Revising and Editing for Creative Writers

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Although the terms revising and editing are often used interchangeably, stylish writers know the difference between revising and editing. When it’s time to shape a first draft into a polished, publishable piece of writing, knowing how to both revise and edit your work is essential.

So, what is revising vs editing? Revising refers to global changes in the text—significant amendments to the work’s structure, intent, themes, content, organization, etc. These are, in other words, macro-level considerations. Editing, by contrast, focuses on changes at the word, sentence, and paragraph level.

These two concepts require different skills and attentions, but both are necessary to create a finished piece of writing. So, let’s dive deeper into revising vs editing, including a revising and editing checklist you can use for any passage of poetry or prose.

First, let’s dive a little deeper into these two essential skills. What is the difference between revising and editing?

Note: the revising and editing resources in this article are geared towards fiction writers. Nonetheless, much of this advice also applies to essayists and nonfiction writers, too.

What is the difference between revising and editing?

Revising and editing are different types of changes you can make to a text. “Revising” is concerned with macro-level considerations: the ideas of a text, and how they are organized and structured as a whole. “Editing,” by contrast, concerns itself with micro-level stylistic considerations, the words and sentences that get those macro-level ideas across.

Revising is concerned with the ideas and structure of the text as a whole; editing is concerned with stylistic considerations, like word choice and sentence structure. 

This revising vs editing chart outlines the different considerations for each concept:

Let’s go a bit deeper into these revising and editing concepts.

Revision strategies focus on:

The text as a whole. If revision focuses on the macro-level concerns for the text, then revision strategies for writing require the writer to think about what the text is accomplishing.

In large part, this means thinking about themes, ideas, arguments, structures, and, if the text is fiction, the elements of fiction themselves. You might also consider how the text is influenced by other writers and media, or what philosophies are operating within the text.

Here are some questions to ask when revising your work:

• Does the writing begin at the beginning?
• Are the ideas logically sequenced?
• How are different ideas juxtaposed? How does their juxtaposition alter the message of the text?
• What messages are present in the text?
• How do the characters of the text represent different ideas and messages?
• What do the different settings of the story represent? How does the setting impact the decisions that characters make?
• What core conflicts shape the plot?
• Who is the narrator? How does their point of view impact the story being told?
• What attitude do I take towards the various themes and ideas? Is that attitude present?
• Does the writing use scenes to showcase important moments, and summaries to glide over less important passages of time?
• What atmosphere(s) are in the text? Does the story’s mood complement the story itself?
• Does the story have a clearly defined climax? What questions does (and doesn’t) the climax resolve?
• What transformation occurs in the story? How are the characters at the end different than at the beginning?
• Does the writing end at the ending? Is the ending a closed door, or (preferably) an open one?

Editing strategies focus on:

The words and sentences. In contrast to revision strategies, editing strategies ask the writer to examine how the text is accomplishing macro-level concerns.

This means getting into the weeds with language. Small decisions, like the use of a synonym or the arrangement of certain sounds, stack up to create an enjoyable story. Moreover, good writing at the sentence level makes it easier to produce good writing at the global level.

Here are some questions to ask when editing your work:

• Is this the right word to describe a certain image, idea, or sensation?
• Do my sentences have enough variation in length and structure?
• Are the words I use easy to understand? If I use jargon or academic language, is the meaning of the text still clear?
• Do I use active vs passive voice with intent?
• Have I omitted any unnecessary words?
• How does it sound to read my work aloud? Does it flow like it should?
• Do I use sonic and poetic devices, like alliteration, consonance, assonance, and internal rhyme, to make the writing more enjoyable? Do those devices enhance the text?
• How does the text transition between scenes and ideas? Do these transitions enhance the logical flow of plot and ideas?
• Do I repeat certain words a lot? Do those repetitions contribute to the text, or do they become redundant?
• Have I employed the “show, don’t tell” rule consistently in my writing? Do I have a good balance of showing and telling?
• Do I use metaphors, similes, and analogies to illustrate important ideas in new and thought-provoking ways?
• Is the writing clear at the word, sentence, and paragraph level?
• Does the dialogue sound like it was spoken by a real person? Does each character have a distinct voice, separate from the voice of the author?

Note: editing does not include proofreading. Proofreading is something you typically do once the final draft is done. It is the process of making sure there are no typos, misspellings, misplaced punctuation marks, or grammatical errors. Do this once you’ve thoroughly covered revising and editing.

Revising Vs Editing: Venn Diagram

Now, let’s take a closer look at each of these skills.

Revising Vs Editing: Revision Strategies for Writing

In addition to asking the above questions, here are some revision strategies to help you tackle the macro-level concerns in your writing.

Revision Strategies: Take a break after drafting

Before you get to revising and editing your work, take a break when you’ve finished the first draft. It is much easier to revise and edit when you can look at your work with a fresh set of eyes.

How long should you wait? It really depends. Some authors give their work 2 or 4 weeks. Stephen King recommends a 6 week break in his book On Writing. Really, you should give yourself enough time to forget the finer details of your work, but not so much time that you lose passion for the project.

Revision Strategies: Write a memory draft

Here’s a crazy idea: when you’re done with your first draft, throw it out.

Right. Don’t save a copy. Don’t reread what you’ve written. Don’t give yourself any access to it. Once you’ve written the final word, delete everything.

Why would you do this? Some writers, called “pantsers” or “discovery writers”, don’t plot in advance, they just write from scratch and figure it out as they go. When you delete this draft, you’re forced to write it again from memory. This “memory draft” will be written from only the most salient parts of the first draft—the parts that were memorable, enjoyable, and essential to the work.

Of course, you can write a memory draft without deleting your first draft. Deleting the first draft just makes it easier to ensure you never go back. This approach is not for everyone, but for some writers, such as our instructor Sarah Aronson, it results in the strongest possible work.

Revision Strategies: Create a plot line

If you’re a pantser, or even if you plot everything in advance, return to your work by creating a plot line.

Go scene by scene. What is every action that drives the writing forward? Who are the characters involved? Are those actions consistent with the characters?

Also give consideration to different plot structures. What plot structure does the story use? Is there a main plot and subplot(s)? How do the subplots tie into the plot as a whole?

Plot lines help you zoom out. Seeing your work at the macro-level is the key difference between revising and editing; to revise your work, you must be able to see it from a distance before zooming in closer.

Revision Strategies: Funneling

Funneling is a process for zooming into the work from a distance. It asks you to get progressively more in-the-weeds with your writing.

First, you need to look at the work as a whole. What are the overall themes and messages? What does the work accomplish, or try to accomplish? How is the work structured? Does the work feel essential?

Then, zoom in, and ask those same questions at the various sublevels of the work. Ask these questions by section, by chapter, by scene, by paragraph, and even sentence by sentence. Evaluating the purpose of each individual component helps you decide what to keep, what to cut, and what to revise and edit.

Revision Strategies: Look for discontinuities

Another way to decide what to keep, cut, revise and edit, is to spend time intentionally searching for discontinuities.

What are discontinuities? These are parts of the text where the writing is not continuous. They can be caused by the following:

• Sections of the text that don’t ultimately contribute to the plot, subplots, characters, character development, setting, etc.
• Plot threads that haven’t yet been tied up, but need to be.
• Subplots that ultimately do not impact the main plot of the story.
• Gaps in plot or characterization that need to be filled for the story to make sense.

Some discontinuities are intentional, and writers should certainly lean into ambiguity and interpretation. But your story should also say everything it needs to. Discontinuities hinder a story’s ability to do this. By snuffing them out and fixing them, you can prepare a text that is much more ready for editing.

Revising Vs Editing: Editing Strategies for Writing

In addition to asking the previous questions we’ve listed for editing your work, here are some editing strategies to help you tackle the micro-level concerns in your writing.

Editing Strategies: Read it out loud

Yes, even if it’s novel-length. Reading your work out loud is essential to honing your prose. (This is also true for writing poetry!)

The way that writing flows in your head is not necessarily how it flows when spoken aloud. As a result, your writing might sound good when you read it, but not when you say it. Writing that sounds good out loud always sounds good on the page; writing that sounds clunky or hard to follow out loud might be read the same way.

In addition to catching opportunities for stylistic improvement, reading your work out loud also gives you a chance to experience your work in a different way. You might gain a new perspective that helps you tackle major revisions.

Editing Strategies: Focus on specificity

Ambiguity has its place in literature. But, when it comes to giving good detail and description, specificity is key.

Take this passage, from The Mayor of Casterbridge by Thomas Hardy:

“Having sufficiently rested they proceeded on their way at evenfall. The dense trees of the avenue rendered the road dark as a tunnel, though the open land on each side was still under a faint daylight. In other words, they passed down a midnight between two gloamings.”

Look at how the attention to detail in this passage paints such a dazzling image. I can see this picture moving in my mind’s eye. And, the phrase “a midnight between two gloamings” is both poetic and musical, making this excerpt an all around enjoyable read.

What would a nonspecific passage of text look like? Instead of the above, imagine Hardy writing “The road was shady.” Maybe you can picture that in your head, but does the image move? Do you know that the shade is provided by trees, as opposed to buildings? Does it even matter whether the road was shady or not?

You don’t need to make everything specific, but specificity helps draw the reader’s attention to what’s beautiful and important. Through specificity, writers can access something both stimulating and poetic for the reader. Use this tool whenever you want to draw the mind’s eye somewhere.

Editing Strategies: Omit needless words

Omitting needless words is central to the art of editing. If a word isn’t doing important work, or if there is a less wordy way to say something, cut it out of the text. Be heartless!

Your style will always be improved by concision. Not brevity, but concision—where every word does important, necessary work. A sentence can be 200 words long, so long as every word is essential.

Common words to omit include adverbs, undescriptive adjectives, passive phrases that are better off active, and prepositions in place of stronger verbs. For more tips, check out our article on this topic:

https://writers.com/concise-writing

Editing Strategies: Turn repetition into variety

Repetition is a useful stylistic device to emphasize the important ideas and images in a text. But, repetition should be used sparingly. To keep your writing fresh and engaging, try not to repeat yourself too much, and call out parts of your text where you do.

This is true at both the word and sentence level. At the word level, keep things visually interesting. If a lot of things in your scene are already yellow, then the building can be green, for example. Also be sure to vary your transition words. If you use “then” to move to every next scene, the reader will catch on and get annoyed, quickly.

At the sentence level, vary your sentence lengths and structures. A series of short sentences will start to sound staccato. Too many long sentences will tax the reader’s attention. Sentences of any length can be used in any way. But, as a quick guide, you can often use short sentences to convey brief summary or information, medium sentences to advance the narrative, and long sentences for moments of introspection or important description. Again, any sentence of any length can do any of those things, but that’s an easy rule to start from.

Even at the paragraph level, try to have a mix of long and short paragraphs, where you can. Also, try to include dialogue at regular intervals. If your characters haven’t spoken for at least 3 pages, let their voices onto the page.

Editing Strategies: Ask yourself, who does your writing sound like?

This is an important question to ask when you’re editing your work. Who does your writing sound like?

It is important to define this, because you want the writing to sound like it’s coming from a real person. If you’re writing nonfiction, then you obviously want the writing to sound like yourself.

When writing fiction, the writing may sound like yourself, but remember, the narrator is not necessarily the author. So, the text should sound like whoever is narrating the story, even if it has some stylistic consistencies with other fiction you’ve written.

What you absolutely do not want is to affect a lofty manner. You can be artful, musical, poetic even, but you absolutely cannot Sound Like A Writer. Using elaborate sentence structures, academic vocabulary, or else trying to write High Literature will only make your writing sound pretentious. Talk to your reader, not above them.

Also, be sure to know the warning signs of when a passage of text is purple prose.

Revising and Editing Strategies

These strategies are useful for both revising and editing. As you revise and edit your work, consider doing the following:

Revising and Editing: Read like a writer

The best way to improve as a writer is to read other writers like a writer yourself. This is invaluable advice, especially for anyone learning how to write a novel. Paying attention to the craft skills that go into a work of literature will help you think about the decisions you make in your own work.

You can do this at both a revising and editing level. How did the author structure their text? Why does the chapter end here? What did they intend to do by using that specific word choice? Why is this sentence so long?

When you make a practice of doing this, it is much easier to bring that practice into your own work.

Learn more about reading like a writer here:

https://writers.com/how-to-read-like-a-writer

Revising and Editing: Print it out

Most people these days write using a computer. (I say most, because our instructor Troy Wilderson writes her novels freehand.) Whatever medium you use to write, try using a different medium to revise and edit.

So, if you typed your first draft, print it out and mark up the physical pages. If you happened to write freehand or use a typewriter, type up those pages and revise from there.

The point is to think about your work in a different medium. Revising and editing with different technology helps shift the gears in your brain, and it also encourages you to see your work with a different perspective. For whatever reason, you’ll think about your work with a fresh set of eyes if it’s sitting in front of you in a different format.

And, if you don’t have access to a printer, at least put your writing in a different text editor. Move from Microsoft Word to Google Docs, or even use a novel editing software like Scrivener. Anything to get you out of writing mode, and into revising mode, allowing you to see your work from a new angle.

Revising and Editing: Don’t do it all at once

Writing is a marathon, not a sprint. The same holds true for revising and editing.

If you try to tackle it all at once, you will create three problems for yourself.

One, you will rush through a process that requires slow, methodical labor. Trying to tackle everything right away will result in a work that’s fundamentally incomplete.

Two, you will end up ignoring or neglecting important or powerful opportunities for revision. Taking things slow helps you think more clearly about your work. You might miss out on powerful insights by trying to accomplish everything right away. You might also force yourself to avoid the work that needs to be done, such as major revisions or a full scale rewrite.

Three, you miss out on the joy of revising and editing. This is a fundamentally fun experience. It is also an experience central to being an author. Let yourself have it.

Revising and Editing: Read in reverse

Try reading your work from end to beginning. Read each sentence left to right, but read the sentences from back to front.

This might seem a little strange. After all, won’t you lose the meaning of the sentences by doing this? Well, that’s exactly the point—reading in reverse allows you to see the text in a new light. You might notice a sentence that is far less musical when it stands on its own. Or, you might find information that’s been unnecessarily repeated. At the structural level, you might realize that certain passages, sections, or scenes are too close to the end (or middle, or beginning) of the text.

This is another effort to see your work in a new light. Taking as many opportunities as you can to do this will inevitably result in a stronger, more satisfying story.

Revising and Editing: Get feedback

When you’ve reached the limit of what you can accomplish yourself, it’s time to get feedback on your work.

The important thing is knowing when you’ve reached this limit. Most people should not seek feedback when they’ve finished the first draft. Why? Because the work is in a far more vulnerable state. You need to give yourself time to revise and edit using only your own expertise.

In other words, you need to bring the work much closer to your vision for the work before other people see it. Letting people in too early could result in feedback that changes the story as a whole, and brings it further away from the vision you have for it.

Give yourself a few revisions before you start getting feedback on your work. Trust in your own instinct and artistic vision. Feedback should help you reach that vision; anything that alters it doesn’t belong in the final draft.

Revising and Editing Checklist

Here are some things to ask yourself in both the revising and editing stages of your work. 

Revising

• Does the writing begin where it should?
• Are the ideas logically sequenced?
• Does the juxtaposition of different ideas enhance those ideas?
• Do the characters of the text represent different ideas and messages?
• Do the settings represent certain themes and ideas?
• Do the settings impact the characters’ decisions?
• Is the plot shaped by conflict?
• Is the narrator clearly defined?
• Does the writing use scenes to showcase important moments, and summaries to glide over less important passages of time?
• Does the story’s mood complement the story itself?
• Does the story have a clearly defined climax?
• Do certain characters transform by the end of the story? (If not, is that intentional?)
• Does the writing end at the ending? Is the ending a closed door, or (preferably) an open one?

Editing

• Is every word the right word to describe a certain image, idea, or sensation?
• Do my sentences have enough variation in length and structure?
• Are the words I use easy to understand? If I use jargon or academic language, is the meaning of the text still clear?
• Do I use active vs passive voice with intent?
• Have I omitted any unnecessary words?
• Does my writing flow when spoken out loud?
• Do I use sonic devices to make the writing more enjoyable? Do those devices enhance the text?
• Do transitions enhance the logical flow of plot and ideas?
• Do I repeat certain words a lot? Do those repetitions contribute to the text, or do they become redundant?
• Have I employed the “show, don’t tell” rule consistently in my writing?
• Do I have a good balance of showing and telling?
• Do I use metaphors, similes, and analogies to illustrate ideas in thought-provoking ways?
• Is the writing clear at the word, sentence, and paragraph level?
• Does the dialogue sound like it was spoken by a real person?
• Does each character have a distinct voice, separate from the voice of the author?

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