You’ve finished the first draft of a story. Congratulations! Whether it’s 2.5k or 250k words long, you’ve achieved something beautiful. Take the time to recognize that.
Once you’ve properly celebrated, you can begin the revision process. Some first drafts are cleaner than others, but nobody writes their perfect story on the first try. Even if you’re an architect who does a ton of preparation before you write a single word, chances are you’ll still need to clean up your work.
So where should you begin with revising your story? You probably recognize that your work has issues, however big or small, but how do you go about fixing them? The good news is this; once you’ve identified the problems with your story, fixing them is easy. As for the bad news, identifying those problems can prove difficult.
As Albert Einstein once said, “If I had an hour to solve a problem I’d spend 55 minutes thinking about the problem and 5 minutes thinking about solutions.” As such, my strategies for revising your story are designed to help you think about your work from new angles. Once you understand the problems, you can get on to crafting solutions.
1. Take Some Space
You need to identify the issues in your work, but how can you do that if you haven’t taken a step away before revising your story? You need to look on your writing with fresh eyes.
Don’t start editing the day after you finish your manuscript. Remember what I said about celebrating your achievement? Throw a party, or lay back for a while. If you can’t sit still (like me), work on other projects. Take a week, two weeks, or six months to get away. The amount of time needed will vary from person to person, story to story, and draft to draft.
For example, I finished a manuscript two weeks ago. I plan on starting on the next draft tomorrow. For the second draft, I will do no more than clean up my writing and reconcile plot holes, so I don’t need to come in so fresh.
However, once I finish that draft, I will likely wait months before I start on a third. Since I expect to make large alterations between the second and third drafts, I’ll need to come in as fresh as possible.
2. Remember Your Inspiration
What was the original impetus for writing this story? It might’ve been a character, a scene, a setting, or a spaceship. Remember what magic filled your heart, what excitement rushed through your veins, that brought you to sit down at the keyboard and engage in such a grueling task. Is that magic still present? Does that magic ring throughout the whole of the work? If not, where can you try to infuse that magic when revising your story?
Readers will know if your voice is disingenuous. And in my experience, the most genuine part of any story is the first seed from which the rest of the writing blooms. If you can reconnect with that seed, you can establish stronger roots. And that foothold will allow your story to blossom.
3. Map Your Story
Maybe you planned out your plot beats before you started writing. Even so, I doubt everything turned out exactly as expected. Details both small and large change as you write. So before you start revising your story, identify its major points. Define the journey.
Do you take any detours? Are they necessary? What do they add? Could you achieve the same end without leaving the path?
Do the stakes increase as the story goes on? Does your protagonist find themselves in situations of greater and greater consequence until they’re forced to confront their worst fears?
What promises do you make to your reader at the beginning of the story? Do you make good on those promises at the end of the story?
With your roadmap, you’ll act more confidently as a navigator for your readers when revising your story.
4. Find Readers
Eventually, you’ll have to let other people read what you’ve written. Terrifying, I know. But no one can look at your story with fresher eyes than someone who knows nothing about it. So, once you’ve written a second or third draft, find beta readers. They can be friends, family, industry professionals, or random people who you pay in Milky Way bars. (Side note: please pay people adequately for their labor in a government-backed currency. To my knowledge, Milky Way bars do not satisfy this requirement.)
Have your readers tell you what they honestly thought of your story. Not how they would’ve written your story, but how they enjoyed it as a reader. Did they feel the way you wanted them to feel? Why, or why not? What could you change to rectify this?
With the four tools I’ve described in this article, you should have a decent idea of where you might begin in revising your story. If you’ve already taken your time away and are ready to jump back in, happy editing! And if not, enjoy some well-deserved time off.
– AJG
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