Worth the Climb: Self-Editing Secrets That Actually Work

I suggest thinking of revision not as a single sweeping process but as a series of distinct drafts, (seven of them, cough cough ) each with a specific purpose. By focusing only on the story, or only on the characters, we avoid that overwhelming feeling of needing to fix everything at once, pinballing from clunky sentence to missing scene to Mom’s-g... See more

Circle every adjective and adverb in three pages of your manuscript. Challenge yourself to replace them with specific, concrete details—nouns and verbs —that show rather than tell. Instead of “she was angry,” show her “knuckles whitening around the steering wheel.”

converting similes to metaphors when possible—saying something is something else is more powerful than saying it’s like something else.

your story’s “heartbeat”—the emotional core that gives your narrative life. Not the plot, but the emotional journey. For memoirists, this might be: “Learning to forgive my father taught me how to parent myself.” For novelists: “The search for external validation ultimately destroys what is most valuable.” Write a single sentence that captures what ... See more