Episode #152 - The Three Stages of Story with Tiffany Yates Martin
September 20, 2022
Tiffany Yates Martin talks about THE THREE STAGES OF STORY: drafting, editing, and revising. We discuss how the first draft is base camp on our trip to the summit of a finished manuscript; the fact that our writing is a commodity; different editing processes; how we hone our craft; combating dejection with realistic expectations; and the fact that writing is not an assembly line.
Do any of those topics pique your interest? Check out 2 MINUTES OF INDY, where over the week following the airing of the episode, you'll find brief video clips from the interview on each of those topics. You can also catch up on some highlights of previous episodes there. |
Tiffany Yates Martin has spent nearly thirty years as an editor in the publishing industry, working with major publishers and New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling, award-winning authors as well as newer writers. She is the author of the Amazon bestseller INTUITIVE EDITING: A CREATIVE AND PRACTICAL GUIDE TO REVISING YOUR WRITING. She's led workshops and seminars for conferences and writers' groups across the country and is a frequent contributor to writers' sites and publications. Under the pen name Phoebe Fox, she's the author of the Breakup Doctor series, including the most recent release, THE WAY WE WEREN’T.
|
Download | Amazon Music | Android | Apple | Google Podcasts | Libsyn | RSS | Spotify | Stitcher | YouTube
"Even in MFA programs, I think that writers are taught writing as if writing is the skill of writing. And of course it is. It's the basis of everything. But writing the first draft or even initial drafts, I always say, is just the first base camp on Everest. The main work of writing, of creating a story, comes in editing and revising it." —Tiffany Yates Martin
Are you getting value from the podcast? Consider supporting me on Patreon or through Buy Me a Coffee!
Links
Tiffany's Links:
https://foxprinteditorial.com/
https://foxprinteditorial.com/2021/12/09/please-dont-revise-your-manuscript/
https://foxprinteditorial.com/2021/10/14/the-three-perspectives-of-effective-storytelling/
https://writersinthestormblog.com/2018/12/nanowrimo-was-the-easy-part-how-to-see-your-story-across-the-finish-line/
Other Episodes with Tiffany:
Episode 112 - Being the Captain of Your Author Voyage with Tiffany Yates Martin
Episode 088 - How to Receive and Give Critique with Tiffany Yates Martin
Episode 065 - X-raying Your Plot with Tiffany Yates Martin
Episode 053 - What Authors can Learn from TV and Movies with Tiffany Yates Martin
Matty's Links:
Affiliate links
Events
https://foxprinteditorial.com/
https://foxprinteditorial.com/2021/12/09/please-dont-revise-your-manuscript/
https://foxprinteditorial.com/2021/10/14/the-three-perspectives-of-effective-storytelling/
https://writersinthestormblog.com/2018/12/nanowrimo-was-the-easy-part-how-to-see-your-story-across-the-finish-line/
Other Episodes with Tiffany:
Episode 112 - Being the Captain of Your Author Voyage with Tiffany Yates Martin
Episode 088 - How to Receive and Give Critique with Tiffany Yates Martin
Episode 065 - X-raying Your Plot with Tiffany Yates Martin
Episode 053 - What Authors can Learn from TV and Movies with Tiffany Yates Martin
Matty's Links:
Affiliate links
Events
Transcript
[00:00:00] Matty: Hello and welcome to The Indy Author Podcast. Today my guest is Tiffany Yates Martin. Hey, Tiffany, how are you doing?
[00:00:06] Tiffany: Hey, Matty. Thanks for having me again.
[00:00:08] Matty: It is my pleasure. To give our listeners and viewers a reminder of your many accomplishments, Tiffany Yates Martin has spent nearly 30 years as an editor in the publishing industry, working with major publishers in New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling award-winning authors as well as newer writers.
She's the author of the Amazon bestseller, "Intuitive Editing: A Creative and Practical Guide to Revising Your Writing." She's led workshops and seminars for conferences and writers’ groups across the country and is a frequent contributor to writer sites and publications. Under the pen name Phoebe Fox, she is the author of The Breakup Doctor series, including the most recent release, "The Way We Weren't."
And Tiffany has got to be at the top of the leader board for repeat appearances on the podcast. She has been on previous episodes talking about topics including what authors can learn from TV and movies, x-raying your plot, perspectives on personal branding, how to receive and give critique, being the captain of your author voyage, and perspectives on creative accomplishments. And if you want to find any of those, just go to TheIndyAuthor.com/podcast and search for Tiffany.
So, the conversation that Tiffany and I are going to have is based on an email we exchanged. And one of the comments that Tiffany made was, "I think writing is taught as if it's made up entirely of drafting, when editing and revision are the bulk of the processes." And so we're really just going to be chatting today about what that looks like from both a craft and expectation-setting point of view. So Tiffany, I'm just going to throw out the first question. What were you seeing in your career as an editor that led you to feel like this is a good message to send on to writers?
The First Draft is Base Camp
[00:01:42] Tiffany: I was just having this conversation with a friend this morning, but it's one I have a lot. Even in MFA programs, I think that writers are taught writing as if writing is the skill of writing. And of course it is. It's the basis of everything. But writing the first draft or even initial drafts, I always say, is just the first base camp on Everest. The main work of writing, of creating a story, comes in editing and revising it. And so what I often see on my end is that, and this is down the line from working directly with authors, as well as working with authors at publishing houses, they get to the point where they feel like by the time it's, let's say, been accepted for publishing, it's already been, how many times has an author gone through it before it gets accepted by an agent, before it gets accepted for publication? So of course you feel like when you sell this story, oh, great, it's ready.
Very often you're still looking at a fair amount of editing, even after that fact. And I've seen that derail authors. I've seen edits turn into, and I'm going to differentiate in a minute between editing and revising, because I think that's important, but let's just call it all edits under the umbrella for now. I've seen when edits get a little bit more extensive, authors lose their heart, they lose their confidence in their story, they lose their motivation to finish it. They dismiss the whole story because there's things in it that aren't working as well as they could. And it's never really taught that that's what the process is. That's what it's supposed to look like.
The process of writing a story is really the process of finding it and honing it. You know me, I use a ton of metaphors, but one of the ones I use a lot is sculpting. Writing is just roughing the shape out of the marble and then everything after that that makes it the David, is all of that little fine detail work going over and over and over it until it's saying exactly what you want it to say as effectively as possible.
Most writing teaching, most writing books, barely touch on that fact, almost as if it's an afterthought. Like, oh, you write it and then real quick you edit it and then you go on and publish it. I think it becomes very daunting and overwhelming to authors.
The Difference between Revising and Editing
[00:03:51] Tiffany: So if we go into it with this mindset of, okay, writing is just roughing out the shape and the marble. Then we're going to do the editing process, which is so to differentiate, editing, I always say, is assessing. Revising is addressing. What I mean by that is, editing is what I do as an editor, but it's also what the author should and can do, which is to look at what you have on the page, see how effectively it's working, how well it's coming across, see where it may not be working as effectively as you would like and figure out what may need to be shored up to strengthen it.
Revising is putting that into practice. Putting it on the page. So all those writing skills that we're taught, of course, it's a huge part of writing. That's what revising is. You take all of those skills that you know about building character and raising stakes and intricately plotting a story that holds together structurally, and you bring that knowledge into the revision process. But the doing of it, is where a lot of the work of writing lies. So if we go into that knowing it, this is my mission to spread this message, if writers go into it knowing that you're just partway up the mountain when you finish the draft, I think the rest of it becomes less overwhelming.
Our Writing Is a Commodity
[00:05:08] Matty: So I love the analogy of the sculpting, and I can imagine someone looking at a sculpture in a modern art museum, for example. And it looks like the first whack at the David. You know, it’s rough, it looks unformed, it maybe doesn't really even look like what the viewer expects. You know, they read it and says, man on a horse and then they look at it and they think, that's not possibly a man on a horse, but it's in an art museum, so somebody must realize that it's good.
So I can imagine that there are authors who say, my work is like the man on the horse. It's raw and unformed and the man on the horse got into an art museum, so my raw writing should be equally appreciated. Do you encounter that? Or am I just making that up?
[00:05:58] Tiffany: Mm-hmm no, totally. Let's call this "50 Shades of Grey" syndrome, where you see something like that that was started as fan fiction and was pretty raw, probably was edited to be less raw when it was published, but, I'm not going to make value judgements, but I'm just saying maybe a little more editing might have been useful to help strengthen that story.
But it was a huge hit. So are there exceptions to every rule? Of course there are. Are there different stylistic preferences? Yes, indeed. This is a subjective industry, but it's also incredibly competitive, as you and every other writer listening know. And if you want to give yourself the best chance of success, you have to bring yourself in line with what is marketable and what is, I mean, at the end of the day, nobody likes to hear this as an artist, but we are a product. We're a commodity. And you are trying to, most of us are trying to take our product onto the market, and you don't do that by going, look, I slapped this together, anybody want it?
Over Editing
[00:06:55] Tiffany: Maybe. Yeah, maybe some people will. Maybe you have friends and intimates and avant garde readers who would love to see the most raw thing possible. And I'm not saying you polish it to within an inch of its life, because there is such a thing as over editing, over revising. You can polish all the life out of something. That's a fine balance to strike, is knowing when to let something go, because a writer can improve their writing, you know, how many of us hate to let a story go ever, because we can always improve it a little bit more? At a certain point, you've got to let it fly. But what is that point? And that's as subjective a decision as can be, not just with the author herself or himself, but with your agent, with your publisher.
Like I said, I work with publishers often and we get things that the author deemed ready, that the agent deemed ready, that the publisher deemed publishable and marketable and accepted, and then every now and then, an author will not understand why after being admitted through all of those gates, why is there still work to do? It's just because everybody in the business is trying to turn out the most polished, marketable, widely appealing story possible. And the way you generally do that is editing and revision.
[00:08:09] Matty: I can imagine that people are bringing different mindsets, and some are going to say of course, who wouldn't believe that. And some are going to be aghast. I can imagine that maybe the hardest sell is to someone who has been working away on their novel for years, decades. You know, they get done with their 120,000 words and they type The End. And they've been at it so long, and that moment of typing, The End is so momentous, that if they were to hear that the writing part was only a small part of it, now they have three more decades of editing and revising process. How do you help that kind of writer deal with that situation?
Different Editing Processes
[00:08:49] Tiffany: So two things about that. That's one of the reasons I talk about this everywhere I can, because I think the more writers understand that this is the process, the less, and I'm not saying there aren't writers who don't edit as they go. Walter Mosley says that when he finishes a manuscript, it's done. It's ready. Because he's been editing as he goes. If that works for a writer, great. But it is not without editing. The only writer I have ever once years ago interviewed Edward Albee the playwright and asked him about his revision process, of course. And he says, this moment of silence, and he goes, I don't do revisions. And I was like, well, okay, Edward Albee, I'm not going to argue with you, but I have read your plays and I'm betting you do at least in some way.
[00:09:31] Matty: Do you think that was just kind of a marketing ploy that he was saying that?
[00:09:34] Tiffany: I don't know, some authors do that. Walter Mosley, I mentioned a minute ago. I think the world of his writing, but I was at an event once where he talked about, somebody asked about what happens if he turns the book in and the publisher thinks that there is some editing or revision needed. And he said, oh, well, in that case, I tell them, I'm happy to take the book somewhere else. And I went, okay.
Which is a slightly different thing because I do think he's a very tight writer. And I do think there's editing that happens as he goes. I write a monthly feature in my blog called How Writers Revise, and I ask successful authors to tell us a little bit about their revision process, because I think everybody does it differently. And some do it as a separate process. Some roll it all in together while they're writing. Some do it little by little as they go. It's whatever works for you.
But the other thing I wanted to address about what you said is, three decades of editing and revising, that isn't necessarily the case, and it's also not a sustainable business model. So yes, editing and revising take time. When I work with a publisher, we generally allot, oh, I would say 6 to 8 weeks minimum for it. But that's really right about where we stay. Rarely longer than three months. So it's not a drawn-out process, but it is an intensive one.
But the beauty of it to me is that I think drafting is the hardest part. You're creating something out of nothing. The hardest part in the sense of coming up with the story you wanted to tell. I think editing and revision is the most demanding part. I always say, it's where you separate the hobbyists from the career authors. And there's nothing wrong with being a hobbyist author. If that's what you want to be and you love this and you're doing it for your own enjoyment, that's incredibly valid and fulfilling and good for you.
But if you do want to be competitive in the market, and if you want to be a businessperson with it, then that's where you have to be able to commit to the work and the diligence that editing and revision requires.
Because it's not the sexy part, right? The sexy part is writing it. Ooh, I have this cool idea, I'm going to put it on paper. This is the plotting part. I mean, it's just like the sculpting metaphor, right? The sexy part is chisel, chisel, chisel, look, a human! But that's probably not going to, probably, it's not going to go in the museum. You talk about man on horse, this hypothetical abstract, I don't think that that is a sloppy, you know, oh, let's just do that. Even abstract art takes a great deal of thought and skill and planning and work. So to me, that is an effect that they're going after. That's a subjective style choice.
[00:12:06] Matty: Yeah, I think that it's one of those things that you hear about the people who go into a modern art museum and look at a painting and say, my third grader can do that. And so people using it as an excuse for not refining rather than making an informed choice. Like, you have to be able to create the realistic form before you decide to make abstract man on a horse, maybe.
The Work of Honing Our Craft
[00:12:30] Tiffany: I mean, look at every other art or even sport form. If you are an actor, you don't just get the script and get on stage with it. You rehearse for weeks and weeks, months, sometimes. If you are a dancer, if you are a musician, you not only do all the rehearsals of the piece that you're doing, but then there's all the work of simply honing your craft in general, all those hours of just plié, plié, plié, third position. You know what I mean? The tedious stuff. That's not sexy. That's not Swan Lake. But it is required if you want to be an artist who masters your craft. If you want to present a polished product.
Look at sports. Okay, I'm not a sports person, you're going to see that in just a minute, pre-season training or whatever it is. And then all the scrimmages or all the practices, all the stuff, and that's not even counting all the things each individual athlete will do on their own to perfect their skills.
So why we think it's going to be different as writers? My theory is because we all, most of us who love doing this, grow up reading. And when you do that, it feels like you're saying about, oh, my third grader could do that. And I'm not saying that's what we think, but we read these stories and we see the finished product that is already as effective, hopefully, as it can be made, we don't see what goes into it. We don't see how the sausage is made. All we see is this story. And just like when you sing along to a song and you think, oh, look, I could be a musician, I think it's really easy to read a book and go, I could do that, without realizing how much work actually goes into it.
Combat Dejection with Realistic Expectations
[00:14:04] Tiffany: And I'm not trying to discourage anyone because I think this is a wonderful, fulfilling calling. I think if we go into every aspect of it with more realistic expectations, that's how you sustain a long-term career. If you go into it knowing what this is going to require of you and are willing to do that work, then you almost can't fail. I mean, I don't want to say that it's like a formula for success, because this is the most mercurial business, any artistic business is the most mercurial business, but if you're just willing to do the work and stay in the game, you're going to find success, whatever that may look like.
[00:14:41] Matty: That is a very heartening message, I think, to share with people and not one that maybe a lot of writers hear.
[00:14:48] Tiffany: Well, because we want the quick success. We want the easy success. We want to be E.L. James. We want to be Stephen King. Maybe you will. I interviewed, and I know she is a colleague of yours as well, Joanna Penn, and I was marveling at all she has accomplished. And she said, I'm going to tear up her quote, but it was something wonderful like, I've been doing this for 16 years and if you do anything for 16 years, you will succeed at it.
[00:15:13] Matty: Yeah.
[00:15:13] Tiffany: I can't see that that's wrong. If you dedicate the work and the time and the fortitude and determination to stay in it, where I think many writers, and I don't want to use the word fail, but the only way to fail is to quit, is to finish a first draft. And interestingly, and I see this over and over again, the authors who are frequently daunted or sometimes even defensive about the editing process, are the ones very early in their career.
The authors who are multi-published, very well established who have very successful careers, welcome it because they know it's part of the process and they know it's not someone trying to take over your story. It's not even a collaboration per se. An editor is a tool. Editing is a tool like anything else. You know, you've got the big chisel tool to make the fun part, and then you have to get all the little fine tools. And that requires a lot of hours and a lot of tiny little patient movements.
But if you do that, you may not get the David, but you're going to make your work as effective as you are capable of making it at that stage in your development. And you'll get better and better with every book.
Developmental Edits
[00:16:20] Matty: Yeah. I'm always surprised. In my own scenario, I think of three types of edits -- developmental edit line, edit and proofread -- and I'm always surprised when I hear someone who's been in the industry a long time saying that developmental edits are more for early writers, and then as you become more experienced, you don't need that anymore. And I'm like, really??
[00:16:41] Tiffany: Every publisher, every publisher in New York and everywhere would disagree with that statement. And every established author would disagree with it.
[00:16:48] Matty: Yeah. The other thing that what you're saying made me think of is this is very much the experience I'm going through with Ann Kinnear Book 6. So the listeners have heard me mention many times the many challenges I ran into with Ann Kinnear 5, because I thought I had the story I wanted, I sent it for an edit, I find out I didn't, and it was very many wasted words on Ann Kinnear five. So I decided I was never going to do that again, I developed this concept of a story frame. And I did that for Ann Kinnear 6, which is great, it has saved me boatloads of pain. And so I took it from a frame of about 40,000 words, and then I needed to turn it into a novel of 80, 85 ish thousand words.
And I'm actually still making changes. Sometimes people ask me if I'm going to do a book on story framing and at first, I said no, but then I realize that it's just one step in a long process and has lots of auxiliary things to go along with it. But I am finding that a challenge is that it's a workman-like effort. It's not, like you were saying, the exciting artistic efforts. It's a workman-like effort to now go through and add the extra 40,000 words of description, dialogue, and detail that are going to bring the story to life.
And it's a little harder to keep my interest. Although I recognize that in the end it will be a better product. Well, it won't be a better product, it will be a more efficient product. Because I was happy with how Ann Kinnear 5 ended up, but I just didn't want to re-experience the pain it took me to achieve that. So from a business point of view, this is more effective, and I need to just suck up the fact that part of this process is not going to be particularly exciting.
Writing's Not an Assembly Line
[00:18:26] Tiffany: Well, writing's not an assembly line and every author is different. And so some are plotters, some are pantsers. If people aren't familiar with that, plotters pretty much outline everything before they start. Pantsers just go with an idea and fly by the seat to their pants. And then there's plantsers they call it, which is a mix of both.
There's no right way to do it. It's whatever works for your style. And when I'm writing anything, whether that's nonfiction or fiction, I tend to be somewhere in the middle, and I do wind up with a lot of people call it, wasted words, but to me it is not wasted words. It's me finding my way to the story.
So when I do get to the editing process, there's generally a lot less to be done because I'm more of a process person. I'm finding it as I go. A lot of times, if you don't do that, if you're like a complete pantser, let's say, and you, one of my favorite phrases, the author Brenda Euland has a beautiful book called, "If You Want to Write" that I cannot recommend highly enough about the creative process. She says, just vomit it up on the page. If you vomit it up on the page, you may have more to do on the back end. But also different authors enjoy that differently. Like for me, I wish to God somebody would hand me my first draft every time, because I don't like drafting. I like editing. To me, that's where the magic really happens because that's where I can get my intentions on the page. That's where I can fine tune, that's where I can deepen and develop on all these things that were interesting in the, not the abstract, the big picture view that I just vomit up as I'm going, then I can really mine out the gold from it. So to me, it's among the most satisfying processes there is. I talk to a lot of authors who feel that way.
But it doesn't have that wild, reckless, purely artistic, just like right brain, let's just see what's going to happen next vibe of drafting that some authors do prefer. But they're both, it's, it's hand in glove. You can't have one without the other because they're both part of the process. But I think because we think of writing as such a big part of the pie, editing and revising are relegated to the little pieces of the pie. But they're not. I mean, if anything, to me, you can't do anything without that first draft. But to me, that's just getting you going.
[00:20:37] Matty: Do you have different advice at all for people who are writing fiction versus nonfiction?
[00:20:43] Tiffany: That's a good question. I do write those two differently actually. Fiction, I tend to have a lot more discard file of things of me finding my way into the story, because I do not like to know everything that's going to happen because then I don't want to tell the story. But with nonfiction, I do have to have a really clear idea of what I want to say, where I'm going, how I'm going to say it. There is some freedom for me in it as I'm writing, because I'll go, oh, here's a good analogy for that, or here are the five components of that that I can extract from the overall big picture of the idea.
But for the most part, I'm a cleaner writer as a nonfiction writer. So the advice I guess I would have is, you're still going to need to do editing for both. Because editing is not, oh, you did it wrong, let's figure out how to do it right. Editing is figuring out where the intentions you have in your head, and probably you have them crystal clear in your head, exactly what you want to say, fiction or nonfiction. Did it make it onto the page? And a lot of times, it's hard for us to see that in our own work, because we are not objective, because we are filling in the blanks, because we see what we think we put on the page, not what a reader coming to it blind will actually see on the page. Or it may be on the page, but not as effectively as we think, not as clearly as we think, not as deeply as we think.
And this is just unbelievably common in every story I work on. And for the most part, when an editor or yourself, I'm not saying everybody should always have to hire an editor. This is a skill writers can and should develop for themselves to be able to see their own work this clearly. Once you see where is the story not achieving my vision, whether that's fiction or nonfiction, now, how do I do that? How do I put that on the page?
The Importance of Beta Readers for Non-fiction
[00:22:29] Tiffany: So advice for it, would it be different for each one? As far as the necessity of doing it, I don't think so. The one thing I will say about nonfiction is it can often be even more helpful than with fiction to have beta readers. Because you ostensibly, whatever you're writing about, either through your research or your own experience, you're an expert on it. And it's a very different perspective from somebody coming to it, who isn't. So if you get a wide array of people to look at it and tell you whether it's clear on the page, whether it flows, whether the ideas are coming across, whether they meld together, whether they all make sense, whether you have enough explanation, too much explanation, redundancy, I think that can be especially helpful.
Using Edit Notes
[00:23:14] Matty: One practice that I'm seeing that crosses over from my non-fiction writing to my fiction writing, is that I will often in non-fiction put notes saying, be sure to cover this, but don't cover this because I want to cover this in a different chapter. I'll type all those things to myself. And I started doing that with fiction as well. So, does it make sense that Ann does this at this point? Probably not, because then she wouldn't have any impetus to do this other thing. Like I'll type all this out.
And I didn't realize I was doing this until I'm working on my first collaborative fiction work. And this fellow author and I are working in the same Google document and she's getting to see me do all this stuff. And it's actually kind of helpful because it's a communication mechanism for me to be able to say, we don't want this to happen here because of such and such. But I find that I would be doing that whether I was typing it for another person or typing it for myself.
Those are edit notes. Those are the kind of notes I would make in an author's manuscript. Just, not to say this is right or wrong, but just to hold up the mirror, I always say, just to go, don't forget this, or this is not coming across here or make sure the reader knows this or this thing doesn't make sense. So it sounds like part of your process is to do a little bit of that as you go.
[00:24:28] Matty: Yeah, and the other thing that I find is that once I land on the answer, I write it in a way that I can easily find and delete before the final, final, final version, because it saves me from getting to that point in one of my many sweeps through the manuscript and saying, oh, you know, what would be cooler? I'm going to do this other thing. No, you can't because then you have to change 17 other things. And I just forget. I think that either my brain is too small, or my plots are too complex. I can't keep it all in my head.
How to Edit and Revise
[00:24:53] Tiffany: So let me ask you this. This brings us to actually an important aspect of this whole three-part process of writing, editing, revising. How do you edit and revise? Do you go through like chronologically? Do you do full sweeps and make notes? What's your process?
[00:25:09] Matty: Well, for Ann Kinnear 6, I think almost always in my fiction work have two storylines. I have the main storyline and then I usually have to have a sub-story line that is my excuse to get Ann into the story earlier. Because in general, Ann doesn't get involved, as someone who talks to dead people, she doesn't get involved until someone has died and someone has found a reason to get her involved. So that can be part way into the book. So I have to have some sub-story line going on to accommodate that.
One of the things that I discovered in my framing effort is the sub-story line that I had originally planned for Ann turned out to be so beefy that there was no way that I could accommodate it as a sub-story line. It really deserved its own book. And fortunately, I realized that after only two or 3000 words of framing. Yay!
So what I had been doing for a while is, I would edit those separately. I would have the main storyline and I just keep sweeping through it and sweeping through it and sweeping through it and either beefing up or refining as I go. And then I would do the same with the other storyline. And now I'm at the point where I have to see how those two storylines are relating to each other. And so now I'm going through the whole book chronologically, as the reader would read it, switching from sub-plot to sub-plot.
Editing Helps You See the Whole Picture
[00:26:24] Tiffany: One danger in doing, and as I said, I do think that authors can and should do their own editing and revising. Like, it's helpful to have an editor, but it's certainly not required by any means to sell your book to an agent. If you're self-publishing yes, get an editor. I think we can lose our freshness to what it is. One thing that helps an editor be objective is we are objective, right? We haven't read this thing 50 times.
So what do most authors do? I think a version of what you said. When they finish their draft, how do they start editing? Well, they go back to the beginning and then they sweep and they start making changes as they go. That's revising. And you have skipped editing.
This is why I think it's important to think of them as three different processes, because remember, editing is assessing, revising is addressing, I broke my book "Intuitive Editing," every single chapter, which is an aspect of storytelling, so it would be like character, plot, stakes, has a section called "How to Find It" and a section called "How to Fix It." They're two different things.
You cannot go, I think you are shooting yourself in the foot if you finish your story and you go through and then you start making changes. You haven't taken in the story as a whole yet, and if you've been making these little sweeps over and over, now you really can't because now you've lost all objectivity to it. You're not going to see that essential big picture. And that is crucial.
The first thing I do as an editor when I get a manuscript is, I read it like a novel. I don't make notes. I don't start thinking about what needs changing. I just need to see what's there. And you have pretty much one chance to do that as an author. When you finish your story, if you can step away from it, if you can stand to wait even a few days, give yourself a little mental distance and then read the whole thing through before you start making the first change.
So many authors skip over that process to get to what I jokingly call again, the sexy part, which is, oh, let's tweak that word, let's tweak that sentence. Let's make it sing. Let's make it beautiful. That's great, but that is the last stage of what revising should be.
Before that, you have to make sure your support beams are all in place. You have to make sure the foundation is solid, the roof is on the building. Then you start making sure that the dry wall is all up without any cracks in it. And then you can stage the house, then you get to decorate it.
But if you start with that little stuff, you are destroying what little objectivity you're ever going to have, this one golden opportunity you have to just see what you created and read it as close to the reader's experience as you are ever going to get, I mean without taking, years away from the thing down the road.
[00:29:02] Matty: Yeah. Well, I think that the doing the frame is exactly what you're describing with the house that I feel I did what you're describing when I was creating the frame for the story. And as I go through subsequent passes--
[00:29:16] Tiffany: The frame or the whole written draft?
[00:29:21] Matty: Well, it sort of morphs from one to the other. I'm trying to figure out a way to describe this. At some point, I realize that I have all the parts I need for a suspense mystery story. That the hints fall together, I understand what the red herrings are going to be. I've already confirmed that the person who's the bad guy really is the bad guy, because that was one of the problems I ran into with my previous book. When I first started out, I had a different person being the bad guy. When I finished, what I thought was the final pre-editor draft of Ann Kinnear 5, I thought I had an idea of the primary motivation of the bad guy. And then that was all the stuff that took me an extra 6 months to fix after I got my edits back.
So at some point I'm saying, yeah, there's 40,000 words that describes what the storyline is and now I'm going in and filling in dialogue, for example. And sometimes when I fill in the dialogue, that's what clues me in that the motivation isn't really there. So then I have to go back more to framing and fix that. But I feel as if most of the revising I'm doing is when I'm working on the frame. And by the time I get to writing dialogue, then it is more putting the nice finishing touches on it.
But then the reason that I'm never going to be a rapid release writer is then I do have to set it aside for a couple of weeks. So that after that period of time, exactly, like you're saying, I can go back to it and feels more fresh. I can read it like a reader and see where I haven't quite achieved what I thought I had achieved when I was deep into it.
[00:30:52] Tiffany: That's sort of the key, I think, no matter, even if you are a meticulous outliner. I heard Jeffrey Deaver ever speak once. And I think his outlines are something like, oh my God, they're something like 80 pages, 120 pages, single spaced. They're nuts, right?
[00:31:10] Matty: Jeffrey Deaver's on my list because 90% of the authors I talk to, when I asked them what their preference is, they're all like, oh yeah. I was so surprised when I found out who the murderer was. I'm like, are you kidding me? So I have to have Jeffrey Deaver on the podcast.
[00:31:21] Tiffany: Yeah, he's a meticulous planner. But I would be, I mean, I'll be interested to hear what he has to say, planning it, no matter how much work you do, we still need to know how well it's coming across on the page to someone who is not you. So I still think that initial read is really invaluable before you start doing anything, even if you've outlined it, like you done the framing. It's the only time you're ever going to get to do that. And it's a pleasure. It's a pleasure to see, most of the time, to see what you have created in its entirety.
And it takes as long as it takes to read a novel, which most of us can do in the space of a good five to eight hours, generally, if you sit down and do it. I do think the closer you can do to one sitting of that first read, the better, just to let yourself get a sense of it. But then I adapted what Saul Stein calls, he's one of my editing heroes and I highly recommend his books, they're on my number one list up there. It's a version of what he calls triage, which is also a little bit counterintuitive, I think, to the way a lot of authors work, which is that chronological thing, let's go in and fix as we go.
Fixing the Biggest Problems First
[00:32:25] Tiffany: Saul Stein talks about going in and fixing the biggest problems first. So if you have a foundational issue with character or the plot is not quite holding together, or your stakes are not sustained or don't build throughout, or your climax isn't effective or leaves loose ends in the story unresolved, go in and fix that big stuff first and then go in and do ever finer, it's the sculpting metaphor again, right? First you go, oh, look at that. The face is just a complete plane of marble with no features, let me rough out the features. And then you get them in and then you go in and you do the fine work after that.
But if you start trying to make a perfect little eyeball, when you still just got this blank slate of marble, then by the time you finish that, you've got to worry about making everything else match it instead of working as a whole, making sure it's intrinsic and then doing all the detail work.
I don't mean to suggest that there is one right way of editing. That's one of the reasons I do this monthly feature, I talked about, How Writers Revise, because I think something works a little differently for every author. But I do think that these basic approaches I'm talking about, these three writer mindset, editor mindset, revision mindset, I do think that those factor in no matter what a writer's process is. Because one of them is creation, one of them is evaluation and assessment, and then one of them is revision and detail work. And they are three different processes.
The Danger of Overthinking
[00:33:54] Tiffany: And I also think there's a danger in trying to over define, overthink about, over follow. One area I see authors frequently misstep is in taking all the wonderful materials that are out there to better your writing, systems like, Save the Cat or The Hero's Journey or the Three Act Structure, or Michael Hauge's Six Stage Plot Structure. These are all fantastic tools. But so often I'll work with authors who say, oh, okay, I've faithfully gone according to Save the Cat. I've completely followed the hero's journey structure. And I think with anything, including editing, if you get too caught up in trying to do it right, you are hamstringing your own process. These are all just tools and you take the tool, and you use it the way that works best for you.
[00:34:40] Matty: Or you spend so much time reading about three act structure, five act structure, six act structure, seven act structure, and then you get done reading and you can't write anything because you're so confused.
[00:34:48] Tiffany: You freeze yourself up. It's just that whole, like how do I hit all these beats? And the one time that you do have that insane freedom that we're talking about is that drafting, if you want it. If you're not Jeffrey Deaver or someone who likes to write like that. The one time you've got the freedom to just go vomit it up, Brenda Ueland says, is on that initial draft. So take that when you can, because then it does become a little bit more of a left brain, right brain collaboration.
[00:35:15] Matty: Yeah. So, early on in the conversation, you had mentioned the idea of there's also the other side too. I'm done writing, so I'm almost done and that is over editing, over revising. What's the red flag there and how can people avoid falling into that trap?
[00:35:33] Tiffany: That's a good question. That's a hard one because it's all subjective. One thing is that I think we are perfectionists, and we want it to exactly, you know, I just saw that meme, I'm sure you've seen a version of it where it's Van Gogh's Starry Night and it says, the vision of the book and the author's mind. And then it's like a child's drawing of it, and it says the execution when I try to write it.
When to Let It Go
[00:35:52] Tiffany: I think the vision that we get on the page, no matter how well we get it on the page, is never going to match in its entirety the glorious technicolor in our heads, because our imaginations are vast and limitless, and our abilities may not quite match them yet. I think it gets closer with every story, but I think there is always a point where you have to say, it's good enough. It's close enough. I'm going to let it go now. It's the most effective I can make it.
And I keep using that word and I think that's maybe one good arbiter of whether it's ready yet. Is it effective? Does it take the reader somewhere? Does it take the character somewhere? Does it resolve whatever journey you set that character on? Is the character meaningfully, intrinsically affected by what happened to them? Does the reader have an experience? Are all the loose ends tied up?
I do have on my website, Fox Print Editorial, I created this really extensive self-editing checklist of questions you can ask, and you can see, have I got all this on the page? Is all of this resolved? Is it clear to readers? Have I done it to the best of my abilities? And at some point, let it go and move on to the next thing.
We all knew the perpetual student who never got out of college because they decided to just keep getting degrees or keep taking classes. And to me at a certain point, that becomes self-limiting. It's a fear of doing the thing. It's continuing to learn the thing. We should all always be learning, but at some point, you have to let the one thing go and move on to the next thing, because you're never going to grow if you don't do that.
It's a bit of a leap of faith. How does mama bird know it's time to kick her little tiny fledglings out who don't look like they can fend for themselves? You just have to trust at a certain point. And that's where your beta readers come in, where your crit partners come in. That's where you are honing your skills as an editor. I teach this all the time, how to train your editor brain. You have to get good at knowing when it's as good as it needs to be. And you've got to be able to let go of the fact that it is not Starry Night just yet. It's the starry night you can create right now in your development.
[00:38:02] Matty: Perfect. That is a lovely way to end, Tiffany, thank you so much. And please let the listeners and viewers know where they can go to find out more about you and all you do online.
The best place is my website, FoxPrintEditorial.com. That's got links to everything, all my socials, online courses I teach, presentations, live presentations. I do a weekly blog that's full of craft tips. I've got the monthly, How Writers Revise feature. It's got a link to my YouTube channel where I do editing tips, panels, interviews, yeah, pretty much everything is there. And a ton of free downloadables also. Like any stuff that we've talked about as far as knowing how to know when it's finished, knowing how to know when to hire an editor, knowing how to make a log line for your story and make sure you've got the outline. I've got a bunch of that on there.
[00:38:47] Matty: Very cool. Thank you so much, Tiffany.
[00:38:48] Tiffany: Thanks for having me.
[00:00:06] Tiffany: Hey, Matty. Thanks for having me again.
[00:00:08] Matty: It is my pleasure. To give our listeners and viewers a reminder of your many accomplishments, Tiffany Yates Martin has spent nearly 30 years as an editor in the publishing industry, working with major publishers in New York Times, Washington Post, Wall Street Journal, and USA Today bestselling award-winning authors as well as newer writers.
She's the author of the Amazon bestseller, "Intuitive Editing: A Creative and Practical Guide to Revising Your Writing." She's led workshops and seminars for conferences and writers’ groups across the country and is a frequent contributor to writer sites and publications. Under the pen name Phoebe Fox, she is the author of The Breakup Doctor series, including the most recent release, "The Way We Weren't."
And Tiffany has got to be at the top of the leader board for repeat appearances on the podcast. She has been on previous episodes talking about topics including what authors can learn from TV and movies, x-raying your plot, perspectives on personal branding, how to receive and give critique, being the captain of your author voyage, and perspectives on creative accomplishments. And if you want to find any of those, just go to TheIndyAuthor.com/podcast and search for Tiffany.
So, the conversation that Tiffany and I are going to have is based on an email we exchanged. And one of the comments that Tiffany made was, "I think writing is taught as if it's made up entirely of drafting, when editing and revision are the bulk of the processes." And so we're really just going to be chatting today about what that looks like from both a craft and expectation-setting point of view. So Tiffany, I'm just going to throw out the first question. What were you seeing in your career as an editor that led you to feel like this is a good message to send on to writers?
The First Draft is Base Camp
[00:01:42] Tiffany: I was just having this conversation with a friend this morning, but it's one I have a lot. Even in MFA programs, I think that writers are taught writing as if writing is the skill of writing. And of course it is. It's the basis of everything. But writing the first draft or even initial drafts, I always say, is just the first base camp on Everest. The main work of writing, of creating a story, comes in editing and revising it. And so what I often see on my end is that, and this is down the line from working directly with authors, as well as working with authors at publishing houses, they get to the point where they feel like by the time it's, let's say, been accepted for publishing, it's already been, how many times has an author gone through it before it gets accepted by an agent, before it gets accepted for publication? So of course you feel like when you sell this story, oh, great, it's ready.
Very often you're still looking at a fair amount of editing, even after that fact. And I've seen that derail authors. I've seen edits turn into, and I'm going to differentiate in a minute between editing and revising, because I think that's important, but let's just call it all edits under the umbrella for now. I've seen when edits get a little bit more extensive, authors lose their heart, they lose their confidence in their story, they lose their motivation to finish it. They dismiss the whole story because there's things in it that aren't working as well as they could. And it's never really taught that that's what the process is. That's what it's supposed to look like.
The process of writing a story is really the process of finding it and honing it. You know me, I use a ton of metaphors, but one of the ones I use a lot is sculpting. Writing is just roughing the shape out of the marble and then everything after that that makes it the David, is all of that little fine detail work going over and over and over it until it's saying exactly what you want it to say as effectively as possible.
Most writing teaching, most writing books, barely touch on that fact, almost as if it's an afterthought. Like, oh, you write it and then real quick you edit it and then you go on and publish it. I think it becomes very daunting and overwhelming to authors.
The Difference between Revising and Editing
[00:03:51] Tiffany: So if we go into it with this mindset of, okay, writing is just roughing out the shape and the marble. Then we're going to do the editing process, which is so to differentiate, editing, I always say, is assessing. Revising is addressing. What I mean by that is, editing is what I do as an editor, but it's also what the author should and can do, which is to look at what you have on the page, see how effectively it's working, how well it's coming across, see where it may not be working as effectively as you would like and figure out what may need to be shored up to strengthen it.
Revising is putting that into practice. Putting it on the page. So all those writing skills that we're taught, of course, it's a huge part of writing. That's what revising is. You take all of those skills that you know about building character and raising stakes and intricately plotting a story that holds together structurally, and you bring that knowledge into the revision process. But the doing of it, is where a lot of the work of writing lies. So if we go into that knowing it, this is my mission to spread this message, if writers go into it knowing that you're just partway up the mountain when you finish the draft, I think the rest of it becomes less overwhelming.
Our Writing Is a Commodity
[00:05:08] Matty: So I love the analogy of the sculpting, and I can imagine someone looking at a sculpture in a modern art museum, for example. And it looks like the first whack at the David. You know, it’s rough, it looks unformed, it maybe doesn't really even look like what the viewer expects. You know, they read it and says, man on a horse and then they look at it and they think, that's not possibly a man on a horse, but it's in an art museum, so somebody must realize that it's good.
So I can imagine that there are authors who say, my work is like the man on the horse. It's raw and unformed and the man on the horse got into an art museum, so my raw writing should be equally appreciated. Do you encounter that? Or am I just making that up?
[00:05:58] Tiffany: Mm-hmm no, totally. Let's call this "50 Shades of Grey" syndrome, where you see something like that that was started as fan fiction and was pretty raw, probably was edited to be less raw when it was published, but, I'm not going to make value judgements, but I'm just saying maybe a little more editing might have been useful to help strengthen that story.
But it was a huge hit. So are there exceptions to every rule? Of course there are. Are there different stylistic preferences? Yes, indeed. This is a subjective industry, but it's also incredibly competitive, as you and every other writer listening know. And if you want to give yourself the best chance of success, you have to bring yourself in line with what is marketable and what is, I mean, at the end of the day, nobody likes to hear this as an artist, but we are a product. We're a commodity. And you are trying to, most of us are trying to take our product onto the market, and you don't do that by going, look, I slapped this together, anybody want it?
Over Editing
[00:06:55] Tiffany: Maybe. Yeah, maybe some people will. Maybe you have friends and intimates and avant garde readers who would love to see the most raw thing possible. And I'm not saying you polish it to within an inch of its life, because there is such a thing as over editing, over revising. You can polish all the life out of something. That's a fine balance to strike, is knowing when to let something go, because a writer can improve their writing, you know, how many of us hate to let a story go ever, because we can always improve it a little bit more? At a certain point, you've got to let it fly. But what is that point? And that's as subjective a decision as can be, not just with the author herself or himself, but with your agent, with your publisher.
Like I said, I work with publishers often and we get things that the author deemed ready, that the agent deemed ready, that the publisher deemed publishable and marketable and accepted, and then every now and then, an author will not understand why after being admitted through all of those gates, why is there still work to do? It's just because everybody in the business is trying to turn out the most polished, marketable, widely appealing story possible. And the way you generally do that is editing and revision.
[00:08:09] Matty: I can imagine that people are bringing different mindsets, and some are going to say of course, who wouldn't believe that. And some are going to be aghast. I can imagine that maybe the hardest sell is to someone who has been working away on their novel for years, decades. You know, they get done with their 120,000 words and they type The End. And they've been at it so long, and that moment of typing, The End is so momentous, that if they were to hear that the writing part was only a small part of it, now they have three more decades of editing and revising process. How do you help that kind of writer deal with that situation?
Different Editing Processes
[00:08:49] Tiffany: So two things about that. That's one of the reasons I talk about this everywhere I can, because I think the more writers understand that this is the process, the less, and I'm not saying there aren't writers who don't edit as they go. Walter Mosley says that when he finishes a manuscript, it's done. It's ready. Because he's been editing as he goes. If that works for a writer, great. But it is not without editing. The only writer I have ever once years ago interviewed Edward Albee the playwright and asked him about his revision process, of course. And he says, this moment of silence, and he goes, I don't do revisions. And I was like, well, okay, Edward Albee, I'm not going to argue with you, but I have read your plays and I'm betting you do at least in some way.
[00:09:31] Matty: Do you think that was just kind of a marketing ploy that he was saying that?
[00:09:34] Tiffany: I don't know, some authors do that. Walter Mosley, I mentioned a minute ago. I think the world of his writing, but I was at an event once where he talked about, somebody asked about what happens if he turns the book in and the publisher thinks that there is some editing or revision needed. And he said, oh, well, in that case, I tell them, I'm happy to take the book somewhere else. And I went, okay.
Which is a slightly different thing because I do think he's a very tight writer. And I do think there's editing that happens as he goes. I write a monthly feature in my blog called How Writers Revise, and I ask successful authors to tell us a little bit about their revision process, because I think everybody does it differently. And some do it as a separate process. Some roll it all in together while they're writing. Some do it little by little as they go. It's whatever works for you.
But the other thing I wanted to address about what you said is, three decades of editing and revising, that isn't necessarily the case, and it's also not a sustainable business model. So yes, editing and revising take time. When I work with a publisher, we generally allot, oh, I would say 6 to 8 weeks minimum for it. But that's really right about where we stay. Rarely longer than three months. So it's not a drawn-out process, but it is an intensive one.
But the beauty of it to me is that I think drafting is the hardest part. You're creating something out of nothing. The hardest part in the sense of coming up with the story you wanted to tell. I think editing and revision is the most demanding part. I always say, it's where you separate the hobbyists from the career authors. And there's nothing wrong with being a hobbyist author. If that's what you want to be and you love this and you're doing it for your own enjoyment, that's incredibly valid and fulfilling and good for you.
But if you do want to be competitive in the market, and if you want to be a businessperson with it, then that's where you have to be able to commit to the work and the diligence that editing and revision requires.
Because it's not the sexy part, right? The sexy part is writing it. Ooh, I have this cool idea, I'm going to put it on paper. This is the plotting part. I mean, it's just like the sculpting metaphor, right? The sexy part is chisel, chisel, chisel, look, a human! But that's probably not going to, probably, it's not going to go in the museum. You talk about man on horse, this hypothetical abstract, I don't think that that is a sloppy, you know, oh, let's just do that. Even abstract art takes a great deal of thought and skill and planning and work. So to me, that is an effect that they're going after. That's a subjective style choice.
[00:12:06] Matty: Yeah, I think that it's one of those things that you hear about the people who go into a modern art museum and look at a painting and say, my third grader can do that. And so people using it as an excuse for not refining rather than making an informed choice. Like, you have to be able to create the realistic form before you decide to make abstract man on a horse, maybe.
The Work of Honing Our Craft
[00:12:30] Tiffany: I mean, look at every other art or even sport form. If you are an actor, you don't just get the script and get on stage with it. You rehearse for weeks and weeks, months, sometimes. If you are a dancer, if you are a musician, you not only do all the rehearsals of the piece that you're doing, but then there's all the work of simply honing your craft in general, all those hours of just plié, plié, plié, third position. You know what I mean? The tedious stuff. That's not sexy. That's not Swan Lake. But it is required if you want to be an artist who masters your craft. If you want to present a polished product.
Look at sports. Okay, I'm not a sports person, you're going to see that in just a minute, pre-season training or whatever it is. And then all the scrimmages or all the practices, all the stuff, and that's not even counting all the things each individual athlete will do on their own to perfect their skills.
So why we think it's going to be different as writers? My theory is because we all, most of us who love doing this, grow up reading. And when you do that, it feels like you're saying about, oh, my third grader could do that. And I'm not saying that's what we think, but we read these stories and we see the finished product that is already as effective, hopefully, as it can be made, we don't see what goes into it. We don't see how the sausage is made. All we see is this story. And just like when you sing along to a song and you think, oh, look, I could be a musician, I think it's really easy to read a book and go, I could do that, without realizing how much work actually goes into it.
Combat Dejection with Realistic Expectations
[00:14:04] Tiffany: And I'm not trying to discourage anyone because I think this is a wonderful, fulfilling calling. I think if we go into every aspect of it with more realistic expectations, that's how you sustain a long-term career. If you go into it knowing what this is going to require of you and are willing to do that work, then you almost can't fail. I mean, I don't want to say that it's like a formula for success, because this is the most mercurial business, any artistic business is the most mercurial business, but if you're just willing to do the work and stay in the game, you're going to find success, whatever that may look like.
[00:14:41] Matty: That is a very heartening message, I think, to share with people and not one that maybe a lot of writers hear.
[00:14:48] Tiffany: Well, because we want the quick success. We want the easy success. We want to be E.L. James. We want to be Stephen King. Maybe you will. I interviewed, and I know she is a colleague of yours as well, Joanna Penn, and I was marveling at all she has accomplished. And she said, I'm going to tear up her quote, but it was something wonderful like, I've been doing this for 16 years and if you do anything for 16 years, you will succeed at it.
[00:15:13] Matty: Yeah.
[00:15:13] Tiffany: I can't see that that's wrong. If you dedicate the work and the time and the fortitude and determination to stay in it, where I think many writers, and I don't want to use the word fail, but the only way to fail is to quit, is to finish a first draft. And interestingly, and I see this over and over again, the authors who are frequently daunted or sometimes even defensive about the editing process, are the ones very early in their career.
The authors who are multi-published, very well established who have very successful careers, welcome it because they know it's part of the process and they know it's not someone trying to take over your story. It's not even a collaboration per se. An editor is a tool. Editing is a tool like anything else. You know, you've got the big chisel tool to make the fun part, and then you have to get all the little fine tools. And that requires a lot of hours and a lot of tiny little patient movements.
But if you do that, you may not get the David, but you're going to make your work as effective as you are capable of making it at that stage in your development. And you'll get better and better with every book.
Developmental Edits
[00:16:20] Matty: Yeah. I'm always surprised. In my own scenario, I think of three types of edits -- developmental edit line, edit and proofread -- and I'm always surprised when I hear someone who's been in the industry a long time saying that developmental edits are more for early writers, and then as you become more experienced, you don't need that anymore. And I'm like, really??
[00:16:41] Tiffany: Every publisher, every publisher in New York and everywhere would disagree with that statement. And every established author would disagree with it.
[00:16:48] Matty: Yeah. The other thing that what you're saying made me think of is this is very much the experience I'm going through with Ann Kinnear Book 6. So the listeners have heard me mention many times the many challenges I ran into with Ann Kinnear 5, because I thought I had the story I wanted, I sent it for an edit, I find out I didn't, and it was very many wasted words on Ann Kinnear five. So I decided I was never going to do that again, I developed this concept of a story frame. And I did that for Ann Kinnear 6, which is great, it has saved me boatloads of pain. And so I took it from a frame of about 40,000 words, and then I needed to turn it into a novel of 80, 85 ish thousand words.
And I'm actually still making changes. Sometimes people ask me if I'm going to do a book on story framing and at first, I said no, but then I realize that it's just one step in a long process and has lots of auxiliary things to go along with it. But I am finding that a challenge is that it's a workman-like effort. It's not, like you were saying, the exciting artistic efforts. It's a workman-like effort to now go through and add the extra 40,000 words of description, dialogue, and detail that are going to bring the story to life.
And it's a little harder to keep my interest. Although I recognize that in the end it will be a better product. Well, it won't be a better product, it will be a more efficient product. Because I was happy with how Ann Kinnear 5 ended up, but I just didn't want to re-experience the pain it took me to achieve that. So from a business point of view, this is more effective, and I need to just suck up the fact that part of this process is not going to be particularly exciting.
Writing's Not an Assembly Line
[00:18:26] Tiffany: Well, writing's not an assembly line and every author is different. And so some are plotters, some are pantsers. If people aren't familiar with that, plotters pretty much outline everything before they start. Pantsers just go with an idea and fly by the seat to their pants. And then there's plantsers they call it, which is a mix of both.
There's no right way to do it. It's whatever works for your style. And when I'm writing anything, whether that's nonfiction or fiction, I tend to be somewhere in the middle, and I do wind up with a lot of people call it, wasted words, but to me it is not wasted words. It's me finding my way to the story.
So when I do get to the editing process, there's generally a lot less to be done because I'm more of a process person. I'm finding it as I go. A lot of times, if you don't do that, if you're like a complete pantser, let's say, and you, one of my favorite phrases, the author Brenda Euland has a beautiful book called, "If You Want to Write" that I cannot recommend highly enough about the creative process. She says, just vomit it up on the page. If you vomit it up on the page, you may have more to do on the back end. But also different authors enjoy that differently. Like for me, I wish to God somebody would hand me my first draft every time, because I don't like drafting. I like editing. To me, that's where the magic really happens because that's where I can get my intentions on the page. That's where I can fine tune, that's where I can deepen and develop on all these things that were interesting in the, not the abstract, the big picture view that I just vomit up as I'm going, then I can really mine out the gold from it. So to me, it's among the most satisfying processes there is. I talk to a lot of authors who feel that way.
But it doesn't have that wild, reckless, purely artistic, just like right brain, let's just see what's going to happen next vibe of drafting that some authors do prefer. But they're both, it's, it's hand in glove. You can't have one without the other because they're both part of the process. But I think because we think of writing as such a big part of the pie, editing and revising are relegated to the little pieces of the pie. But they're not. I mean, if anything, to me, you can't do anything without that first draft. But to me, that's just getting you going.
[00:20:37] Matty: Do you have different advice at all for people who are writing fiction versus nonfiction?
[00:20:43] Tiffany: That's a good question. I do write those two differently actually. Fiction, I tend to have a lot more discard file of things of me finding my way into the story, because I do not like to know everything that's going to happen because then I don't want to tell the story. But with nonfiction, I do have to have a really clear idea of what I want to say, where I'm going, how I'm going to say it. There is some freedom for me in it as I'm writing, because I'll go, oh, here's a good analogy for that, or here are the five components of that that I can extract from the overall big picture of the idea.
But for the most part, I'm a cleaner writer as a nonfiction writer. So the advice I guess I would have is, you're still going to need to do editing for both. Because editing is not, oh, you did it wrong, let's figure out how to do it right. Editing is figuring out where the intentions you have in your head, and probably you have them crystal clear in your head, exactly what you want to say, fiction or nonfiction. Did it make it onto the page? And a lot of times, it's hard for us to see that in our own work, because we are not objective, because we are filling in the blanks, because we see what we think we put on the page, not what a reader coming to it blind will actually see on the page. Or it may be on the page, but not as effectively as we think, not as clearly as we think, not as deeply as we think.
And this is just unbelievably common in every story I work on. And for the most part, when an editor or yourself, I'm not saying everybody should always have to hire an editor. This is a skill writers can and should develop for themselves to be able to see their own work this clearly. Once you see where is the story not achieving my vision, whether that's fiction or nonfiction, now, how do I do that? How do I put that on the page?
The Importance of Beta Readers for Non-fiction
[00:22:29] Tiffany: So advice for it, would it be different for each one? As far as the necessity of doing it, I don't think so. The one thing I will say about nonfiction is it can often be even more helpful than with fiction to have beta readers. Because you ostensibly, whatever you're writing about, either through your research or your own experience, you're an expert on it. And it's a very different perspective from somebody coming to it, who isn't. So if you get a wide array of people to look at it and tell you whether it's clear on the page, whether it flows, whether the ideas are coming across, whether they meld together, whether they all make sense, whether you have enough explanation, too much explanation, redundancy, I think that can be especially helpful.
Using Edit Notes
[00:23:14] Matty: One practice that I'm seeing that crosses over from my non-fiction writing to my fiction writing, is that I will often in non-fiction put notes saying, be sure to cover this, but don't cover this because I want to cover this in a different chapter. I'll type all those things to myself. And I started doing that with fiction as well. So, does it make sense that Ann does this at this point? Probably not, because then she wouldn't have any impetus to do this other thing. Like I'll type all this out.
And I didn't realize I was doing this until I'm working on my first collaborative fiction work. And this fellow author and I are working in the same Google document and she's getting to see me do all this stuff. And it's actually kind of helpful because it's a communication mechanism for me to be able to say, we don't want this to happen here because of such and such. But I find that I would be doing that whether I was typing it for another person or typing it for myself.
Those are edit notes. Those are the kind of notes I would make in an author's manuscript. Just, not to say this is right or wrong, but just to hold up the mirror, I always say, just to go, don't forget this, or this is not coming across here or make sure the reader knows this or this thing doesn't make sense. So it sounds like part of your process is to do a little bit of that as you go.
[00:24:28] Matty: Yeah, and the other thing that I find is that once I land on the answer, I write it in a way that I can easily find and delete before the final, final, final version, because it saves me from getting to that point in one of my many sweeps through the manuscript and saying, oh, you know, what would be cooler? I'm going to do this other thing. No, you can't because then you have to change 17 other things. And I just forget. I think that either my brain is too small, or my plots are too complex. I can't keep it all in my head.
How to Edit and Revise
[00:24:53] Tiffany: So let me ask you this. This brings us to actually an important aspect of this whole three-part process of writing, editing, revising. How do you edit and revise? Do you go through like chronologically? Do you do full sweeps and make notes? What's your process?
[00:25:09] Matty: Well, for Ann Kinnear 6, I think almost always in my fiction work have two storylines. I have the main storyline and then I usually have to have a sub-story line that is my excuse to get Ann into the story earlier. Because in general, Ann doesn't get involved, as someone who talks to dead people, she doesn't get involved until someone has died and someone has found a reason to get her involved. So that can be part way into the book. So I have to have some sub-story line going on to accommodate that.
One of the things that I discovered in my framing effort is the sub-story line that I had originally planned for Ann turned out to be so beefy that there was no way that I could accommodate it as a sub-story line. It really deserved its own book. And fortunately, I realized that after only two or 3000 words of framing. Yay!
So what I had been doing for a while is, I would edit those separately. I would have the main storyline and I just keep sweeping through it and sweeping through it and sweeping through it and either beefing up or refining as I go. And then I would do the same with the other storyline. And now I'm at the point where I have to see how those two storylines are relating to each other. And so now I'm going through the whole book chronologically, as the reader would read it, switching from sub-plot to sub-plot.
Editing Helps You See the Whole Picture
[00:26:24] Tiffany: One danger in doing, and as I said, I do think that authors can and should do their own editing and revising. Like, it's helpful to have an editor, but it's certainly not required by any means to sell your book to an agent. If you're self-publishing yes, get an editor. I think we can lose our freshness to what it is. One thing that helps an editor be objective is we are objective, right? We haven't read this thing 50 times.
So what do most authors do? I think a version of what you said. When they finish their draft, how do they start editing? Well, they go back to the beginning and then they sweep and they start making changes as they go. That's revising. And you have skipped editing.
This is why I think it's important to think of them as three different processes, because remember, editing is assessing, revising is addressing, I broke my book "Intuitive Editing," every single chapter, which is an aspect of storytelling, so it would be like character, plot, stakes, has a section called "How to Find It" and a section called "How to Fix It." They're two different things.
You cannot go, I think you are shooting yourself in the foot if you finish your story and you go through and then you start making changes. You haven't taken in the story as a whole yet, and if you've been making these little sweeps over and over, now you really can't because now you've lost all objectivity to it. You're not going to see that essential big picture. And that is crucial.
The first thing I do as an editor when I get a manuscript is, I read it like a novel. I don't make notes. I don't start thinking about what needs changing. I just need to see what's there. And you have pretty much one chance to do that as an author. When you finish your story, if you can step away from it, if you can stand to wait even a few days, give yourself a little mental distance and then read the whole thing through before you start making the first change.
So many authors skip over that process to get to what I jokingly call again, the sexy part, which is, oh, let's tweak that word, let's tweak that sentence. Let's make it sing. Let's make it beautiful. That's great, but that is the last stage of what revising should be.
Before that, you have to make sure your support beams are all in place. You have to make sure the foundation is solid, the roof is on the building. Then you start making sure that the dry wall is all up without any cracks in it. And then you can stage the house, then you get to decorate it.
But if you start with that little stuff, you are destroying what little objectivity you're ever going to have, this one golden opportunity you have to just see what you created and read it as close to the reader's experience as you are ever going to get, I mean without taking, years away from the thing down the road.
[00:29:02] Matty: Yeah. Well, I think that the doing the frame is exactly what you're describing with the house that I feel I did what you're describing when I was creating the frame for the story. And as I go through subsequent passes--
[00:29:16] Tiffany: The frame or the whole written draft?
[00:29:21] Matty: Well, it sort of morphs from one to the other. I'm trying to figure out a way to describe this. At some point, I realize that I have all the parts I need for a suspense mystery story. That the hints fall together, I understand what the red herrings are going to be. I've already confirmed that the person who's the bad guy really is the bad guy, because that was one of the problems I ran into with my previous book. When I first started out, I had a different person being the bad guy. When I finished, what I thought was the final pre-editor draft of Ann Kinnear 5, I thought I had an idea of the primary motivation of the bad guy. And then that was all the stuff that took me an extra 6 months to fix after I got my edits back.
So at some point I'm saying, yeah, there's 40,000 words that describes what the storyline is and now I'm going in and filling in dialogue, for example. And sometimes when I fill in the dialogue, that's what clues me in that the motivation isn't really there. So then I have to go back more to framing and fix that. But I feel as if most of the revising I'm doing is when I'm working on the frame. And by the time I get to writing dialogue, then it is more putting the nice finishing touches on it.
But then the reason that I'm never going to be a rapid release writer is then I do have to set it aside for a couple of weeks. So that after that period of time, exactly, like you're saying, I can go back to it and feels more fresh. I can read it like a reader and see where I haven't quite achieved what I thought I had achieved when I was deep into it.
[00:30:52] Tiffany: That's sort of the key, I think, no matter, even if you are a meticulous outliner. I heard Jeffrey Deaver ever speak once. And I think his outlines are something like, oh my God, they're something like 80 pages, 120 pages, single spaced. They're nuts, right?
[00:31:10] Matty: Jeffrey Deaver's on my list because 90% of the authors I talk to, when I asked them what their preference is, they're all like, oh yeah. I was so surprised when I found out who the murderer was. I'm like, are you kidding me? So I have to have Jeffrey Deaver on the podcast.
[00:31:21] Tiffany: Yeah, he's a meticulous planner. But I would be, I mean, I'll be interested to hear what he has to say, planning it, no matter how much work you do, we still need to know how well it's coming across on the page to someone who is not you. So I still think that initial read is really invaluable before you start doing anything, even if you've outlined it, like you done the framing. It's the only time you're ever going to get to do that. And it's a pleasure. It's a pleasure to see, most of the time, to see what you have created in its entirety.
And it takes as long as it takes to read a novel, which most of us can do in the space of a good five to eight hours, generally, if you sit down and do it. I do think the closer you can do to one sitting of that first read, the better, just to let yourself get a sense of it. But then I adapted what Saul Stein calls, he's one of my editing heroes and I highly recommend his books, they're on my number one list up there. It's a version of what he calls triage, which is also a little bit counterintuitive, I think, to the way a lot of authors work, which is that chronological thing, let's go in and fix as we go.
Fixing the Biggest Problems First
[00:32:25] Tiffany: Saul Stein talks about going in and fixing the biggest problems first. So if you have a foundational issue with character or the plot is not quite holding together, or your stakes are not sustained or don't build throughout, or your climax isn't effective or leaves loose ends in the story unresolved, go in and fix that big stuff first and then go in and do ever finer, it's the sculpting metaphor again, right? First you go, oh, look at that. The face is just a complete plane of marble with no features, let me rough out the features. And then you get them in and then you go in and you do the fine work after that.
But if you start trying to make a perfect little eyeball, when you still just got this blank slate of marble, then by the time you finish that, you've got to worry about making everything else match it instead of working as a whole, making sure it's intrinsic and then doing all the detail work.
I don't mean to suggest that there is one right way of editing. That's one of the reasons I do this monthly feature, I talked about, How Writers Revise, because I think something works a little differently for every author. But I do think that these basic approaches I'm talking about, these three writer mindset, editor mindset, revision mindset, I do think that those factor in no matter what a writer's process is. Because one of them is creation, one of them is evaluation and assessment, and then one of them is revision and detail work. And they are three different processes.
The Danger of Overthinking
[00:33:54] Tiffany: And I also think there's a danger in trying to over define, overthink about, over follow. One area I see authors frequently misstep is in taking all the wonderful materials that are out there to better your writing, systems like, Save the Cat or The Hero's Journey or the Three Act Structure, or Michael Hauge's Six Stage Plot Structure. These are all fantastic tools. But so often I'll work with authors who say, oh, okay, I've faithfully gone according to Save the Cat. I've completely followed the hero's journey structure. And I think with anything, including editing, if you get too caught up in trying to do it right, you are hamstringing your own process. These are all just tools and you take the tool, and you use it the way that works best for you.
[00:34:40] Matty: Or you spend so much time reading about three act structure, five act structure, six act structure, seven act structure, and then you get done reading and you can't write anything because you're so confused.
[00:34:48] Tiffany: You freeze yourself up. It's just that whole, like how do I hit all these beats? And the one time that you do have that insane freedom that we're talking about is that drafting, if you want it. If you're not Jeffrey Deaver or someone who likes to write like that. The one time you've got the freedom to just go vomit it up, Brenda Ueland says, is on that initial draft. So take that when you can, because then it does become a little bit more of a left brain, right brain collaboration.
[00:35:15] Matty: Yeah. So, early on in the conversation, you had mentioned the idea of there's also the other side too. I'm done writing, so I'm almost done and that is over editing, over revising. What's the red flag there and how can people avoid falling into that trap?
[00:35:33] Tiffany: That's a good question. That's a hard one because it's all subjective. One thing is that I think we are perfectionists, and we want it to exactly, you know, I just saw that meme, I'm sure you've seen a version of it where it's Van Gogh's Starry Night and it says, the vision of the book and the author's mind. And then it's like a child's drawing of it, and it says the execution when I try to write it.
When to Let It Go
[00:35:52] Tiffany: I think the vision that we get on the page, no matter how well we get it on the page, is never going to match in its entirety the glorious technicolor in our heads, because our imaginations are vast and limitless, and our abilities may not quite match them yet. I think it gets closer with every story, but I think there is always a point where you have to say, it's good enough. It's close enough. I'm going to let it go now. It's the most effective I can make it.
And I keep using that word and I think that's maybe one good arbiter of whether it's ready yet. Is it effective? Does it take the reader somewhere? Does it take the character somewhere? Does it resolve whatever journey you set that character on? Is the character meaningfully, intrinsically affected by what happened to them? Does the reader have an experience? Are all the loose ends tied up?
I do have on my website, Fox Print Editorial, I created this really extensive self-editing checklist of questions you can ask, and you can see, have I got all this on the page? Is all of this resolved? Is it clear to readers? Have I done it to the best of my abilities? And at some point, let it go and move on to the next thing.
We all knew the perpetual student who never got out of college because they decided to just keep getting degrees or keep taking classes. And to me at a certain point, that becomes self-limiting. It's a fear of doing the thing. It's continuing to learn the thing. We should all always be learning, but at some point, you have to let the one thing go and move on to the next thing, because you're never going to grow if you don't do that.
It's a bit of a leap of faith. How does mama bird know it's time to kick her little tiny fledglings out who don't look like they can fend for themselves? You just have to trust at a certain point. And that's where your beta readers come in, where your crit partners come in. That's where you are honing your skills as an editor. I teach this all the time, how to train your editor brain. You have to get good at knowing when it's as good as it needs to be. And you've got to be able to let go of the fact that it is not Starry Night just yet. It's the starry night you can create right now in your development.
[00:38:02] Matty: Perfect. That is a lovely way to end, Tiffany, thank you so much. And please let the listeners and viewers know where they can go to find out more about you and all you do online.
The best place is my website, FoxPrintEditorial.com. That's got links to everything, all my socials, online courses I teach, presentations, live presentations. I do a weekly blog that's full of craft tips. I've got the monthly, How Writers Revise feature. It's got a link to my YouTube channel where I do editing tips, panels, interviews, yeah, pretty much everything is there. And a ton of free downloadables also. Like any stuff that we've talked about as far as knowing how to know when it's finished, knowing how to know when to hire an editor, knowing how to make a log line for your story and make sure you've got the outline. I've got a bunch of that on there.
[00:38:47] Matty: Very cool. Thank you so much, Tiffany.
[00:38:48] Tiffany: Thanks for having me.
I’d love to hear your thoughts!
I hope you enjoyed my conversation with Tiffany! Do you consider editing and revising as separate processes in your own work? If you do, how do you accommodate these? If you don’t, do you see benefits to approaching them in this way?
Please post your comments on YouTube--and I'd love it if you would subscribe while you're there!