How I Tackle Edits and Attempt to Stay Sane and Organized in the Process
How I Tackle Edits and Attempt to Stay Sane and Organized in the Process
Reverse Outlining, Tackling Feedback, and more!
Receiving edit notes—whether it's from an early critique partner, multiple beta readers, or your agent/editor—is always a deeply emotional and vulnerable process. It's a unique tension that lives inside your mind: you know changes are needed, you know feedback will likely make your MS better, but why am I being a huge baby and a little sad or mad about these notes?
It can be a little (or a lot, tbh) overwhelming. Sometimes feedback comes in the form of 300 in-line comments from a beta reader, or a 12 page single-spaced letter from an editor. Sometimes you're only working with a couple paragraphs of reactions, sometimes you're given super detailed examples of what to fix and how to fix it. It really varies!
I've found that the following process works to help me a) not freak out and b) get a good handle on everything I need to do, and not miss stuff.
A quick caveat—this is what I do for larger development/structural edits. Times when I’m really elbows-deep in the guts of my manuscript!
GETTING READY TO EDIT
Before I dive into edits, the first thing I do is prepare a reverse outline. This is a great step to do before you get your edit letter (if, for instance, you know your agent/editor will be sending one out in 2 weeks or so) or before you dive into beta feedback.
A reverse outline lays out, at a high level, what happens in your manuscript, broken out chapter by chapter.
Chapter 1
Scene 1
FMC wakes up and talks to her father
Scene 2
Villain wakes up and begins plotting with his accomplice
(Sorry for the terrible examples, this is not a good way to start a book!!!)
Try to use concise bullets to describe the key events of each scene—you want to be able to easily skim and get a sense of what happens where in your book.
The goal here is to create a key so that you're easily able to look up an event and hone in on what pages this occurs on. This also gives you an eagle-eyed roadmap of your book, and can help you iron things out later!
At this point, the reverse outline should focus on the current state of the manuscript; don't worry (yet) about pointing out plot holes, etc!
The beauty of reverse outlines is that they can be tailored to what you need. For example, my book, THE FOREST BLEEDS, takes place over the course of 11 days. This meant everything had to be tightly mapped out—and every 3 days, someone would die. My reverse outline was not only organized by chapter, but also by days, so I could make sure I was doing the math correctly and everything shook out in its proper sequence!
READ THE EDIT LETTER, THEN WAIT
After I get my edit letter or notes, I read through, then WAIT. At minimum, for a full day. Ideally, a little longer.
Why? A lot of times, I know I have a knee-jerk reaction. Especially if I'm on a later draft of my MS, if I see a mountain of comments/feedback, I might get sad or defensive.
Oh my god I should just throw the entire manuscript out entirely, change my name, and move to the woods. No, I don't actually need to change that. Did they even read the book?
The funny part about editing: no matter how much I'm prepared for feedback, that first 24 hours, I still stress out. IT'S NORMAL.
Taking a day or two gives my brain the time to percolate and start separating out what actually resonated with me, and what's still feeling weird in my head.
BREAK DOWN THE PROBLEMS
A lot of times, I get a bit overwhelmed at the sheer scope of work there is to do, so I start organizing everything into more bite-sized next steps.
To do this, I use a spreadsheet to keep everything organized, then start combing through my edit letter and in-line notes. A blank version of my editing spreadsheet is available HERE—feel free to make a copy and make it your own!
My first step is to try to identify the higher-level edit categories. If you're working off an edit letter, then a lot of times it'll already be broken out into some broader categories. If you're working off of beta reader notes, then you may be creating these as you're sifting through in-line comments.
I try to get a little more specific than the generic edit categories that we see, like "Pacing" or "Character Development".
For example, in my last developmental edit, my big categories were: "Magic System", "FMC/Villain Relationship", "FMC Backstory", "Villain Development", "Science", and "[Character D] Impact".
In my spreadsheet, I have six columns: "Category", "Problem", "Change", "Chapter/Location", "Edit Type", and "Status".
Once I have the categories, I start filling in the problems that have been pointed out in the edit letter.
At this stage, it's totally normal for a lot of my "solution" cells to be blank. Sometimes, I just need a longer time to think through bigger problems! I'll start tackling the areas I know I can first, and then come back later. Keeping a placeholder in my spreadsheet also makes sure that I don't lose sight of anything, because I have mashed potatoes for brains.
This is where your reverse outline really comes in handy! It's a lot easier to reference your edit letter, then use your reverse outline as a table of contents, so you can jump directly to the section you're thinking of.
After I've identified the big categories that I need to be editing, I like to do a pass of the MS that is only highlighting the lines. I assign every category its own color (for example, world building is yellow) and I'll highlight everywhere I see that needs an edit in that category. I don't do any editing at this stage—it's only marking up the MS on places I know (at this stage) need to be changed.
Again, because I have the brain of a small shrimp, I've always found this step to be really helpful because I can scroll through pages quickly and see if I've missed any changes I need to make.
ACTUALLY FIGURING OUT WHAT EDITS TO MAKE
This is where things get really nebulous, because obviously every MS is unique, everyone's situation is different, etc. I thought it could be helpful to break down an edit note I got on a recent short story and how I addressed it.
*Note - obviously a short story is a much smaller scale than a novel, but in this instance, I had a word count constraint! I also didn't want to spoil anything in any of my books (just in case, lol)
This story followed Nok, a woman who was grieving the loss of her husband and her father, whose mother started acting... strange.
One of the main points of feedback I got was that the ending felt a bit abrupt.
The first thing I had to do was figure out why the ending seemed so abrupt. And I realized that from scene to scene, the first 90% of the story was a slower burn, but the last 10% went from 0-100 pretty quickly.
It ends with a scene of Nok, who had been transforming into a cursed monster, accepting her fate and begging her best friend, Ot, to save her child. But instead, Ot kills Nok and her child to protect the town.
I realized two things:
There needed to be more of a reason Nok comes to terms with her fate. Throughout the story, she made a lot of terrible choices out of grief and desperation - she protects her mom, even though it was her mom's choices that turned them both into (literal) monsters. The ending needed more of that desperation to feel in line with the rest of the story.
We needed more depth between Nok and Ot's relationship, to make that final scene even more of a gut punch. There were a few lines alluding to them being long-time friends, but most of the character interiority was spent on Nok grieving her father and husband.
With that, I ended up making the following changes:
I wrote a new scene before the last scene detailing Nok's frantic race to try to escape before the mob came for her, but she gives up when she realizes she's too far gone, because her baby no longer recognizes her.
Before everything goes downhill in the story, I added another conversation between Nok and Ot where Ot is begging Nok to let her help.
Wove a few lines throughout the tense scenes to reference Nok being as good as Ot's sister, Nok growing up running between their houses, and more.
And to support all of these changes, I went through the entire story with a fine-tooth comb and chopped every extraneous word and detail I could.
Again, this is all on a much smaller scale, but this is why I rely on my edit spreadsheet, reverse outline, and highlighting system.
One change can have a lot of cascading effects throughout the entire MS, and this is where the reverse outline comes in handy! It lets you see your story at an eagle-eyed view, but at a level deeper than your synopsis (and truly, who likes their synopsis???), so you can spot those ripple effects sooner.
It’s also a great tool when you’re trying to edit for something like pacing. If you’ve heard that the middle of your book slows down, take a look at what happens in those chapters. If the bullet points don’t seem all that important—maybe, for example, it’s a lot of nice character-relationship scenes, but the plot only advances a little—you can use your reverse outline to figure out how to combine those chapters, which scenes need to come out, and so on!
A common piece of feedback that authors hear is that their book is starting in the wrong place. It may open with the inciting incident, where in reality, it should be happening a chapter or two later, so the author needs to figure out how to open their book and what groundwork needs to be set. The downside? Word count. If you add 5K to the beginning of your book, there’s a chance that you’ll need to find 5K somewhere else to cut. Again, this is where the reverse outline can come in handy: you can make sure your new additions flow with your existing pages, and identify some weaker places to streamline.
DISAGREEING WITH FEEDBACK
Generally, when I get feedback notes, I find my reactions fall into one of three categories:
That makes total sense, no problem, doable
Ehhhhhhhh maybe? But I'm not sure if I fully agree?
Definitely not lol
This is why I always (try to) wait at least 2-3 days before tackling any of the feedback in my edit letters—I need time to emotionally process everything.
Anything with a #1 reaction I can dump into my edit spreadsheet and skip along my merry way and feel very very productive for the day.
Anything with a #3 reaction I really try to wait a few days to see if I still feel that way about. But sometimes, your gut is your gut, and you can set aside those notes.
If you're working with your agent or editor, though, I'd recommend talking this out with them before discarding completely!!! This is not a "trad pub forces you to change your artistic vision" note, this is a "trad pub is a partnership with people who have you and your book's best interests at heart" note. Be prepared to explain why you're against this change. Your agent/editor could be totally okay with setting aside that note, or you can brainstorm together different reasons and solutions.
In a lot of instances, there’s a middle ground here. For example, you could agree with the problem they pointed out, but you don’t agree with their recommendation on how to solve it. This is really common: people are great at figuring out what’s not working, but actually finding a solution is a lot trickier. Take time to think through how you would rather solve it, see if that works better than their recommendation, then talk it out!
If you're querying or getting beta reader feedback, it's much more up to your discretion—you don't necessarily want to overhaul your MS based on a single full rejection, for example! I once got an R&R that told me to remove the majority of my character flashbacks and history; that was a note I felt pretty confident in disregarding because that was part of my style.
Finally, the #2 reactions are usually characterized by a weird feeling in my chest or stomach.
A lot of times, it's because I can recognize that the problem being pointed out is valid, but I don't know how to fix it yet.
Unfortunately, I haven't found a magic solution other than time. It takes time to solve tricky problems in your MS; it's hard to speedrun a revision. There are tools you can reach for, though. Critique partners, writing friends, your agent, editor, etc. Tackle edits that you're confident in, and come back to the trickier ones later. Recharge your creative well and let your writing breathe, and keep a notepad in the shower handy for when it finally hits you.
Finally, whenever you get feedback, remember that everything is subjective. If you're stuck on a note, it can be really hard to understand if something is a personal preference or something to really fix.
This is the time to lean on your community—get a second, third opinion, poll the crowd. Consider the background of the person giving you this note, because a beta reader who doesn't read too much in your genre can hold different weight than your acquiring editor.
But overall, if someone is taking the time to give feedback, it's usually from a place of wanting to help. Again, time is your friend—don't be afraid to mull things over for as long as you need.
(People pleasers, this is a reminder that you do not get a good grade for revising really fast) (me to myself in the mirror)
Revisions can be a very emotional process. It's never fun hearing what needs to be fixed, and you may be coming to terms with the fact that you've got a lot of work to do.
STAGES OF REVISION
Once you've gotten your plan together, it's time to actually... you know.... make the edits. But I swear every single time I revise, I end up going through the following Stages of Going Through It (TM).
Holy shit, my book is terrible.
OK wait, I overreacted, maybe it's not terrible?
No, it's terrible. Why am I doing this again?
Wait, I have an idea. I think I know how to fix it.
I'm overwhelmed.
I'm on a roll and this might???? be good????
Oh fuck am I making my book worse
I've rearranged so many guts and I don't know if this makes any sense anymore
Please someone sanity check this because I don't think I'm speaking English anymore
So close but I think I will die before I finish this revision
Final read-through and this is????? actually good?????!!!
I love this book and this version is so much stronger omg
It’s so normal for you to go through a whirlwind of emotions throughout the editing process, so hopefully it helps knowing that you’re not alone!
WRAPPING UP
Before you press send on your bright and shiny new version, I always recommend doing a final read-through where you read your MS out loud to yourself. It's a good way to catch any awkward phrases, copy/paste errors, etc., and prevent your agent from leaving comments that just say "?" in your next version (sorry Rose).
Finally, there's no "right amount" of time for revisions. I know I've fallen into this trap before: I get notes that are deeper than I want to acknowledge, I do a surface-level pass, then I send it out because I want to get it out the door and be done. It happens. But this is just a reminder to try not to panic if your edits are taking longer than you hoped.
This ended up being much, much longer than I anticipated, and I'm sorry if my editing process makes me seem like a serial killer. I promise I am not this organized in real life, I just have dumb-squirrel-ADHD-brain and I will get lost in the sauce if I don't structure everything appropriately.
Additional Resources:
I hope this helped, and if you have any questions, thoughts, or anything, feel free to shoot me an email or DM me.
Happy revisions!!!! xx
You’re so smart ✔️✔️✔️✔️✔️