Common Novel Revision Mistakes & How to Avoid Them
Bella Rose Emmorey
book editor, rogue behaviorist, digital marketer, writer, brand builder, plant aunt, and cheese enthusiast.
The last thing you want is to work hours and hours, maybe even spend the majority of your free time during $ NaNoWriMo to write a novel$ …and then make common revision mistakes that send you back to the drawing board.
Thankfully, there are plenty of tools and $ writing software$ out there to help you avoid these revision mistakes, but we’ll list them out for you, along with the solutions!
Common Novel Revision Mistakes & Tactics to Avoid Them
Revising a book is not easy. It’s one of the most dreaded parts of the novel process for a reason. You never want to face the fact that your book potentially sucks, or that it needs a ton of work to go from first draft to finished manuscript, but sometimes that’s reality.
To make the process easier, we’ve uncovered the most common novel revision mistakes—so you don’t have to make them!
1. Revising with tired eyes
It’s tempting to jump immediately into revising when you$ finish your draft$ , but there's a common rule that says to wait a little while first. This can be a week or two, sometimes even a month, before diving into revisions.
The reason is that your draft is still hot off the stove. You just wrote it—you know it inside and out, you've been living in the characters' heads for so long, and you're just too close to see it accurately.
You want to revise your novel with a reader's eye, and taking a break first is a good way to get closer to that perspective. It’s easier to see what needs fixing when you’re not still in the throes of writing it.
Avoid the Mistake: Give yourself at least a week, preferably two, before revising your novel. In the meantime, you can start writing the next book in the series or even read books in your genre in order to better understand the expectations so you can write a stronger next draft.
2. Revising without reading in full first
A revision mistake we see too many writers make is going directly into revisions without having first read the work in its entirety to take notes. The problem here is that you can’t make accurate revisions when you don’t have a full picture of your work.
Another problem here is that you might get to a scene, assume you left something out or created a plot hole, take the time to patch it up, then realize you'd intentionally left it for the next chapter. Now you have repeats and have to revise that part again!
Avoid the Mistake: Instead, we recommend setting aside time to first read your work and do nothing but $ take notes$ on what you observe. These notes can include:
- Character inconsistencies
- Scene inconsistencies
- Phrasing you use too often
- Dialogue that needs work
- Scenes that don’t further the plot or character arc
Do NOT change anything yet. Once you’re done, you can review your notes and be intentional about your revisions for each chapter.
3. Going it alone
You can’t revise your book entirely on your own. Because it’s your baby and you’re so close to it, you won’t always be able to see the biggest flaws from the perspective of a reader even if you waited a couple weeks before starting.
Avoid the Mistake: Do a run through on your own first, then pass your draft off to beta readers and critique partners so they can help. Using a $ collaboration function$ like we created in $ NovelPad$ is a perfect way to keep all of those notes in a single place so you can update inside the draft.
4. Reading silently
Reading something in your head—especially something you wrote—doesn’t always work for revising a novel. This is especially true for dialogue scenes, but for others as well. Something that sounds normal in your head can sound completely different (and bad) out loud.
Avoid the Mistake: Read your book out loud! Even better: Have a friend or housemate read it to you so you can really hear how a new reader will say the sentences, where they’ll put the emphasis, and any other syntax issues. Pay extra attention to how this writing sounds out loud:
- Dialogue
- Descriptions
- Inner musings
- Pretty prose (these can often sound nice to you but confusing to readers)
5. Not saving your work, notes, or deleted scenes
It’s a writer’s worst nightmare: You do so many revisions, update scenes, even rewrite entire chapters…and you didn’t save your work. Suddenly, your computer dies unexpectedly, or the power goes out, and all of that work is gone.
While a writer only has to make this mistake once before obsessively saving future work, it’s a pain we don’t want you to experience.
Avoid the Mistake: No need to hit "save" repeatedly while revising. We want your attention on your work, not on making sure you save every little thing. To avoid this revision mistake, use a software that has an auto-save feature like NovelPad's automatic saves every 60 seconds. That way, every update you make is auto-saved, but you can also view previous revisions in case you want to undo an update.
6. Ignoring goal setting for revisions
Many writers will create word count goals in order to finish drafting their book, but then ignore goal setting for revisions, beta readers, and even edits. Goals help keep you on track for every part of the process!
Avoid the Mistake: Before you even start revising, create a few goals for yourself. Here’s how you create goals based on the various revision steps:
- Set a per-chapter reading goal for the first read through
- Set a word-count or chapter goal for making revisions based on the notes from your read through
- When it’s time for beta readers, set a goal for how many beta readers you want
- Then set a goal for how many chapters you want each beta to get through per week
- Set goals for reading beta feedback, and a separate one for making changes
- Set a per chapter or word count goal for self-edits based on beta feedback or critique partners
7. Allowing your first draft to make you feel bad about your skills
It’s really easy to look at your first draft and feel crappy about it. Most of us already have a poor view of our writing skills to begin with, and a first draft is never how we pictured the book going. But that’s why revising exists in the first place!
Avoid the Mistake: Remember that this is the first draft. You can think of it like the blueprint of a building before the construction team even begins work on it. Is the blueprint exactly what the architect imagined? No! It’s 2D, for one thing, and buildings are 3D. After the blueprint, there's client edits, construction plans, zoning changes, laying the foundation, building the frame, plumbing, wiring, windows, drywall, paint, carpet, interior decoration—it might not be recognizable as that original blueprint by the end of it.
Your first draft is the blueprint. Your published draft is the final construction. The blueprint isn’t wrong or bad just because the building isn’t finished yet.
8. Only revising once
If you have a really good editor and can pay them a bit more to be extensive in their work, then you can get away with only revising once. But the truth is that you should revise two or three times. By the end, you should have read your novel at least 4 times over (and sometimes even more).
Avoid the Mistake: Revise your novel in waves. We’ve already discussed reading your novel in its entirety before making any revisions. Here are other waves for revising:
1. First read-through
2. Read-through after first revisions
3. Read-through after beta revisions
4. Read-through before professional editor
9. Not having a good system
If you find yourself drowning in a sea of saved documents, revised scenes, disjointed chapters in various states of revision—I feel you. But I have a tool that will literally revolutionize the way you write: $ Side-by-side scene revisions.$
This feature enables users to create and save an infinite number of scene revisions, keeping them neatly attached to the active scene in your manuscript. Simply click the arrow icon to switch which revision appears in the manuscript. You can revise scenes to your heart's contentment, experiment with different versions, revert to previous iterations, and know that they're all safe and right where you left them.
Novel revision can be difficult and overwhelming, but don’t make it harder on yourself by committing these common mistakes. Start fresh, and do it right!
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