Edit A Month: Editing Versus Revision (And Why It Matters)
You’ll notice that despite the title of Edit A Month, I end up talking about revision most of the time. That’s because your first crack at your rough draft is going to be revision, not editing. While the two words are used interchangeably throughout the process, there are some key differences.
Revision is the process in which you go through and rewrite, reorganize, and start hammering your story into book shape. It’s where major changes are made and plots are rehashed.
Editing is more about making grammatical, wording, and visual structuring to your book to make it more readable. While important, it shouldn’t be the first thing you focus on.
While you’ll be doing both, what I really stress doing is focusing on revision first. You don’t want to perfect your opening only to realize you have to completely change it later (having done this, it sucks). You want to find those plot holes and unnecessary characters before you try to pretty them up, otherwise you’ll be wasting your time. Not that you aren’t going to do both at once - you are - but don’t stress editing too much.
There’s two main jobs I want you to leave for the very end, once the revision is good and done, and that’s perfecting your beginning and your end. I’ve said this multiple times, but if the rest of the story isn’t worth reading, all that energy you poor into your hook and conclusion will be wasted. Fix is later so you don’t have to change the perfect words for a story they no longer fit.
If you don’t have it yet, make a list of all your major plot points, big scenes, character turning points, and plot twists. You’re going to checklist your story, starting with:
Does this make sense? Does everything work by the rules you’ve set up, or have you pulled an of Because The Plot Says So? Did you change the way your magic works just to get one scene going? If you notice it standing out, the reader will too.
Are your characters consistent? Do they act in the ways they should being the people they are, or do you commit character assassination in act three to get things where you want? Again, it’s super easy to notice when a character does something that seems to go against everything they’ve been up to that point.
Do you need all of those characters? This is a trickier one that might have to go through a few close revisions, but if you end up with similar characters or just ones that don’t make sense including because they don’t relate to the plot other than doing one thing, you’re going to have to work on that.
What are your subplots? How do they work out? Did you drop any major threads?
Where is your setting? How many locations do you have? How much time passes? Time is a huge thing that novelists tend to forget, so it’s good to know if it’s been a week or just half a day since the last event, just to be sure you don’t step on your own toes. I try to include what day and when in my notes so I can always look at them.
This isn’t everything, of course, but it’s a start. Tomorrow we’ll dive right in with the circle method of revision!
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