Three-Document Revision Strategy

The Fast Track To Revising Your Manuscript While Raising the Bar On Your Writing

*To TL;DR through this post, scroll down to the subtitles for the scoop!

When I finished the first draft of Slanting Towards the Sea in July ‘23, it was… well, a workable mess.

My novel has two timelines which weren’t balanced at that point — there was no cadence (rhythm) between the past and present storyline (I needed to hone and trim both, and then decide how to braid them together, and then also make sure the transitions between the two work, and be careful that the back-and-forth falls into a nice pattern and a pace that’s well-balanced…). The ending of the novel was totally wrong — I knew this wasn’t how I wanted the book to end, but I didn’t have any idea how to frame the type of ending that I actually wanted (let alone what happens in it). The voice was inconsistent in places too (let’s just say you could see I was reading Elizabeth Strout while I was writing some paragraphs, and Barbara Kingsolver as I was writing others 😅).

Like I said, a mess.

But it was the beginning of July, and I had a few agent calls scheduled for the end of that month, as I’ve purchased a ticket to Muse & the Marketplace conference. It was also July — in the sense that the kids were not in school, and that it’s the month I always run my Novel With Meaning Program, so my work schedule was packed. July also means the height of summer in Croatia, when all you want to do is swim, swim, swim and stroll around in the evenings with ice-cream or corn on the cob or drinking cold beer on one of the summer terraces. Meaning, less-than-ideal working conditions.

My family and I were at my mom’s summer house, and this made the work even harder, because—small house and five people to avoid 😏.

But then something happened that I could, later on, only refer to as a visit from the muse.

Despite less than perfect conditions, I managed to revise the first 2/3 of the MS before July was out—into, basically, the very version that got me both an agent and a publisher a few months later. At the beginning of August, I also realized what the ending should be, and by September, the book was, narratively-speaking, done. In the next five weeks, I gave it a couple of more passess for word-choice, cadence, style and grammar, before querying in mid-October, but really, the massive job of straightening out that mess of that first draft was done in less than two months.

It was a major overwrite: a complete overhaul of 2/3 of the MS, and a complete rewrite of the last 1/3. All within 1,5 month, and with limited writing time.

If you’ve followed my journey, you know what happened next. The book got 9 full requests out of 24 queries; 3 offers of representation—all three agents agreeing that the novel was submission ready; the book sold in an auction within one month of being out on sub.

So when my editor said she wanted to do three passes before August this year (meaning, in a period of 4 months), I thought—gosh, I really could use another visit from that muse. Never in my life have I revised the MS that fast and that well (hence—the muse theory). Revisions had always been a gruesome, long-lasting process for me, often with questionable outcome (ie. dubious improvement).

But as I thought more about it, I started discerning patterns in what I had done the previous summer, until it became crystal clear—there was never a muse at all. Just work, and what turned out to be a pretty clear-cut strategy that I could rinse-and-repeat whenever I wanted to.

The Three-Document Revision Strategy

Here is a step-by-step account of what I did:

1. I HAD CLARITY ON WHAT NEEDED TO BE DONE

   My MS was a mess, but I understood what needed to be done to shape it up. Granted, I’m a book coach, so I can turn that editorial part of my brain on easier than most other writers. I knew my storylines (past and present) weren’t balanced, transitions between them were off; I knew that the ending was all wrong. And I didn’t know how exactly to end my book, but I knew what type of ending I wanted it to have, how I wanted my reader to feel when they finished reading.

   This, I understand, is the hardest step. But even if you’re not a book coach, there are ways of getting clearer on what needs to be done. Read your book as if it were someone else’s and you were reading it for fun: see where you lost interest as a reader, ask yourself why, and what it needs instead. Be open to noticing inconsistencies or issues. You can also use beta-readers, critique partners, or hire a developmental editor. The point is, go into this revision knowing what needs to be done.

2. NEW DOCUMENT + A PACT THAT ONLY THE GOOD STUFF GOES IN

   With my previous book, when I went into revision, I always made a copy of the draft I had just finished, and then tried to do edits within that new document. But doing substantial edits in a 350-page document is hard and unwieldy. Moreover, that unwieldiness primes your brain to keep as much of the material you already have, because the sheer length and size of the document makes the changes feel unmanageable.

   This time though, I didn’t edit the Draft 1 document. I opened a new document and made a pact with myself. ONLY THE STUFF THAT REALLY WORKS GOES INTO THE NEW DOCUMENT. No exceptions. It only goes in if it freaking shines.

   Sometimes, this meant I could copy an entire chapter, and make small adjustments inside (adjustments no bigger than word choices and sentence-level alignment; tweaks basically). But more often than not, it meant taking only bits and pieces of the material that worked in the first draft, and writing the rest out anew. But because of the step 1 (knowing what needed to be done) the rewrite felt manageable—and also, because new material was being produced, it even felt creatively exciting (unlike the drag that revision often feels like).

3. KEEP A SCRAP DOCUMENT FOR SCENE DEVELOPMENT

   The trickiest scenes were the ones where I had a lot to save while also having to rewrite or restructure them significantly. Instead of copying the entire chapter from the original First Draft document into the new (clean) Draft 2 document, I had a ‘scrap document’ handy. In it, I could play with the scene in a million different ways, trying stuff out, copying it so that I had multiple versions saved in case I needed to back up. Only when I was absolutely satisfied with it, would I copy it in the clean Draft 2 document—because, again, the hard rule was ONLY THE STUFF THAT REALLY WORKS GOES INTO THE NEW DOCUMENT.

Why this approach works:

1. A shift in your allegiance: instead of being loyal to the original draft (we writers are oh-so-protective of our sentences!), you shift your allegiance to the story. You stop trying to bend backwards to try to save that pretty wording you have in that one paragraph, but that’s, quite honestly, messing up your character arc.

2. Keeping the document open-ended makes the edits more manageable. For example, you copy one scene that works from your Draft 1 and then you realize that it needs an intermittent scene before you can move on. The open-endedness of your document allows you to think only about what your story needs now, and not about how you will adjust what you have later on to fit in with that new addition.

3. You hold yourself to a higher writing standard. By accepting the hierarchy between the documents (Draft 2 being above Draft 1, in that not all things in Draft 1 make the cut for Draft 2), you hold your Draft 2 to a higher standard, and your writing is better for it.

4. You can monitor your process more easily. You’re 15 pages in? That’s great, because they are 15 very clean pages that made the cut.

5. The scrap document allows you to play until you get it right, without compromising the original document, or making a mess out of new one.

I ended up doing the same with my first round of revision with Simon & Schuster, and it turned out to be a repeatable process. Revision is never easy—there were times, especially mid-way through, when I wanted to pull all my hair out. But I can honestly say that this approach is what saved my sanity in those moments. Go easy. Chapter by chapter. Only what needs to go in, goes in, and only when it shines. And the best part? No muse needed at all!

My Novel With Meaning Program is open for enrollment. Only two seats left, so hurry to save your spot! Learn more about the program here.