Revision Checklist: What I Use to Stay on Track

A little list to make sure your manuscript sings

What’s new in my writing room: My latest novel, Last Bets, was selected in December for Kirkus Reviews' Top 100 Best Indie Books of the Year! Kirkus reviews thousands of indie books, and less than 1% receive a coveted starred review (which mine did). Of those, only 100 are selected across all genres for the “Best of” list. Kirkus is (to many) the Michelin Guide to industry book reviews. A star is like a Michelin three star award. A Best of is way beyond! I’m humbled, stunned, delighted. Grateful to all who helped me get here.

Photo by Jonas Jacobsson on Unsplash

Books move through our lives in distinct stages. First comes the wild idea. It grows gradually in the inner room of your creative self, until you can't ignore it. You have to get it down. This burst of energy propels you through an important starting gate— past ideas ruminating inside to ideas on the page.

Maybe these ideas are externalized for the first time, and they generate other ideas. You write for months, years, whatever it takes to shape your vision as the ideas flow in, pause, resume. I feel it’s like a river, and it keeps flowing as long as I pay attention.

The timeline for this initial stage is very individual.

If it's your first book, you may need a lot of time to dream and write those ideas and what they generate. Or, if the book’s been incubating inside for years, it all may come forth in a mad rush.

A songwriter friend talked with me this week about that mad rush. A song comes out in its entirety, and it works totally. That’s super exciting. Most often, for me, it takes time. Especially with a book.

The goal from this first stage is a rough draft. As writer Anne Lamott says, it’s a shitty first draft. Without it, you ain't got nothing, you ain’t going nowhere.

Finding the real story

Next task, after that river of ideas get on paper, is to figure out what the real story is inside all the words.

Many of you have been here. You face a 300-page document on your laptop or the printed pages piled onto your desk. You may be emerging from #1000 words or nanowrimo with something you hope will become a book. This stage is all about reworking, over and over. And feedback. And reworking some more.

For me, emotions come up. Resistance, too. And hate, passionate love (how amazing! how unique!), and the desire to toss it all away.

Eventually, I get to a place of neutrality. Where I can really see the work as it is, not as I hope it will become. How long does it take to get here? Depends a lot on your experience as a writer, if you’ve published or worked with an editor before, how you receive and use feedback. For newer writers, this clear vision can take years to develop. Sometimes, it’s faster. But the goal is to locate the real book within the initial draft.

The key to this step is moving from writer view to reader view. A writer must—I believe this so strongly!—release all personal attachment to the story. We must let it become what it is meant to be.

BTW, readers will not care if it's your precious idea. They want the book, the story, to relate to them, too.

Sometimes, in classes, I call this step “moving from the personal to the universal.” Finding what, in your personal vision or story, will speak to others and touch their lives too. It takes a lot, for most writers. Some never manage it. They are too attached to what they originally saw.

I say this from years of editing experience, working with publishers, helping writers cross this threshold. I say it with much compassion, because I have to do it too--and it's often a bitter medicine to swallow.

Essentially, you, the writer, must let go in order to see your story from a reader's eyes. You must absent your hovering presence and let that story speak for itself.

That's when you really can begin to revise.

Transitional drafts

Robert Boswell, author of The Half-Known World (highly recommend!), calls all our drafts to this point "transitional." The idea is that each time we rework, we transition the material to a higher, tighter, more accurate story. More accurate in that it expresses more of what we want to say.

I find Boswell’s term so true for all genres I’ve written myself and edited for other writers. Even prescriptive nonfiction, like how-to books, often work with outlines and talking points and much planning to gain this universal view.

It’s also a relief to tell myself that this version I’m working on is transitional. In other words, it will become something better as I rework it.

Some editors call this “developmental” editing, which means larger movement—maybe changing position of chapters or scenes, maybe adding or deleting large sections. We’re not into the fine-tuning yet.

Fine-tuning works best, in my view, after we’ve reached the place where we’re satisfied that the manuscript is telling the right story. It’s reached the place where we’re having a conversation with the reader, not just ourselves.

Then we're ready for the revision tasks that make it sing.

Four steps to fine-tuning your manuscript

I trained as an editor for eighteen years. Both as a freelancer for various publishers and a salaried manuscript editor for a small press in the Midwest, I worked with experienced pros who were steady, careful, and kind enough to instruct me. I learned there are indeed clear steps to take when polishing a manuscript. It's not a blind ride. Each editor has their own method, but many overlapped.

From my eighteen years, four main steps evolved. There are many more, but I'll share these with you today--maybe one will be helpful to your revision process.

Step 1: Find your editing method

First, find a good editing method that fits you.

Decide if you're more comfortable editing by paper or on screen. It's really a matter of personal preference. I tend to work onscreen until the document gets impossible to hold in my mind. Then I work with revision charts and printed pages.

It's important to find a method that lets you "see" the whole book, not just its parts. My charts check for three main features in each scene and chapter: (1) is there an outer event, (2) what is my intent for that scene or chapter as writer, and (3) what is the reader's possible take-away about the characters, narrator, or message of the book. I create a big Excel document or a chart in Word for this step then enter all the data for each scene, each chapter. Tedious, yes. Revealing, absolutely. I can immediately see where I slipped out of reader view into my own limited intent.

For more on these charts, which I call Structure Analysis Charts (SAC), check out my past post here.)

Step 2: Weed out the blahs

Even though your manuscript as a whole fits your reader view now, you may still have spots of less conscious language choices. One typical area is blah verbs. We choose verbs in haste when drafting, and we may overlook their weakness. Here's a short checklist that many professional editors use.

1. Scour out the verb "to be": search for "was" and "is" and replace with more active choices.

2. Remove "had" as much as possible. "Had" is past perfect and is really only needed in the first instance of a flashback. Then most pros slide into simple past tense. For instance: "She had been a chef years ago. She landed a good job at Circus Maximus." Notice that the "had" places us in the backstory, but after we are there, we can move to simple past, with "landed."

3. Eliminate "ing" verbs. Gerunds are useful but slow down the pace. Compare: "He wired the alarm" with "He was wiring the alarm"—fast, punchy versus languid. Occasionally, languid verb forms draw out tension, but if you search, you'll be astonished how often you've unconsciously used them.

4. Replace "walk" and "move" with more vivid actions. "They moved across the field" versus "They sped across the field." Quite a difference.

5. An adjunct to weak verbs is often the overuse of adverbs. Wipe them out as much as you can if you've opted for "ly" descriptors instead of punching up the verb choice. Adverbs slow down the pace. Use them cautiously; sometimes they are essential, but can you get rid of most of them?

Step 3: Continuity

Revision means making sure all details are consistent throughout your manuscript. Here are the three biggest offenders to double check:

1. Verify the movement of weather and time of day, chapter to chapter. Make sure these are consistent and evolve logically. We can't go from midnight to midday without notice. I make a chart and double-check it against my chapters. The SAC, above, can help enormously with tracking this.

2. List all major items in your story--vehicles, physical details, room locations, possessions--anything that appears frequently. Use the checklist to search for each. Verify that you've used the same descriptions. A man with flaming red hair in chapter 1 who is suddenly bald in chapter 10 needs explanation.

3. List all names--place and people. Check for consistency. One of my mom's pet peeves (she's a voracious reader) is the author who changes a main character's name from Elise to Elaine mid-book.

Step 4: Content checklists

If you still find yourself swimming in unease after these changes, you may need to go back to your content and upgrade it. Here are five small questions I ask myself, to bring content to another level.

1. Does each person in the story show inconsistencies? Humans do. We're generous and stingy. We're sweet and snarly. If your players aren't two sides of their own coin, stop protecting them. Show everything.

2. Are the places and peoples unique enough? I make lists of how each person differs from the others, then do the same with each location. Push this as much as you can.

3. Are there enough fights? Do they range in intensity? If not, add some. Conflict makes prose move.

4. Are there enough secrets? Do you reveal them too soon? Can you delay more, to build tension?

5. Does each chapter have a clear and definite purpose? If not, can you change it? Or eliminate it?

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Your Weekly Writing Exercise

Pick one of the steps above. Try it out this week on a chapter or your entire manuscript. See how it works for you. Then try another, if you wish.

Slow and steady--most editors I admire have these qualities. It's something we writers may not come to naturally, but the revision process will certainly teach us better!

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Shout Out!

A hearty shout out to these writing friends and former students who are publishing their books! I encourage you to pre-order or order a copy to show your support of fellow writers and our writing community.

(If you are a former student and will publish soon (pre-orders of your book are available now), or have in the past two months, email mary[at]marycarrollmoore[dot]com to be included in a future Shout Out! I’ll keep your listing here for two months.)

Megan Lindhal Goodrich, Beyond Terminal: Processing Childhood Trauma to Reclaim Self (Wise Ink), September release

Elizabeth Jarrett Andrew, The Release: Creativity and Freedom after the Writing Is Done (Skinner House), October release

Robert Johns, The Fighters: A Trilogy (River Grove Books), October release

Morgan Baylog Finn, The Gathering: Poems (Finishing Line Press), November release

Ed Orzechowski, Becoming Darlene: The Story of Belchertown Patient #4952 (Levellers Press), November release

Mary Beth Spray, Imprint: A Woman’s Journey from Trauma to Freedom (Beaver’s Pond Press), December release

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I’m a lifelong artist, and I love to inspire and support other creative folk, which is why I write this weekly newsletter. My goal with these posts is to help you strengthen your writing practice and creative life so it becomes more satisfying to you.

I’m also the author of 15 books in 3 genres. My third novel, Last Bets (Riverbed Press), was published in April, after becoming an Amazon bestseller during pre-orders. My second novel, A Woman’s Guide to Search & Rescue (Riverbed Press), was published in October 2023 also and became an Amazon bestseller and Hot New Release from pre-orders. For twelve years, I worked as a full-time food journalist, most notably through my weekly column for the Los Angeles Times syndicate. My writing-craft book, Your Book Starts Here, won the New Hampshire Literary Awards “People’s Choice” in 2011 and my first novel, Qualities of Light, was nominated for PEN/Faulkner and Lambda Literary awards in 2009. I’ve written Your Weekly Writing Exercise every Friday since 2008.