Are You Writing, or Are You Revising? Some Do’s & Don’ts

Here’s a writing joke: The worst part about sitting down to write your first draft is the fact the page is blank, and you have to come up with the darn thing. The worst part about revising is…your first draft.

Ha, ha! I’m hilarious.

In fact, the best part of revising is that you have a first draft, but I’m getting ahead of myself.

Here’s the thing about writing: there’s the first draft, and then there’s everything else. Your writing techniques and priorities differ depending on where you are. So let’s explore these two processes, and their do’s and don’ts.

Writing and…everything else

“Writing” is starting from scratch. “Everything else” includes edits, rewrites, additions, deletions, you name it.

You can call what you’re working on your second draft or your fifth, but honestly, after the first draft, it doesn’t matter anymore. Where do you draw the line between the subsequent iterations?

Are you counting only those times you go through the manuscript from top to bottom? To be frank, more authors could stand to do this. It would elevate the level of their work.

There’s only one question, and that is this: are you creating the story, or are you improving it? Habits that make a first draft possible are terrible during revision, and techniques that make revision better can totally kill your first draft process. Basically, a do for writing is a don’t for revision, and vice versa.

The first draft

The most important job of your first draft is to give you:

• A beginning, a middle, and an end—in other words, a complete story/narrative, and some semblance of organization.
• Important characters and the important things they’re up to.
• Key details that make sense of how the beginning, middle, and end fit together.

We often call first drafts “rough” drafts because that’s what they might very well be—rough. The story might be rough, the organization might be rough, the sentences might be rough.

Having a compelling first draft makes everything else easier, of course, but once a first draft exists, its most important work is done.

Because the first draft is a generative process, the following techniques are useful:

• Write as much as possible.
• Don’t think too much.
• Keep re-reading to a minimum; do only as much as you need to remind yourself of where you are.
• If you need to do research, do it separately from writing.
• Don’t delete the material on the same day that you write it.
• Incorporate obstacles and stakes, and character or reader problems/wants/needs.
• The order you write the story is irrelevant. You can rearrange it later.

This is in almost complete contradiction to what you want to do when you revise.

The revision

Revision’s most important job is to make the first draft better. Revision is the opportunity to improve:

• Organization.
• Characterization.
• Dialogue.
• Scene or setting.
• Transitions.
• Factual basis (more research?).
• Motivation and rationale.
• Plot.
• Tone.
• Word choice.
• Sentence structure.
• Repetition.
• Grammar.
• Lack of clarity.
• …anything else you can think of.

Revision is literally seeing again. You will get nowhere unless you have a first draft to look at.

Rather than generating words, the revision asks you think about the words you’re using. Rather than plowing forward, the revision circles back, asking: Is this good? How could it be better?

Because of this, ALL of the techniques I listed as useful in the first draft process are the opposite of what will help you during revision. Techniques that help you during revision include:

• Re-reading, and more than once.
• Referring to outside sources to fact-check or fill out your research, as necessary.
• Deleting what doesn’t work.
• Thinking about whether your book is long enough, or “too short” for your genre—and working that word count.
• Re-ordering material.
• Checking that every setup has a payoff, and vice versa.
• Asking for feedback.*

*Unless you have experience and are talking to someone who also has experience, DO NOT SHOW ANYONE YOUR FIRST DRAFT AND ASK FOR FEEDBACK BEFORE IT IS DONE.

And of course, re-reading your manuscript from top to bottom is a revision technique, and should go without saying. See my post on the Art of Revision for more revision tips.

Bottom Line

Habits and techniques that are good for you while writing can backfire during revision. Habits and techniques that are excellent for revision can stop your first draft dead in its tracks. Generating material is a sensitive process, and you mostly need to get out of your own way. Revision, on the other hand, requires you to think critically. Know what it is you’re trying to do, so you can choose the most effective tools to help you.

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Want help creating or revising your book? A book structure intensive can get things started, and editing makes it better.

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