The next phase

I don't have much of a preamble this week. The holidays have come and gone, the decorations are packed away, and it's been a few weeks since I've worked on the novel. According to my roadmap, that means it's time to start editing.

At this stage, the novel is closer to a pile of building materials sitting on a muddy lot than a finished home ready for entertaining guests. But that's expected. It's part of the process.

I knew there were problems while I was drafting, but trying to fix them on the fly is a sure way to get stuck in creative quicksand. If you start editing while you’re still drafting, you'll get pulled into the pit of perfectionism, never to see sunlight or a finished draft ever again. You just have to keep moving forward and know you’ll fix it later.

Getting the story on the page has always been the easy part for me. Now comes the real work of crafting a novel.

On to this week’s essay. Unsurprisingly, it’s about first round editing.

Finishing a first draft feels like crossing a finish line. The idea is finally out of your head and on to something tangible. Or at least what passes for tangible in the digital age.

You’ve told a story, and in your mind it’s perfect. You’re ready to write your award acceptance speech for best novel of the year. But when you crack open that manuscript to find the perfect pull quote, you discover someone has replace your elegant prose and clever plot devices with bad tropes and wooden characters.

You could go looking for the culprit, but in a twist that everyone saw coming, it was you who made a hash of your story. And you’re the one who has to clean it up.

My dad had a sign on the wall of his garage workshop that said, if you’re going to eat a plate of frogs, eat the big one first. Now I still don’t know why anyone would want to eat a whole plate of frogs. But the metaphor is sound when it comes to dealing with a lot of tasks before you. Fixing the book’s structure is the biggest frog on the plate, and now is the time to eat it.

Here’s how to go about eating that first big frog.

Before you edit anything, stop. Put the manuscript away for a few weeks if you can. Distance is what allows you to read like an editor instead of a writer that’s emotionally attached to every scene. When you come back cold, problems reveal themselves much faster.

Your first read should be fast and uninterrupted. Don't line edit. Don't rewrite. Read it like a novel you picked up at a bookstore. Take light notes in a separate document about confusion, boredom, emotional highs, or moments that feel rushed or unearned. You're collecting reactions, not fixing problems yet.

Once you finish that first read, zoom out. Does the story have a clear inciting incident? Do the stakes rise as the book progresses? Does the ending resolve the central conflict in a way that feels earned? Can you even identify the central conflict?

Pay close attention to cause and effect. Events should happen because of character choices, not because the plot needs them to. If something feels off, it usually means motivation or setup is missing.

Characters should drive the story, especially your protagonist. Identify what your main character wants at the beginning and how that changes by the end. Look for moments where growth happens too suddenly or entirely off the page. Remember the goals, motivations, and conflicts you set out for them in the planning phase. Check to see if they’re still what drives the character’s actions.

Watch for passive characters. If your protagonist spends long stretches reacting instead of choosing, tension suffers.

Every scene should earn its place. Ask what changes as a result of a scene or chapter. Does it advance the plot, deepen a character, or ideally both? First drafts often include scenes that repeat information or feel good but don't move the story forward. This is often where infodumping and excessive world building happen.

A simple scene list with one-sentence summaries can quickly reveal redundancy and identify dead weight.

Now's the time to flag plot holes, timeline issues, contradictions, and shaky worldbuilding. Don't fix them yet. Just identify them clearly so you can address them in a focused revision pass.

Look at where the story slows down or rushes ahead. Are early chapters overloaded with setup? Does the middle stall? Does the climax move too fast to land emotionally? Pacing problems are usually structural, not stylistic.

Before rewriting anything, gather your notes, including the ones you wrote while drafting, into a single plan. Prioritize big changes first. This means restructuring chapters, strengthening arcs, cutting and merging scenes. This keeps the revision intentional and not spiraling off into a full rewrite. (Which will land you right back here again. Ask me how I know.)

Only after you’ve done the groundwork and developed a plan are you ready to revise the manuscript. Save sentence-level editing for later. You’re going to make a lot more mistakes at that level, so there’s no point in cleaning them just yet.

The first edit is about building a solid story. Everything else comes later.

If you want to have a fun time, take the steps above, starting with Check the story’s structure, and apply them to the book or show you’re currently enjoying. It’s a pretty good primer for story analysis.