Speaker 1: 0:00

If there's one fundamental thing I want to do, I want to help. Everybody love editing as much as I do. It's so, so, so fun. To me, it's the best part of the whole entire writing process, from idea generation all the way to. You know, putting name is Savannah Gilbo and I'm here to help you write a story that works.

Speaker 2: 0:29

I want to prove to you that writing a novel doesn't have to be overwhelming, so each week, I'll bring you a brand new episode with simple, actionable and step-by-step strategies that you can implement in your writing right away. So, whether you're brand new to writing or more of a seasoned author looking to improve your craft, this podcast is for you. So pick up a pen and let's get started. In today's episode, I'm talking with Alice Sudlow, a developmental editor and book coach who helps fiction writers transform their rough drafts into polished manuscripts. Alice is an expert at helping writers craft powerful stories by making every scene unputdownable, and she's the host of the your Next Draft podcast.

Speaker 2: 1:10

If you've ever finished a first draft and then felt completely overwhelmed about what to do next, or if you're stuck in what Alice calls line-editing purgatory, endlessly tweaking sentences without actually improving your story, then this episode is for you. Alice and I dive deep into why the revision process feels so overwhelming for most writers and, more importantly, she shares her five-phase revision framework that takes you from messy first draft to a manuscript you can be proud of. We talk about why you need to step away from your words and think big picture first, how to create different types of outlines that actually help you see what's working and what's not, and why. Separating the thinking from the execution is the key to efficient, effective editing. So, whether you're someone who loves the editing process or someone who absolutely dreads it, you're going to walk away from this conversation with a clear roadmap for tackling your revisions and maybe even some excitement about diving back into your draft as well.

Speaker 2: 2:06

So, without further ado, let's dive right into my conversation with Alice Sudlow. Hi, alice, welcome to the Fiction Writing Made Easy podcast. Hi, savannah, I'm so excited to be here, I'm so excited to have you and, for listeners who might not know this, alice and I got to know each other gosh almost 10 years ago, I think. At this point, in a little place in Nashville, we were training to be story grid editors together. So we have a long history but, surprisingly, the first time I've had her on the podcast, yeah, it's amazing.

Speaker 1: 2:35

It feels like a long time coming.

Speaker 2: 2:42

Yeah, long time coming, so I gave you a little introduction already, but can you tell my audience in your own words who you are, what you do and things like that? Little introduction already, but can you?

Speaker 1: 2:44

tell my audience in your own words who you are, what you do and things like that. Absolutely so. I am a developmental editor and book coach and what I do is I help writers who have already, you know, gotten about as far along in their drafts in their editing process as they can. I help them turn those drafts that they feel like have more potential in them into really amazing stories. So I come in.

Speaker 1: 3:07

I don't start at the very beginning with writers. I like to start in when the story is already developed and they have a really strong idea for what they want the story to be. And then we get into this refining phase where we start with the big picture, making sure the story structure really works, and then we go all the way down into the scene level and that kind of late stage refining to give it the last polish so that they're ready to query and pitch and or self-publish. I have writers who go both ways. So I work with clients one-on-one. I have a course that I work with people through scene editing, scene revision, and I have a podcast called your Next Draft. That is all about the editing process, because I love editing. Can't get enough of it.

Speaker 2: 3:45

Yeah, and we will link to all that in the show notes. But I think what listeners are going to pick up on is that you're very excited about this part of the process and for most people this is not an exciting time. So if it were me and I was a writer out there, I'd be like wow, I can't believe someone loves this as much as Alice does. Like I want to get that energy in my revisions. So we will link to where you can find Alice around the internet in the show notes.

Speaker 1: 4:07

My goal is to spread editing joy, like if there's one fundamental thing I want to do. I want to help everybody love editing as much as I do. It's so, so, so fun. To me it's the best part of the whole entire writing process, from idea generation all the way to you know, putting your book in readers' hands.

Speaker 2: 4:29

I'm like the editing process. That's where it's at, that's where the good stuff happens. And it's funny because I personally agree with you it's my favorite part of the process. I love the time of making your vision match what's on the page, or vice versa. So I think it's super fun. But I know a lot of people are very overwhelmed by it because it does feel like an insurmountable task. I mean, sometimes you're working with over 100,000 words and you're like what do I do with this?

Speaker 1: 4:50

And because no one really trains you how to turn a first draft into a really great story. There are a lot of resources out there that you can hunt down, but I think it's really intuitive for people when they have a story idea, even if they've never written anything before, to sit down and go cool, I'm going to write a really long document and then I'll have a book. But after that the map is a lot less clear and so it kind of feels like great. Now I have a giant task ahead of me with no instructions, and I don't know how to do this. I don't know how to take this from idea to a really polished book, and I think that's part of the reason why people don't love the process is just because it's very unclear coming into it what you're actually trying to do.

Speaker 2: 5:32

Totally, and I think that's actually really interesting, because you're right that there are a lot of resources on like how to craft characters, how to outline your book, how to do X, Y, Z when you're trying to start, but then, once you have that draft done I mean, luckily we have your podcast now and some other great resources that have come out of kind of this wave of coaches and editors coming on the scene but before that it's almost like people needed to rely on someone else to tell them how to do it or to do it for them through like developmental editing or whatever. But now you know, people like you are making it easier to do it ourselves ever.

Speaker 1: 6:04

But now you know, people like you are making it easier to do it ourselves Absolutely, and I've talked with several writers who have said things like I had to invent this process myself. I had to, like, engineer an entire revision strategy and it took me years to figure out the process that I would go through to edit my book. I had someone who reached out to me last week who said that and she was like I love the process that you lay out because it is the thing that I've had to figure out myself over the course of like five years and you've just put it all out there.

Speaker 2: 6:32

Yeah, so no more reinventing the wheel. Alice is going to give you her framework to use. But I also think it's interesting Alice tell me if you think this is true or false that we're going to talk about using a lot of the same tools that we use for writing and outlining a book, but it's just we're kind of looking at them and the manuscript through a different lens. Would you agree or disagree with that?

Speaker 1: 6:51

Absolutely so. A question that I hear a lot from writers who listen to my podcast, which is all about editing, is can I use all of this stuff in the first draft stage? Can I use it to draft a story? And the answer is yes because, honestly, a lot of the fundamental principles and strategies and everything that I'm sharing on your next draft are the same kinds of things that you're sharing here on Fiction Writing Made Easy, that you share in your course. They're the same things that help you construct a story from the ground up, because, ultimately, what we're doing is creating the same, you know, end goal.

Speaker 1: 7:25

We're trying to craft a good story which is going to have cool characters and it's going to have a great plot and it's going to have different layers of meaning. Like, all those things are the same no matter what stage you're starting at or what stage you're using them. But it's mostly a question of how do you like think about the use of this tool at this stage? What are you looking for? What's of this tool at this stage? What are you looking for? What's useful to apply at this stage? What helps you move forward at this stage and what actually gets you more stopped up, because you're thinking like three steps ahead and trying to solve a problem that's not the problem of the moment. I think that's probably the biggest one in all of these places. When are you thinking three steps ahead and you're like trying to solve tomorrow's problem? So they're all the same principles Story hasn't changed but it's a question of what application of those principles is going to be useful to you at any particular stage in your process.

Speaker 2: 8:15

Yeah, which I actually think is a little encouraging, because it's not like we're saying you have to learn a whole new toolkit. You're learning the same things, just applying them differently. So, alice, why don't you tell us, like imagine we're a writer who's just finished this really messy first draft, what should we do? Like, where do we even start with this?

Speaker 1: 8:33

So the very first thing I recommend is to take a break, because you need a little bit of mental refreshment to come back to your story with different eyes. We're switching hats here from the writer hat to the editor hat and it's helpful to some degree to even kind of forget what the words are on the page. Honestly, as a baseline principle for this entire revision process that I use, the thing I'm constantly encouraging my writers to do is to forget the words on the page. The words on the page are not the point at this stage. They were helpful so you could get the idea down. Now we want to zoom out and look at things big picture. So the first place I start is take a break. Whether that's a day or a week or three weeks or six weeks, you're not aiming for like a year here, but just enough of a pause to give your mind a little bit of a mental shift.

Speaker 2: 9:22

And then, alice, if I could pause. You people ask me all the time. They say, ok, cool, I heard you give a general timeline, but what do you recommend? What do you think I should do? I'm curious, what's your answer? And then I'll tell you my answer. It's a great question.

Speaker 1: 9:36

So I personally would recommend probably I mean I say two to six weeks. That's broadly what I recommend. I probably would say the sweet spot is around four weeks because it's enough time for you to have a break without losing momentum on the project. That's the risk. You don't want to lose momentum. But I've also, you know, I read the artful edit by Susan Bell and she was like some people they turn around, they have processes to turn around and start the revision the very next day. So for some people that break just ends up being too long and they do lose momentum over that period of time. I would probably say four weeks If I were pinned to the wall and required to give a timeframe.

Speaker 2: 10:15

Yeah, you are required today. And it's funny because that's the exact same answer I would give when people ask me. They're like, just tell me what to do and I'll do it. And it's always like four weeks, just go four weeks. And, like you said, there are definitely people who will want to turn right around and do it. So, if that's you, totally fine. I have also worked with writers who do that. But you know, just know, that with longer breaks and shorter breaks, there are pros and cons. So, okay, so we've taken a break. Now what is our next?

Speaker 1: 10:40

step. So the next thing to do is to come back to the manuscript and read it with purpose, and the purpose at this stage, in the approach that I take, the purpose at this stage is to make an outline of what is on the page. So you're not reading the manuscript with the goal of going in to make changes Absolutely not. That's the last thing I recommend. We're not trying to make any changes to the manuscript right now. One more time for the people in the back Alice, Do not make changes to the manuscript at this stage. You're just going to be like putting in energy in the least efficient way. You know things will be different, but they won't be holistically improving the manuscript on the whole. Yeah, so we are not here to make changes. We're also not really here at this stage to look for things to change. Those ideas are going to come up, and so I recommend keeping a list to the side where you're writing down all of the ideas for things that are coming to mind as you're going through this. But you're not even necessarily going to look for those things.

Speaker 1: 11:42

All we're trying to do is to go into the manuscript and create an outline of what is there, and there are a few different forms that this outline can take. It can be really really brief and short. I've made outlines of manuscripts that are just reminders for me of what each scene basically is, where I just write down like five words to describe a scene. But really at this stage, what I think is most helpful is if you challenge yourself to summarize what is on the page and capture both what is happening, like what literally the characters are doing, and also why that matters to the story, how it impacts the plot and how it impacts the characters internally, and what you will do as you do that.

Speaker 1: 12:24

First off, you'll condense the story down into a document. That's way easier to manage. You will no longer have to hold 100,000 words in your head at a time. You will just have to hold 5,000 words in your head, and that's so much easier. But also you're going to see oh wait, I can't figure out why this scene matters. There's no answer to that, and that's going to be a really illuminating thing that will just start already sparking ideas for noticing what's working really strong in the story and where you've got some weak spots and, alice, can I challenge you to tell listeners what that looks like for the scene where Katniss volunteers as tribute?

Speaker 2: 13:04

What would like describing the external and the internal look like?

Speaker 1: 13:07

That's a great question and I haven't read that scene in a while, but I'm going to imagine that I have. So where I get plot things wrong, we'll just I'll help fill in the gaps. Perfect, so I would. In the shortest version it's Katniss volunteers as tribute. That's a really short, like key here. But in the longer version I would probably write a paragraph that ranges from about 50 words to 100 words, in which I would say that Katniss goes to the reaping and she watches as multiple people are selected and that is stressful, but it's not like directly harming her.

Speaker 1: 13:54

And then Prim is selected and she realizes that if she doesn't do anything then Prim is going to die Like there's just no way around that. Then Prim is going to die Like there's just no way around that, and so she raises her hand and volunteers for the reaping, which puts her in the crosshairs to potentially die in this story, but it will save Prim. And then she is selected. So now, at the end of that, katniss has been selected for the Hunger Games, she is joining the Hunger Games and she has saved Prim. So that is rough and dirty, but it's got in there, what's literally happening and how it's impacting Katniss, and you can break that out in different ways. You can like describe the action first and then say this is how it impacts her, or you can weave them in together, but we've got both of those pieces there.

Speaker 2: 14:38

Right. Great job on the fly there, Alice. Thank you you got it all.

Speaker 1: 14:41

Did I get the plot right? You got it all right. Yep, you're good.

Speaker 2: 14:46

Okay, so we're creating this outline and we're jotting down what happens in the scenes, why it matters to the characters and, like you said, there are going to be places where you know both parts are broken. One of the parts are broken, right. So maybe we I see this happen where writers are like describing a scene where it's like these two sit down for coffee and they're like I'm so bored with this summary and it's like, yeah, that's probably what's happening to readers when they read this page, right? So we're just kind of, like you said, framing the story in a shorter, more concise way. And then what do we do?

Speaker 1: 15:17

with it. So the next thing is, I'm assuming at this point, as you have gone through that story and noticed, oh, the scene with the characters getting coffee is really boring. You've probably made note of that in your list of notes about your story. Now, what I recommend is to go down to base principles. So when I'm working with a writer, I read this outline and then we set it aside for a while and we use it as reference when we need to remember, okay, what did Katniss do in that scene? But we don't actually even make any changes to that outline at this stage. We go back down to base principles and I recommend that you ask yourself really fundamental questions. So that would be, in fact, let me pull up my guide here that I'm building out with the list of questions that I ask. That would be why are you writing this story at all? Like, let's just start there. What's the purpose of this story? Like, let's just start there.

Speaker 1: 16:15

What's the purpose of this story? What is the point of this story? So what is kind of the meaning that this story is carrying underneath it? Every story does have a point. So we're not trying to be super didactic here. We're just trying to acknowledge what movement is happening in this story, right? What is your character's goal? What are they trying to accomplish in this story? What are the stakes of the story? Do we have life or death stakes? Do we have success or failure stakes? What are the stakes in this story? What's the character's arc of change? This is kind of related to the stakes, but it's the stakes on the inside of the character. How are they going to be different at the end of the story than the beginning of the story? And what is the genre of the story?

Speaker 1: 16:55

And I ask that one last at the end of that list, because all of those other questions are going to give you clues to the genre and so the genre is kind of like doubling down on. Ok, now that we see all of these things, they point us here. I know that you, or I think that you, encourage your writers to go into their first draft process with some awareness of what their genre is. So some of these questions again, because we're using the same tools at the same at different stages, some of these questions are going to be easier to answer because you've already answered them, but sometimes those answers change, you know, over the course of your drafting process.

Speaker 1: 17:25

Sometimes they shift, Sometimes you discover new layers to them. So now we're going back to these questions and doubling down, and then the last one in that stage is what is the story's point of view, which is I ask it at this stage. I kind of hold it to the end, because that's really about how we're presenting the information to the reader. All those other ones, though, they're about what information are we trying to present. So that's what I do at this stage, is we ask a ton of fundamental questions about what the story is.

Speaker 2: 17:50

I love that and that's what I do too, and I'm working with writers and I feel like sometimes there's this instinct to want to skip it, because you're like I did this already or, of course, I'm writing a fantasy, there's magic, you know, or whatever. What would you say to those people who are inclined to skip this step?

Speaker 1: 18:06

I would say, first off, I get it because it feels like you've done this already and it feels like the work is to go into the manuscript and start making things better. But the reality is this is the heart of revision, this is the heart of the editing process. This is where the magic happens and your story will. I honestly feel like I kind of have to like it's like a lobster boiling in a pot situation, like convincing my writers in my story clarity process that, yes, this is worth doing. It's like around call two or call three of a four call engagement that they're like oh man, I get it, I see it.

Speaker 1: 18:50

I hadn't seen all of this here before, so we kind of have to ease our way in. But this is the heart of revision and you will discover if you take this part of the process really seriously, if you do it really intentionally, if you allow yourself the time to have the deep thoughts in this space, you will find the keys, the hidden keys that are like woven in underneath everything else that you've written. You'll find the hidden keys that make your story far more rich, far more engaging, far more exciting and that make the actual making the changes to the manuscripts part way easier. Like this is where we figure out how to make those changes. This is absolutely worth it.

Speaker 2: 19:33

And I think you know people, they tend to want to skip it a because they've already they feel like they've already done it. But, like you said, things change. I think we should almost always count on things changing between our plans and what we write. But also, like you said, it makes it so much easier once we get into the actual editing on the page and people tend to skip it because they want to get to that part sooner, but then they end up spending like months and years on the page. You know that part of the process when it's like you could have spent months there instead of years if you spent time here answering these fundamental questions and just kind of getting that baseline of what your story is about, now that you've seen it to the end. So take it from two editors and book coaches If you're inclined to skip it, please don't.

Speaker 1: 20:19

Absolutely. I mean, the way I think of it is we're separating the thinking stage and the execution stage. The thinking stage is going to happen Like you have to think about how you're going to shape the story. At some point you have to do the thinking. But if you can separate it from the execution, you can focus on just one side at a time. You don't have to worry about what are the words on the page, in the scenes, in the chapters, how is this actually working? Which lines do we use?

Speaker 1: 20:47

When people go into their pages, it's really easy to get sucked into line editing and the line editing will keep you surface level. It will keep you away from the deep thoughts about the story. So if we separate the thinking and the execution, then you can put all your energy into just the thinking, the planning, the understanding, the vision for the story first, and then when you go into execution, it's going to be so easy and so fast. I mean not easy easy, you know but it'll be so much easier. You'll roll through it because you know exactly what changes to make and how to make them and why they matter and you're just going to see the story come to life.

Speaker 2: 21:19

Right, I totally agree. Okay, so let's pretend we've done that. We've answered those fundamental questions that you just went through. What do we do next?

Speaker 1: 21:28

So the next thing is I'll qualify this a little bit I'll say we've answered those questions no-transcript, a background where we were trained to observe, observe information about a story, and then we kind of had to figure out on our own how do we apply the information that we observe. But basically, once you have that information that you have observed, it is a matter of applying that to the story itself. And the way that I do that is I pull out the outline again. Actually, no, I'm jumping ahead. I don't even pull out the outline at this point, savannah, I stay away from the outline for as long as possible.

Speaker 1: 22:34

What I do next is I actually build up a teeny, tiny little outline of the five commandments of the global story. I'm like can we tell this story in its tiniest little form? We are building an outline here, but we're going to start really, really, really small so that we can see that our arc of change is working from the very first page to the very last page in our tightest possible way, tightest possible way. And even if you did that before you wrote your first draft, I recommend that you do this thinking again fresh and put your story through its paces again fresh, so that you can see. Okay, now, based on what I've got, does this work? Does that story hold together? What new ideas do I see when I try to think through that again? So that's where I go next. Take all of those things that we established about the fundamentals of the story and then build them out into a teeny tiny little.

Speaker 2: 23:20

I call it a little six point outline of the heart of the story arc there and can you run us through that really quick, what those commandments or those six points are?

Speaker 1: 23:29

Absolutely so. The inciting incidents is the first one. It's going to kick the story off. It's what starts the whole conflict.

Speaker 1: 23:36

I don't list out every progressive complication in the entire book because there are going to be so, so many of them, but you do tend to notice, or I tend to notice, like two or three major plot points that really move the story along. Sometimes I'll even separate out the midpoint to be a separate like bullet in this little outline, so it ends up being more like seven points. But that's one of the progressive complications, a really big one that pushes the story forward in a major way. And then there's the turning point, which is the place that most greatly challenges the protagonist on this arc of change that leads them to a crisis, which is the big question of the story. What are they going to do? Are they going to choose kind of the old way that they have been solving problems, or are they going to choose a new way of solving problems?

Speaker 1: 24:21

Then there's the climax of the story, the big event. Honestly, sometimes I start there when I'm building out this little outline because a lot of times it's like the easiest thing to spot in the story. That's the big event, that's the climax. That's where we're going. And then there's the resolution, which is the new world order. It is how does the world look after we've gone through this arc of change? What's different now? So you know, at the beginning our two protag—our love interests were not together. At the end they are together. So we've got our arc of change mapped out there and when we can see that, you can see that you've got a story that really does work on the highest biggest level.

Speaker 2: 25:03

Yeah, and something I find when writers do exercises like this is they'll usually look at it and be like, well, that seems so basic, it seems so boring and it's kind of like it is supposed to be that way to an extent, because if it's a love story, what else are you writing about? You're writing about two people coming together. That's going to look the same for every love story, but then you flavor it and color in the lines with, like your own unique story. So I think if listeners, I'm just kind of I'm feeling out in the future what people are going to be worried about, they're worried about it seeming boring or like this sounds like every other story. I think that's a good sign.

Speaker 1: 25:37

What do you say, alice? I think so too. I think that, on the one hand, archetypes are archetypes because they work, because they're patterns that exist throughout humanity. And so if you discover, in building out that little tiny outline that you're establishing, you're kind of, you know, falling into an archetype, that's great. That's a tested framework that works, that makes for an excellent story. And also, exactly what you're saying, you're going to color in the lines, you're going to make it your own, uniquely different, with your setting, with your characters, with all of the details that you add in.

Speaker 1: 26:06

I think, particularly for me at this stage, the thing that feels to me like it's most unique and owned by the writer is the, the crisis question.

Speaker 1: 26:18

What are the stakes that that specific protagonist is facing in that specific question? There's nuance, there's flavor there, and what's the solution that the writer sees to that question? That tends to be drawn from at least the way that I approach this I look for how can we draw that out of the writer's own personal experience. So when I'm coaching a writer through all of those initial questions about you know the points and the genres and everything I'm going deep. I'm like let's get some journal prompts about when you went through this really big experience in your life and what we find there is these layers of highly specific nuance that then shape that crisis question. So even if this is, you know, girl meets boy, boy gets girl at the end, great, but that crisis that is hyper specific to the writer and it's based on what their experiences are, that they're drawing from their own life to say cool, we've got this big archetype that makes for a great story. But this is how it's personal and unique to me.

Speaker 2: 27:19

Yeah, I think that's so true too. And that ties back to theme, which is usually also more specific. Yes, it's about true love winning, or whatever. But it's like how does true love win, how do we get the boy and girl together, or whatever? So I think that is. I totally agree. Okay. So now that we've done all that, let's pretend we're following along with this process. We've created our outline, We've created our five, six, seven point little mini outline. What's next?

Speaker 1: 27:46

So then I take that little mini outline and I start expanding it and I really love the five commandment framework. I love it because it's fractal, so it works at every level of story. If you can figure out how to use it on one level of story, congratulations, you've got a key to the entire thing. So if we can use it on that global story level for the entire story from start to finish, then we can use it again for each of the acts. So I look at the story in terms of four acts and you've got your beginning, the very first quarter of your story, and then I split the middle into two acts that are each 25%, and then we've got the end, the very end, the last 25% and each one of those. I look for the five commandments for each of those acts, and so then what happens is basically I pull up a document and I list all of those points out, with just blanks beside them, so that I'm trying to fill them out and I fill in what I know. And from that six point outline now we know the inciting incident of the story, which is usually going to be.

Speaker 1: 28:52

I tend to find you can correct me on this Savannah if you find it differently. I'm still kind of experimenting with this, to be honest, but I tend to find you can correct me on this Savannah if you find it differently. I'm still kind of experimenting with this, to be honest, but I tend to find that that inciting incident either falls as the inciting incident of the first act or as the turning point of the first act, Like it's somewhere in there. It can flow around a little bit, but it's one of those major points. We know that the climax of our little six point outline is going to be the climax of our fourth act. So we've got some points that we can fill in, just based on our little six point outline, and usually, usually, the turning point of that six point outline is probably going to be the turning point of act three. That's the space where we're hitting that crisis point for the character.

Speaker 2: 29:31

So just to clarify that's the second part of the middle.

Speaker 1: 29:33

When you say act three yes, so some people call it middle build two, some people call it like act two, part two. I like the shorthand of four acts one, two, three, four. But it confuses people because there are so many ways in which people number their acts. So, yes, it's like around that 65 to 70% mark in the story. So I map out, you know, what we've got from our six point outline into the full act by act outline, and then we start filling in the blanks and say, ok, what's the arc that's happening within each of these acts?

Speaker 1: 30:06

And if we had for the story as a whole, the stakes are, you know, life or death, or the stakes are love or hate, then I'm looking at for each of these acts, what is, what's our starting state and our ending state on that point. And we're mapping what's that arc, what's the goal for the character within this act, what are they pursuing and how is that challenged throughout this act? And we use the same global tools, we use them on the act level to map out what are these little arcs of change all the way through.

Speaker 2: 30:30

And what would you say to someone who's listening and they're like I just hate outlining, I hate structure. This makes me feel like I just want to like light everything on fire.

Speaker 1: 30:39

What would you say to those people? I mean, I recently talked with author AS King, who's a brilliant surrealist author of YA novels and also novels for middle grade and adults. She's brilliant and she uses the surrealist writing method, which is just to sit down and write whatever comes to mind as fast as possible, without questioning it. So it's very pantser heavy and then when she goes into revise she just like combs her way through, starts on page one and combs her way down and she writes brilliant novels that way. She's not approaching them from like let's map out every point of our story structure, but she writes brilliant novels. But I will say also so there's no like one right way to write or to edit a novel. But I will say, even if you started off pantsing your way through the first draft, the revision process is the point where story structure really starts coming into play, because the goal of this whole revision process I mean we're talking specifically second drafts here, but we're also talking, I would say, any story that hasn't yet gone through this fundamental structuring of the story. I've seen, you know, 10th drafts that someone has worked on for 10 years and the story hasn't had this structure built in. They've got lots of beautiful language, but they've never put the structure together. At some point you've got to have a story with structure to it, otherwise you end up with a narrative that just rambles out into the weeds, that doesn't have an arc of change, that your reader can't make heads or tails of. And they go well.

Speaker 1: 32:30

I read a lot of words. I don't know what those words were doing, but I read them. So at some point your story needs structure and this process. You don't have to be as structured as this in your process. You can also outsource this.

Speaker 1: 32:46

You can come work with me, you can come work with another editor who will do this kind of analytical thinking, really like on the back end, while your experience is, I'm asking you a ton of questions where I'm saying cool, what do you believe about you know? Love, about life, about friendship, about anything. And then, like I've had writers who sit there going I don't even know like how you did this. It doesn't feel like we're working, we're just having a conversation and suddenly I figured out the whole end of my quartet here. And you can feel like that on the writer's side if you bring in an editor who can do this strategy on the back end for you and then kind of present to you well, this is the structure you've laid out.

Speaker 1: 33:26

Does that sound like what you want to do? But the structuring of the story has to happen at some point in order to create a story that is going to engage your readers. So if you want to fast track that process a little bit, you can use these structural tools to give you some handholds in that. Otherwise, you can move through it via intuition, and it's not that that doesn't work. It's just probably going to take you a while to end up at a story that really, really clicks.

Speaker 2: 33:51

And I think that piece about outsourcing is really important, because a lot of people who are like the more creative I don't want to structure my story they're going to maybe feel a little handcuffed by any kind of structure and, like you said, that's my experience too, working with writers at this stage, where it's we just ask a bunch of questions and then, like, let your editor kind of carry that burden for you and you get to still be that creative brain. So you know that is an option. I think sometimes people forget that that's an option, so I just want to remind everybody. I think sometimes people forget that that's an option, so I just want to remind everybody. Okay, so, alice, what is up next after that?

Speaker 1: 34:26

So we've got our little six point outline and we've got our act by act outline. At this point I expand that into a scene by scene outline. So my goal now is we've done the hardest part of the work. I'm just going to plant a flag there and say we've done the hardest part of the work. We've figured out what the story is, we figured out how that story arc takes place and we've figured out what each act of the story is doing so we can see the momentum all the way through the story. The hardest part is done. So now we're trying to take that outline and expand it into a map. That will make the actual revision process on the page of the manuscript as easy as possible. So what I do now is I expand that act by act outline into a scene by scene outline and at this point we can come back to that original scene outline that you created when you were first finishing the draft and we can start making changes directly there. Like we can start pulling out.

Speaker 1: 35:22

Okay, just move scenes around or add a new scene here or cut the scene. It can be like you've got this modular document where you're moving your puzzle pieces around to fit your map, the larger kind of vision you've created. Or, you know, sometimes we move it directly on that original outline. You know I love versioning create a new copy, so you've always got the old version, but you can move it directly on that outline. Or you can create a new document or just take that act by act outline and start expanding it into scenes and referencing the old material. So you know, you know you have these things on the page. You'll pull those into your new document as you like.

Speaker 1: 35:59

But basically our goal here is to create an outline that lists out every scene so that when we go to the manuscript we know what scenes are going to be there and we know really easily what material to cut.

Speaker 1: 36:11

And at this stage I like to write down, you know, whatever information you know about those scenes. So if you want to keep the same kind of format from that original scene list where we're describing the external action and also the internal world for the character in the span of about 100 words, like that's great. If you're like, hey, I don't want to be restricted on this one anymore, I want to, like put all the detail in so I really understand what's happening in the scene, I can see things in my mind. I've got ideas of particular details that need to go on the page. Great, get that down on the outline and hold that there as your kind of like guide so that when you get to the manuscript it's all there and all you've got to do is execute. So that's our step. There is turn that act by act outline into the scene by scene outline.

Speaker 2: 36:54

Awesome. And just for anyone listening, imagine having not done all that big picture work and kind of saying what is my North Star, where do I want this draft to go? And sitting down and looking at 100,000 words on paper, that's really overwhelming. No wonder so many people don't like the editing process, right? Yes, I think all the stuff Alice covered already is super important and like yes, it will take time, it should take time. It's valuable thinking that you're doing and then, once you get to this stage, take time.

Speaker 1: 37:22

It's valuable thinking that you're doing and then, once you get to, this stage you're kind of just hitting the ground running, which is great, exactly. You go back into that manuscript and you know I'm not going to downplay the amount of work that this takes or ever say that this process gets easy. I don't think that that's ever quite the right word to use for this but it's so much easier. It's so much more directed and targeted. You'll open up that manuscript and you'll be like I already know that pages 25 to 32, they just need to go. I can just cut them right out. It'll take me two minutes to do that. I already know that I need to write this scene over here halfway through the story and it's so clearly pictured in my mind because I've spent all of this time thinking about how the story arc goes together and what that scene does for the story and why it's so important, that now it's just like already in there. All I have to do is transcribe the idea that's already been built up. So when you get to the actual changing the words on the page stage, it becomes so much clearer what changes you actually make and you get out of line editing purgatory, which is what I think about it.

Speaker 1: 38:21

When writers just open up their drafts. This is like the bad way. Not the bad way. This is the inefficient way to do a structural edit of your manuscript. Open up the draft, start at the top on page one and just start working your way through. You'll probably end up with 18 versions of chapter one because you're just never satisfied with it, and the final chapter is going to languish at the end gathering dust. You'll never touch it and in the middle you'll just have all these beautifully polished sentences, but you'll be like the story still has plot holes and none of these sentences have fixed the plot holes. This is how you fix the plot holes.

Speaker 2: 38:54

Yeah, and I'm sure we could create a list over a hundred people of we've seen do that just between us two as editors. Like people get stuck there and it it makes sense why it's the first thing we go to, because we wrote these words, we want to fix them, but you just get so lost in the weeds that it's super inefficient, not very helpful for you, and then you end up with something that doesn't work.

Speaker 1: 39:16

And because, again, no one was it was an intuitive process to write the first draft, and so the only map that we have after we've written the first draft if we've never gone through the process of revising a book before is to say, hey well, I started on page one the first time, I'll just do that again Start on page one and work my way through. And the revision process is just a different beast. Editing a book is a different beast from writing a book and it needs a different process to support it. So that's really it's like the key here the tools that we use, the questions that we're asking they're the same questions at any stage, but the process in which we use them is very, very different.

Speaker 2: 39:49

The revision process is not like the editing process or the writing process, yeah, and it requires more of a logical, analytical brain, at least when you're kind of going through those bigger questions and then. So it's kind of like you wrote the book, you were in that creative side, even if you outlined, you're in that creative side of your brain, then you pause and you go on that logical side. Then you can flip back because you have your plan. So it's like we all want to. I think a lot of us want to get back to that creative side and that creative process and it's like this process and these tools will help you get there quicker and also make it more fun.

Speaker 1: 40:22

Yes, and I think two things. First, you're both the puzzle maker and the puzzle solver. I didn't make that up, Somebody else said it recently. I forget who it was. I wish I could credit them. But you're the one who created the puzzle of the story and you're also the person who gets to solve the puzzle of the story. And the creation of the puzzle was when you wrote the first draft and now we're in puzzle solver mode, which is a different hat to wear when we're trying to put the pieces together.

Speaker 1: 40:47

But also, I think that there's so much creation hidden within the revision steps of even that early big picture thinking. Because when we're asking questions like why does friendship matter to you, that's creation kind of space. And when you can outsource the analytical pieces largely to an editor, you get more freedom to stay in that creative space. Because I'll ask you what does friendship mean to you? You'll be in the creative space to think about that and then I'll come back and say, great, here's what that means for your story structurally and analytically. And then you can say like yay or nay, like that works or doesn't work, but like I've done a lot of the analytical side of it for you so you can stay in a little bit more of the creative space.

Speaker 2: 41:32

Plus, I think sometimes too, we discount, like we think that editing doesn't equal creativity at all, and I think you have to be super creative to solve problems. Like you know, you can't always logic your way out of everything. So I don't know in my world. I'm always like, how do we find a balance between the two? Some people say like I always want to be creative or I always want to be logical, and I don't think that's always going to work personally. But I think this process is a great way to just kind of separate, like you said, those brains and then also make the whole thing easier and more efficient. So, alice, I have a question for you, kind of on the back end of that. Well, I have two questions. One is, let's say, so this process carries you through that second draft, right? Yes, okay, and so then, in theory, you can kind of just repeat if you want, right, you can repeat the entire process again, or what do you recommend, people?

Speaker 1: 42:21

do so. I just on principle here. What I recommend is just a constant back and forth between draft to outline, manuscripts to outline, manuscripts to outline, and creating a new outline that matches the existing draft every time, because you'll again you'll see new things. The first thing that I invite new clients to do when they come to work with me is to create that outline, because I want them to send it to me, and every single time they email me and say I discovered so much when I was making this outline, like I have so many ideas for my story now and what I want to change. So even just that act, even if that is the only thing that you take from this entire process and you're like the rest of this is trash, even if that's all you take, that process of going from manuscripts to outline to manuscript is going to illuminate so many things about your story, every single draft that you do it. I do think that. I mean I think that going down to the base principles every single time is really helpful.

Speaker 1: 43:20

I've had clients who love the analytical side of things and they've done this analytical work themselves like three times over and then they've worked with another editor. Sometimes they've gone to work with you, savannah, and you've done that analytical work with them and they've done another draft. And then they come to me and I'm like, great, I can see, I can so clearly see the fruits of all of that labor. And first thing I'm going to do is go back to those base principles again and build up the story for myself and we're going to just vet at every step and what we'll see is that more and more things become solid and easier to answer more quickly every time. You do that, which will open up the next layer of discovery. To say okay, like, for instance, just thinking about a. The next layer of discovery. To say okay, like, for instance, just thinking about a writer that I've worked with recently. They had worked with you, savannah, and when they came to me they knew all of these things about their story and I brought us back to base principles and some of the questions. I was like I'm going to be just repeating things you already know. So, just like, tell me what they are, because you know them.

Speaker 1: 44:17

And what we discovered was the next layer that was needed in the story was the character's arc of change was already set up because of all of the work that this writer had done in all of those previous edits. And when we did that work again, you know, for probably like the fifth time, we found that next layer to say this is what's going to really create emphasis and catharsis for the reader here. So every time it's worth doing At some point. You know we can't be doing this for 40 drafts, like there's no need for that. We do have to stop eventually.

Speaker 1: 45:09

And I would say that some of the art and the challenge, the difficulty of revision, is knowing when to stop, knowing when we've done enough. So when you start finding the diminishing returns on that, when you do that process again, when you do that process with feedback, when you're talking out your ideas with beta readers or with critique partners or with an editor, and you just feel like it's so solid, it's so there, everything's clicking, everything's aligning. There's nothing new that's coming up from these conversations. You're hitting diminishing returns and it's probably time to really like zoom in on the details of the scenes, make sure they're hitting every level that you want them to and then call it done and ship it off and say you finished. But this is the process that I would use for all of those big picture revisions. You can do it one time or three times or five times, and do it 10 times and you'll find new things, but you'll probably start hitting diminishing returns and diminishing energy on the project.

Speaker 2: 46:05

Yeah, and I think what you said is. So it goes back to kind of what you said in the beginning about editing is really when revising is where that magic happens, because, like you said, someone came to you with a story that worked and let's just go on this example we were using of a romance earlier. You could have, let's say, five different romance novels where the character is learning about how to trust another person and they have to trust the love interest in order to get there, happily ever after. It's through these multiple iterations of these questions, these core questions that you find well, what is my version of learning truth, or what does truth look like to me versus to Alice, to another writer? And so it's like you can write a really good first draft, but then doing this deeper work equals the magic that we all want coming out of our books and that, those goosebumps that readers feel and those glowing reviews and things like that. So it is well worth the exercise and the multiple rounds if that is your goal, to write a book like that.

Speaker 1: 47:03

It's so fun. I mean to see the transformation from cool this is a good idea with potential and it's fun. You've got a lot of great set pieces here. That's one of the things that I say a lot. You have a lot of great set pieces. You have a lot of great moments and action sequences or whatever our external genre is. So you know, like our lover's first kiss moment, that's a cool little plot element that you've got over here.

Speaker 1: 47:24

We're going to create so much meaning behind that. We're going to make all that hang together so tightly. We're going to make it feel so exciting to the reader. It's going to go from that's a lot of cool ideas that are all together in a really long document to this is a brilliant story that your readers can't put down. And I love seeing that transformation.

Speaker 1: 47:45

And like I laugh because I've got, I think, three stories on my desk right now that are all friendship stories and so, like the fundamental questions of why is friendship important and how do we keep and maintain and repair and create new friendships, like all of those questions, those are the same kind of questions that I'm asking multiple writers right now, but the stories are so different because every writer is coming to that with a unique take on the friendships they've experienced in their lives, the reasons why friendships are important to them, the things they want to say to a different set of readers, whether those readers are, you know, 10 years old or 40 years old, whether they're readers who love fantasy worlds or they're readers who are really struggling with something in their work lives. Like they're all stories about friendship, but there's a uniqueness from every single writer that makes every one of those so fun to explore on their own terms.

Speaker 2: 48:41

And I think this is what people mean when they say write what you know. Yes, it could be true that maybe you were a nurse in a past life and so you're writing a medical thriller or whatever. That is one layer of it, but it's also like what is your personal experience that makes your story more you and more unique.

Speaker 1: 48:58

Yes, absolutely. What human truths can you find within yourself, within your own life, within your own experience, that you want to share with the world? I think that, fundamentally, stories are how humans communicate. It's how we share our experiences with other people, how we share ideas with other people. I will be honest, I'm really bad at reading nonfiction books. Like the number of nonfiction books that I have not finished is like shameful. It's terrible.

Speaker 1: 49:30

You give me the ideas that are in a nonfiction book but you put them in a story and I will eat it up. Like that's how we engage with the minds, the thought process, the experiences of other human beings. And so you know, whether your book is set now like just down the street from your house or on another planet, with dragons or anything like, what you know is still the heart of it your own experiences, your own ideas about the world. And that's the work in that revision step that people want to skip that early stage, figuring out what that is. It's not just like what are the logistics of? How do I don't know dragons get, you know, materials for saddles in our planet, in a different galaxy? That's not the heart of the story here. The heart of the story is what of you is going into this story? And that's what I love to uncover with writers.

Speaker 2: 50:23

I love what you just said, too, about like the thing that you don't want to do. That's probably what you need to do to make the magic happen. So if there's anyone listening who's avoiding a part of the writing or editing process, it's probably because you need to dig into it and do the work, and that will be the magic that comes out of it. So, alice, I think we can just wrap up there. I think that was amazing, and I know that you have a guide for listeners.

Speaker 1: 50:49

Do you want to tell them about that really quick? Absolutely, so it is a guide to all of the things that I have been talking about here. I am currently, as we record this podcast, putting the finishing touches on it, so I'm probably going to change the title, but right now the working title is the Five-Phase Novel Revision Process, even if you've edited your manuscript a dozen times already. And the reason why I call it a five-phase revision process is because it goes through all of these buckets of steps that Savannah and I have been talking about here. But I break down the steps within them because you know figuring out what your point is, figuring out what your genre is, figuring out what your point of view is those are all very different steps, so it's all one phase, but I list out a lot of those questions that I ask here.

Speaker 1: 51:31

So it is a guide for if you are feeling like you're stuck in line, editing purgatory, if you are feeling like you made it through to the end of your first draft but nobody taught you what to do once you finish that and how to turn that into a great story, this guide is your map for that whole entire process. I wish that I could promise it would make it easy. It won't make it easy because there are still a lot of places where you're going to have to ask really big, challenging questions that are probably going to be hard to answer and hard to figure out how to apply to your story. But it is going to make it much more clear how to walk through that whole path from start to finish.

Speaker 2: 52:10

Yes, so we will put the link to that and to Alice's website and her podcast and all the things in the show notes. But, alice, thank you so much for coming on the show. Thank you so much for having me Savannah.

Speaker 1: 52:20

This is so fun. I love sharing these ideas. This revision process we've been talking about is the things that I think that every writer should know, and yet nobody knows them. So I'm really glad to get to share them here and glad to get to join you on Fiction Writing Made Easy. So thank you.

Speaker 2: 52:38

All right, so that's it for this episode of the Fiction Writing Made Easy podcast. So thank you, stage. Whether you're just starting out, stuck somewhere in the middle of a draft, drowning in revisions or getting ready to publish, take my free 30-second quiz at savannahgilbocom forward slash quiz. You'll get a customized podcast playlist that'll meet you right where you're at and help you get to your next big milestone. Last but not least, make sure to follow this podcast in your podcast player of choice, because I'll be back next week with another episode full of actionable tips, tools and strategies to help you become a better writer. Until then, happy writing.