Suggestions For Revising and Self-Editing

My next masterclass on Monday 15 December is devoted to Endings, not only discussing the craft of The End and bringing a story to a rewarding conclusion, but also exploring the work that happens when you come to the end of a draft and embark upon the task of revision.

Much of the work in self-editing and revising lies in tricking yourself in ways to see your work anew. In this post I outline suggestions for things to try out in your own practice.

Approaching revision and drafting in stages

After completing a first draft, it’s a good idea to put the work to one side for a span of time. I suggest at least a month of keeping your distance. 

If changes occur to you while you’re away from your book, you can add them to a list of notes rather than going back into the manuscript. Perhaps devote a special notebook to handwritten notes, but also keep a document in Notes or an app on your phone for jotting down ideas on the move.

Also bear in mind that it’s unlikely that you can tackle everything in one reread or draft, from larger structural matters down to style and words at the sentence level. You might plan on doing separate read-throughs or drafts for different aspects of craft (see below).

Reading and reviewing your own writing

When you are ready, print out a copy of the manuscript for reading and reviewing. 

I recommend printing in the style of the facing pages of a book (see below). I suggest formatting a draft so that it’s landscape, two columns, justified, single-spaced, and uses an elegant bookish font such as 11pt Baskerville or Garamond or something that you haven’t used in previous drafts. See your work anew.

Play around with the Layout menu till you achieve something that vaguely looks like a spread in a book; it’s a subtle step in starting to read your own writing as a book rather than a manuscript.

And don’t forget to paginate – page numbers are invaluable yet easily overlooked reference points.

You could also read on your Kindle. You can mail a document containing your manuscript to your Kindle account, and if you don’t have a Kindle, you can use its app on a phone or a tablet. Then with another subtle tricking of the self you can read your own book as if it were any other on your Kindle. (And I don’t think you even have to shop at Amazon to take advantage of this service!)

On your first read, resist the temptation to do anything other than read. Take your time, make a cup of tea, sit in an armchair and read as a reader, immersing yourself in the text (right-brained, crudely speaking) rather than worrying analytically about what you might need to fix (getting more left-brained). 

If you flag things you might want to change, simply add a Post-it tab or pencil a cross in the margin. Or maybe jot a brief note in your notebook – just enough to jog your memory later. You can also, e.g., highlight words and text on Kindle without shifting gear too much.

But try not to get sidetracked into making edits; as much as you can continue the task of seamlessly engaging with your book as an experience of reading, rather than creating or editing. Just read – just review. See it again – be present with it.

Crafting your content 

After reading your manuscript write a summary: of what you have already, not what you plan on changing. Take a simple snapshot of your material in whatever state it is. Use a Word document to summarise your book chapter by chapter, e.g., in note form as a bullet list or with a paragraph for every chapter. If you have gaps or identify points that need fixing, [you can add a note about this in square brackets].

Depending on what your book needs, separate read-throughs could pay specific attention to different aspects of craft and content: characterisation and setting; storylines and plot points, including setups, through lines of narrative and payoffs; structure and pacing, including part and chapter breaks.

A read for voice and style might come later, after you’ve addressed bigger sweeps of story.

As an exercise to evaluate pacing and potential engagement, try this revising experiment: A Gift on Every Page. Collate what you find into a list (Word document or Excel): plot developments, character insights, juicy dialogue, taste of setting, lyrical prose. You might like to colour code different gifts in different colours or columns.

It also helps to identify a narrative focus. For example, you could consider story types in the checklists from Ronald Tobias’s 20 Master Plots, and use them to evaluate what you have already (in your summary and list of gifts) and also to assess ways in which you might need to bring a more of a certain shape or emphasis to the story. Sometimes material needs to be pruned or tightened, and finding a story type can really help in figuring out not only what aspects of the story might need trimming but also what else might need developing.

For further detailed ideas, see Revising: A Craft Checklist.

Mapping a way forward

Write a revised outline. This is the plan you can follow in creating your next draft.

Sometimes it helps to start planning by making notes using index cards or Post-its or, if you prefer, Excel or Scrivener or a mind-map app such as SimpleMind. You could colour-code scenes or sections, e.g., for different character points of view or settings that are important in shaping your story. Organise, shuffle and reshuffle until you achieve a pattern that works.

Then you can translate such notes into a chapter breakdown in continuous narrative form, e.g., in a Word document, with a paragraph for every chapter. Fleshing out the story in condensed form can help you feel through how everything holds together.

Then make a revision plan: when and how you are going to expand your revised outline into the next draft. Be realistic. Consider your daily and weekly schedules (and holidays), as well as blocks of more intensive writing time. Set a target, e.g., a chapter a week or a word count per day. If you have the time, it can really help to break the back of a project by organising mini retreats where you accomplish the editing and rewriting of significant chunks of story.

You could input changes for each read-through as you go, or you might prefer to collate notes for each read, later adding them to a master copy that will be your working document for editing.

For that master copy, you might want to print out the manuscript in its regular professional format (portrait, double-spaced, 12pt Times New Roman, etc.) and start to make edits by hand there. Then you can input those edits into a fresh draft in a document saved with a new name.

Alternatively, some writers go straight to the screen and do their edits there.

Depending on the changes you have to make, you could also think about doing a Retype Draft.

Be sure to save each draft using a unique document name. You can save the last draft with Save As and using a new document name.

Testing your work on readers

Along the way you’ll probably want to seek feedback from valued readers. 

It makes sense to have reread your manuscript before sharing with your readers; even if you’re not doing serious editing at this point, it probably won’t hurt to tidy up the writing, adding any necessary clarifications and also gaining your own sense of where you might be. It’s understandable to want the gratification of someone reading your writing and telling you what they think of it right away, but I always feel it’s worth taking control of your work at the start, rather than deferring to outside opinions right away. 

Also, trusted feedback is precious, so respect your readers’ time by showing them something that’s ready for reading. 

It’s also useful to line up different readers for different future drafts. Some readers are great for the bigger picture and character arcs, while someone who has good proofreading skills will be useful on a later polish. 

Some readers might be trusted beta readers, another might be a professional editor doing a manuscript review or a developmental edit – though this is not a requirement. Above all, seek recommendations of readers who’re experienced in your area of writing and who will know what feedback will be helpful.

Find more ideas in my post Working With Feedback On Your Writing.

I am sure there are also ways in which you could use AI as a reader, but I’m a bit bored with AI or maybe just trying to ignore it for now. So let’s just ignore it here too! In my brief explorations of its efficacy some things are impressive but overall I feel its findings can be a bit lifeless and even wrong-headed relative to the useful input of a valued flesh-and-blood reader.

Exploring where and how your book might take shape in the world

A synopsis is the selling document you will use to pitch and sell your final draft. It’s not quite the same thing as a summary or an outline. Writing a synopsis is a special skill, and is very much designed with readers in mind, and it might be a useful exercise in identifying a commercial focus for your story. Here is some good advice on writing synopses from Curtis Brown Creative. 

You might also want to write cover copy that you’d find on books in bookshops. It’s most likely that a publisher will want to create their own version, and professional copywriters are usually very good at coming up with pithy and persuasive words that conjure up the spirit of a book. But having a go yourself can be very instructive, not least in exploring your material at a very basic level. What’s at stake, and where and especially for whom?

You could also create a mood board of cover images. Pay a visit to a bookshop and investigate cover styles that appeal to you and embody the impression you wish your book to make. Again, a publisher will have expert designers, but this can be a useful exercise in conceiving your book from fresh perspectives at a nonverbal and visual level.

Polishing your later drafts

Reading your writing aloud is a tried and tested method of revising, particularly at later stages once you’ve made larger macro edits and are paying attention to the language at a micro level: the rhythm, the music, the feel of the words in the mouth. Your natural speaking voice can catch unnecessary word repetitions, clunky phrasing, or those long sentences that leave you breathless. You’ll also find ways to smooth the writing out when it’s needed.

You can also listen to your own work. I’ve known of beta readers and writing groups whose greatest value has come from reading each other’s work aloud so that the writer can hear how their own work is expressed by others and lands.

A more practical approach in Word is to use Read Aloud in the Review toolbar. In Apple Pages you can use Edit > Speech > Start Speaking. I find it useful to listen to a Word or Pages document on my phone, when necessary pausing the audio to make edits in a newly saved document on my computer.

Trusting your own vision 

At some point you will have to stop editing. This, to my mind, is mostly a matter of trust – trusting yourself, trusting your instincts, trusting your own vision. This might involve clearly identifying your vision in the first place, which can take time and be a journey of its own. 

Throughout, if you get stuck, try the notebook practice of Field Work. Work out your problem on the page – write your own notes processing where you are, or write into the world of your book in the voice of your narrator or characters to see if you can flesh out what you might need to do. 

It’s possible that the ongoing work of drafting and editing might seed doubts, and feedback from beta readers as well as professionals can sometimes feel overwhelming or annoying. Again, come back to your own vision: what you can do, what you want to do.

At such points it can be clarifying to write yourself a brief mission statement, or to create a personal manifesto for your book.

You might repeat some or all of these stages for future drafts.

It’s best not to rush matters. If you are in a rush: ask yourself why you are rushing – you could even explore this in your notebook.

Inevitably, more haste can slow things down in the long run. I see so many writers rush unready writing into submission when a few months of sensible revision would have elevated their manuscripts; frustration and disappointment follow, not least because agents and publishers can be slow in responding anyway. Creative energies get jammed.

And finally

I’ve raised all sorts of ideas here, and if you follow everything I suggest you might labour things too much. It’s possible to make heavy work out of editing. We know after all that plenty of books get published with very little editing at all!

So be serious about improving your work in accordance with your own wishes, but also try to have fun with revision. Be playful and experimental, and give free rein to your imagination in trying out new things, but don’t overthink things and get in a tangle. Always come back to your original inspirations and check in on your evolving intentions.

And above all remember your book has to move a reader. A book has to be felt as well as read.

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My class Endings on Monday 15 December will discuss some of these matters as well as what it takes to craft an effective conclusion for a story.

I’m also planning courses on self-editing and publishing for 2026. If you’re interested, you can register interest here – give me a few lines about your project and what you’re hoping to achieve.