique for the day is make a persona that you can just say, oh, well, this version of Rachel, this version of Tiffany Sawyer, they can show up and do this editing today. They're not me. They're just figuring it out as they go. They're not worried. Duh.
[35:13] Tiffany: Perfect.
[35:14] Rachel: Let's do that. Give that a try. What else? What other techniques and practice? If we pull this back to self editing, we had, like, low mindset, tangent, which is very important, very helpful. What other practices can we use to help ensure that core message, the emotional pull of our story, remains strong and intact and that we're not losing sight of the story that we're telling because we're getting so in the weeds with all these changes.
[35:42] Tiffany: Yeah, I think the biggest thing that will help is understanding what your book is about and what you're trying to say. And I know that everyone tells me, I just want to entertain, and I'm like, that is the sole job of a book. That's not your job to make it entertaining. The book is supposed to do that on its own. So what else are you trying to say? And I know when we say message, it can kind of feel a little bit like asop's fables, like we're trying to preachy some preachy message, but it's very subtle. The reader doesn't pick up on it. But just understanding that before you kind of dive in to the editing process is going to help. So a way to do this that I found really helpful is to kind of create a pitch. And I know that distilling your entire book into a sentence makes you want to run the other way, but I'm going to walk you through it and give you an example. First, I like to start with what I call like a what if concept, and I want to talk about why it's important. Not only does it set the stage for the entire book, it's the initial spark of inspiration that captures your imagination and the reader's interest. And a well developed concept provides clear direction for the story, helps you understand its unique identity so that you can shape it through multiple revisions. And it also is your guiding star to kind of keep you on track. Think of it as like your North Star as you're revising. Is this little one line pitch.
[37:23] Rachel: Okay?
[37:23] Tiffany: And one thing I want to point out is that because a lot of us are discovery writers and we don't like outlining, that's like a big taboo word. We don't like to think of this until deep into revisions, if at all. Like we said earlier, so many people come to us and they don't know what their book genre is, for example. So waiting this long isn't necessarily the wrong way to write, but it does mean that we have more rounds of revision to go through. So I will never, ever start a book without knowing what my concept is ever again because I found it to be so helpful. So the what if concept is like the scenario or core theme that the narrative revolves around. It is the seed from which the plot, characters and themes grow. And then we're going to turn that into a high concept. And this is a concise and attention grabbing pitch. It's a brief, one sentence description that encapsulates the essence of the book in a way that's intriguing, marketable and easy to understand. It's going to help when you want to sell the book. When you write a good one, your agent literally uses your pitch to pitch it to publishers. It's what the back copy of the book kind of uses too. So if we look at an example, I picked The Cruel Prince by Holly Black, and I picked this because there are so many fairy books and they're so popular right now. And we're going to talk about what makes this book stand out and why Holly was able to get it published. So the what if concept might look something like what if. A mortal girl witnesses the murder of her parents and is taken to live in the treacherous fairy realm, where she must navigate the intricacies of fairy politics, deal with the constant threat of danger, and find her own place of power within a world where everyone is vying for control. A little bit wordy because we're trying to throw a lot of stuff in there, but it's a big series. It has a lot of stuff happening. So then we can distill that even further. To in a fairy realm, immortal contends with political intrigue, dangers, and her own quest for power becoming a pivotal force in the tumultuous struggle for control. So I'm going to pull out her own quest for power. This is this book's unique selling proposition. If we want to get super technical, it's that unique angle. It's what makes it stand out from others. Fairy books are still incredibly popular, but Jude, the main character of The Cruel Prince, her thirst for a place in court is what drives the entire series. It's what has her making every decision that she makes throughout the entire series. So when you highlight what makes your book stand out from others, just like, it, it makes that emotional pull so much stronger. It also just makes it so grabby. We're always talking about it being like, attention grabbing and whatnot. So I know that our listeners might be like, that's great. How do I write one? So start with that what if get really big. Like, if we look at The Hunger Games, I think that Suzanne Collins has talked about in interviews how she came up with the idea because she was, like, flipping, looking at commercials, and then she was, like, watching the news and there's a war. And then she was like, okay, how can I put these two ideas together? And started with, like, a vague what if? And then you get more specific. And since when you're editing, you've already have your kind of book. Now you're kind of pulling out that what if. What if a boy and a girl fall in love. It could be vague. Then we get it more and more specific. So a way to keep an emotional pull intact that's not even talking about the pitch, necessarily harness your own obsessions and interests. What do you love about other books in this genre? What do you love in general? What gets you up in the morning or whenever you're waking up? And then how can you challenge stereotypes? Flip tropes on their head? Explore your own culture and unique view of the world? I am bisexual, and my characters are all bisexual, and I write about how.
[41:44] Rachel: They.
[41:47] Tiffany: All take tongue tied. I write about how they exist in a world where they're alienated on all sides. Don't fit in the straight community, don't fit in the queer community. So many vague assumptions are made about people who are bisexual. And I think this is something that I deeply care about and other people deeply care about. And I'm going to explore that in my books. So find what you deeply care about and put that in your books and that specificity is what helps make it more interesting and exciting.
[42:23] Rachel: Yes, absolutely. And then we use this specificity we use this work that you're doing in this exercise to guide the framework, to guide these conceptual changes through the structural changes all the way down to what's the last terminology? I'm still picturing it as like furnishing the house.
[42:45] Tiffany: Yeah. It's conceptual, structural, and stylistic.
[42:48] Rachel: Stylistic. Stylistic. Love it. Yeah. So if you're still like, I finished this draft and I don't quite know what is all the things that I care about, what's my grabby hook? How do I stand apart? This is very important to do, and you do not have to be I don't think Tiffany is saying you must be the most original thought ever that out there happened.
[43:14] Tiffany: There's no such thing as exactly.
[43:18] Rachel: But it's the heart. It's your heart behind the story. That is what's going to make it start to shine. Yeah.
[43:25] Tiffany: I like to think of it as authenticity, like, what makes you authentic and what makes people like you or make you like yourself. Or if none of those feel good, then what makes you different than the person next to you?
[43:39] Rachel: Yeah, absolutely. I love that. So how do we bring your authentic nature as the author to this story, to the heart of the story and make sure that you're pulling yourself through it? We talk about a lot how writing is most effective when it's pieces of yourself, it's catharsis, it's exploration. It's like understanding the nature of human beings, starting with you. That's when I think stories become really powerful and that's when they start to stand apart from the others in their genre. Even if the content is pretty similar, the heart's going to be different because authors, people are individual.
[44:20] Tiffany: Exactly. And what you care about is different from what I care about. Like you're a mom. I'm a cat mom. A little bit different.
[44:28] Rachel: Close. It's close. I joked about this with someone else. Parents don't come for me. Like raising a puppy is kind of similar. I mean, they're not really, obviously, but having a tiny little thing that's dependent on you for everything, it's kind of similar.
[44:46] Tiffany: Also, you can't leave alone for a long time and you constantly have to come home and restructure your whole life. It's pretty similar.
[44:53] Rachel: Yes. And they don't sleep a lot either. So you have parallels. I'm not going to say they don't exist.
[44:59] Tiffany: They exist. You said it, not me.
[45:03] Rachel: I know. Don't come at me in our emails. Leave it. It's fine. Okay. I love this. This has been such a great discussion. It can be a lot. This can be a lot. This process can be a lot. But I know you mentioned your revisions Alchemy course, so I want to hear more about that. Tell us about just your resources and how you can help someone go through this process so that they don't feel just completely overwhelmed, that they can follow this framework and all the ways that you can support someone through self editing.
[45:38] Tiffany: Yeah, absolutely. So I call it a course, but let's call it a program.
[45:44] Rachel: A program.
[45:45] Tiffany: It's a program. So it's like course meets community meets coaching because you get access to me. So I call it a twelve week kind of self guided course. And at the core, that's what it is for fiction and memoir writers who want to edit their book. And then aside from the actual material, you get access to me in a slack community where you can ask questions, you can ask the group questions because other writers are also geniuses and they can help too, and share ideas and all the things right. And then we meet monthly forever. Eventually it'll probably stop, but right now indefinitely. And we have themed kind of coaching sessions where we'll kind of go through a topic. Like we just talked about dialogue last time and talked about how to write really engaging, great, authentic dialogue. And that's not necessarily in the course, but it's something that is really important when you're editing. So we tackled that. And so I have all of these kind of recorded that you can watch as you want if you want. But yeah, I kind of set it up to walk you through how to do it. And then each kind of week we have one topic. So it starts with kind of best practices for how to edit. Kind of a little bit of what we talked about today, go a little bit deeper than that. And then narrative distance and tone and mood and genre and audience expectations and just each kind of section of each of my three stages of the editing process we go through. And I give homework if you want. You never have to do anything, right? But I'm just like here's what would make this work really well for you if you did this homework and I have workbooks, and then I have a lot of resources in the resource library, kind of with extra help if you need it. I tried really hard to give you a lot of resources and information without making it overwhelming. And I know everybody's threshold for overwhelm is different, so obviously, maybe it will feel a little overwhelming at first. But people come to me all the time, and they're like, what should I be working on right now? Here's where I'm at. And I can kind of guide and help in that way, too. I think the biggest help with this is that there is that community, and we're all rooting for each other. We're always in there being like, I cannot wait for you to finish this book. I want my hands on it right now. Chop chop.
[48:31] Rachel: Yeah.
[48:33] Tiffany: But for the most part, you kind of get in the program what you take out of it or take out what you put in. Set it backwards.
[48:43] Rachel: Awesome. I love how much you've put so much effort into this program to guide people, but hold their hand in a very good way, because, like you just said, with any type of, I think, writing program, including our own tenacious writing, the writer gets the most effect when they put in the effort. But I think you've done a great job of making it really easy to put that effort in. So you've got workbooks and you've got it guided, and you've got everything accessible to ask questions or to reach out for help. And that's when I see people succeed with programs like this, because I think a self guided course is great. We've sold them, we've had them. But that also means that it's self guided. So if you're not going to put in the effort, you're not going to get the stuff out of it. But I think with Revisions Alchemy, you've done such a good job of giving scaffolding to your students to go through this process, go through this framework with the support of people around them. And that's where success comes from. That's where you get your Hype, buddy. That's where you get your when you're about to have a little breakdown, just pop into the slack, and you're like, oh, my God, I don't know what to do. Tiffany help me. And Tiffany's like do, huh? Relief. So I love so how do people get access to that? I will put a link in the show. That's that's actually a question that I'll ask myself. There will be a link for Revisions Alchemy in the show notes. But what's your website?
[50:23] Tiffany: So virgindesignandeditorial.com. And that's B-U-R-G-E-O-N. Design and editorial. And yeah, I do want to backtrack for just a second, because you were talking about how self guided courses how many times have you done a self guided course where you just didn't finish it because you're like, I have all the time in the world to finish this. So I'm like that too. And so we're doing watch parties now where we all get together on a zoom, and then we go watch whatever module we're on, and then we can come back and talk about it or share our progress and stuff like that. And obviously everything is completely optional. So if you're like, oh, I hate people, you don't have to do that. But if you do like people, it's really fun.
[51:09] Rachel: Love it. I love it. But it's such a great way for easy accountability of like, okay, let's all show up together. But also, I'm not going to like you're not nagging them. You're not like you have to rate it or anything. Exactly. Yeah. I love it. Okay, so we're going to put a link for Tiffany's website and the Revisions Alchemy course in our show notes, and I also think Tiffany has a special little discount offer for listeners. Is that right? Yes.
[51:42] Tiffany: If you use the code story Magic, then you get $500 off of Revision Alchemy.
[51:49] Rachel: That's awesome. That's so cool. So if you are listening right now, swipe up, tap that link for Revisions Alchemy, and then use Code Story Magic to get $500 off. That's awesome. Thank you, Tiffany.
[52:02] Tiffany: Yeah, of course I want to make it as easy of a yes as possible.
[52:06] Rachel: Yes. I love it. And I know for sure that your students get so much value out of this course. Make the magic happen. We all know revisions are where the magic happen. So if this is something you're struggling with, revisions Alchemy is absolutely the program that you need to get started to go through.
[52:24] Tiffany: It like a nosy, involved person that I can't help you and then be out of your life forever. I want to be in your life for literally ever and help you every step of the way. So Revision Alchemy is so cool because I get to just be a fly on the wall, and everybody's like, we have a channel for Wins, and everybody shares when they get published and whatever they're working on, and it's just so exciting because we get to all cheer each other on.
[52:50] Rachel: I love that. I think that's also what makes you such a great coach. This is an aside. That's what makes great coaches great, because I'm the same way, where I'm just like, I'm in your life now. Ha. We're best friends. What's your address so I can send you a Christmas gift?
[53:11] Tiffany: Literally, I just was like, okay, everybody, give me your address if you want a Christmas card or just holiday card, but yeah, exactly.
[53:19] Rachel: I love it. Okay, do we have any final thoughts about self editing before we wrap up?
[53:27] Tiffany: I'm sure there's a billion, but if you take away one thing from today, just know that you kind of talked about this a little bit with, like, coaching. We're never going to tell you what to do. Our whole purpose on this planet that's so true is to kind of guide and ask questions and help you make the right decisions for you and your book and your life. So you're in control. As scary as that is, it's all up to you.
[54:03] Rachel: So do it. I love it. You're in control, so make it happen now. But you can do this. You can do this. It's possible. We can do it together. We can get through it together. And that's why we have so many amazing resources available to help you through it. Exactly.
[54:22] Tiffany: And if you want to follow me on instagram at virgin design and editorial, you can DM me, ask questions, see if it's right for you. That's totally fine. I love chatting with people because sometimes I'm like, actually, no, you should do this instead, because I'm never going to try to get you to do something that doesn't make sense for you.
[54:43] Rachel: Right, exactly. Amazing. All righty, well, don't forget to check out the show notes. We're going to have links in there for revisions. Alchemy. Get on. Tiffany's newsletter. If you do nothing else, get on Tiffany's newsletter because it's awesome and there's always amazing content in there. We'll put a link there and then go follow Tiffany at virgin design and editorial on instagram so we'll also have that link in the show notes. Thank you so much, Tiffany, for joining us today.
[55:11] Tiffany: Thanks for having me. It was so much fun.
[55:13] Rachel: 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. 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. Link in the show notes. We'll see you there. Bye.
