Lore & LilacStage 04 of 05
Revise
Turn the draft into the book you meant
Revision works best from the outside in: first the shape of the whole story, then scenes, then sentences. This stage covers reading your draft with fresh eyes, making structural changes without losing your nerve, and checking continuity — the facts, dates and secrets a reader keeps track of even when you don't.
Polishing a sentence in a scene you later cut is the most common wasted effort in revision. Big things first.
Guides in this stage
The diagnostic read: seeing your draft as a reader would
Read your finished draft once without fixing anything, and come away with a map of the book you actually wrote.
6 min read
Fix structure before sentences: cutting, moving and merging scenes
Settle which scenes exist and where they sit before you spend your best hours polishing the prose inside them.
7 min read
Continuity checks: facts, timelines and who knows what
Readers notice when a book disagrees with itself; here is how to check yours methodically, one kind of slip at a time.
7 min read
Key concepts
- Revision passOne read-through of a manuscript focused on a single kind of problem, such as structure, continuity, dialogue or line-level polish.
- Reverse outlineAn outline made after drafting that records what each scene actually contains, so you can see the book's real structure.
- Developmental editAn editor's big-picture assessment of a manuscript's story, structure, characters, pacing and theme, rather than its sentences.
- Continuity errorAn inconsistency within a story, where a detail established in one passage contradicts the same detail somewhere else.
- Timeline errorA mistake in the order, timing or duration of events, such as impossible travel, wrong ages or days that don't add up.
- Kill your darlingsAdvice to cut passages you love when they don't serve the story, however well written they are.
- Reading aloudRevising by speaking your text out loud to hear rhythm, repetition, awkward phrasing and dialogue that doesn't sound real.
- Style sheetA running record of one manuscript's spelling, capitalization, naming, number and formatting decisions, used to keep it consistent.