Manuscript Makeover: Revision Techniques No Fiction Writer Can Afford to Ignore

Remember, there is a difference between a critic and someone offering a critique. The critic will level judgments against your writing, your chances of succeeding, or you personally.

Fiction writing can be like daydreaming with a keyboard or notepad. Revision works best when you have the acuity that follows a great night’s sleep or the edge that comes after drinking a double espresso.

However, if you listen to your story, you’ll hear clunks, hisses, and coughs.

The most powerful technique I’ve discovered for silencing inner critics, banishing the inner censors, and developing any part of your story is a technique I call “riff-writing.

By “inner critic,” I’m referring to a form of self-talk that interferes with both the writing and revision process. The reason you want to silence these critical voices is that their advice is worth absolutely nothing.

For instance, most fiction writers act like protective parents toward their characters, especially the hero and his or her friends. Writers are too nice. You not only don’t have to treat your characters nicely, but in revision you should look for ways to make the obstacles bigger, the complications seemingly endless, and their suffering worse.

Where in your body do you, or would you, experience your characters’ anger, elation, worry, fear, and so forth? Add your human and realistic responses where you have omitted them when writing.

Cultivate deep listening. • Silence critics; banish censors. • Practice riff-writing. • Revise from your truth. • Harvest your emotions. • Catch fireflies.

A canon of good writing is never write away from a good fight.

Also read aloud—and alone—making sure you don’t perform your writing. Theatrics, including inflections, modulations, and dialects can too easily disguise problems or glamorize the ordinary. Read in a straightforward manner and more slowly than normal, which facilitates deep listening.