Hi Reader,

We’ve all heard of the shitty first draft.

Personally, I don’t love the term; I find it a little too judgmental and emotionally charged. But it gets the point across:

Your first draft’s job isn’t to be perfect.

It’s not going to go on bookstore shelves. It’s not the version your readers will read.

Its only job is to exist.

Make it to “The End,” and you’ve succeeded. No matter how messy. No matter the plot holes. The flat characters. The world building inconsistencies.

So when you finish that first draft, and it’s a mere shadow of the movie playing in your imagination, that’s okay. Totally normal! A feature, not a bug.

But . . .

. . . what about two drafts in? Five drafts? Eight?

What about when you’re measuring the time you’ve spent on this story in years, or even decades?

When you have worked really freaking hard to fill the plot holes, flesh out the characters, build coherent logic into your world . . .

. . . and yet the manuscript still feels like a mere shadow of the story in your imagination?

The first draft was never meant to be perfect. But all the many, many, many drafts you’ve revised were meant to close the gap between what’s in your imagination and what’s on the page.

And yet your manuscript doesn’t feel like your vision come to life. You can feel the gap.

If the story in your mind is from Gucci, the story on the page is from Wish. If your vision is from Prada, the manuscript is from Temu.

There are parts of your manuscript that you love. But there are also parts that feel off, somehow, in a hard-to-define way.

If readers read it right now, they wouldn’t feel the emotional highs and lows the way you want them to. They wouldn’t fall in love with your story.

If it were published right now, as-is, you would cringe a little. There are parts that still feel unsatisfying to you, aspects that still feel unfinished.

And yet you have worked so hard! Why isn’t all your hard work and deep thought and careful revision working?

Why isn’t your novel done already?

I’ve worked with many, many writers at precisely this stage in the process—deep into careful revision, and yet still not done.

In my experience, when you reach this stage, there are two problems that keep you from realizing your vision on the page.

Problem #1: Perspective

When you spend this much time in your story, you get to know it really, really well. Every page makes sense to you because you wrote every word and you know exactly what you mean by each one. You can feel the emotional highs and lows of the story because you’re so in tune with the characters.

On the one hand, this is a major advantage. You have an intimate understanding of your story to a degree that you could only dream of when you were writing your first draft.

On the other hand, at this point, you know your story so well that you’re unable to see how someone else will experience your manuscript.

I call this “Author Brain.” It’s when you’re so immersed in your story that you can’t spot what it needs anymore.

Yes, you can feel the gap between your vision and your manuscript.

You can even imagine a variety of potential changes to make.

But you can’t see what, precisely, your manuscript needs in order to close the gap.

Which change will break everything, and which change will solve it all? Paradoxically, you know too much about your story to be able to choose.

In order to see what your manuscript actually needs, you need outside perspective.

You need to shift your perspective so that you can look at your story from a different angle—one you’re not familiar with, so you can spot solutions you couldn’t see before.

And you need to call in someone who isn’t trapped in Author Brain to look at your vision and your manuscript with you and help you close the gap.

And the second problem is . . .

Problem #2: Process

Revision is an extremely complicated project.

Sure, there are tons of resources that can teach you a variety of aspects of writing and storytelling craft. But there’s shockingly little out there about revision process. In all likelihood, no one has taught you how to revise.

And so you’ve had to figure it out yourself.

Maybe you’ve spotted specific problems in your story, and you’ve tried to fix them, one by one.

Maybe you’ve gotten feedback on specific aspects of your story from critique partners or beta readers.

In either case, the problem here is the same: your revision process is too narrow.

It’s keeping you focused on isolated, individual issues in your story without considering the root cause underlying all of those issues. That traps you in addressing problems piecemeal—and every time you fix one problem, that change causes a cascade of new problems elsewhere throughout the story.

In order to finally close the gap between your vision and your manuscript, you first need to clarify your vision—that is, you need to define exactly what you want your story to be. Then, you need to find holistic solutions that solve everything in your story—from the big-picture story structure to the line-level expression.

In other words, you need a revision process that builds a direct pathway from the vision in your mind to the words on the page.

The result is the movie in your mind . . .

. . . captured on the page . . .

. . . and brought to life in your readers’ imagination.

A manuscript that finally reflects your vision.

A novel you’re proud to publish.

The story you set out to tell, finally done to your complete satisfaction.

If you’re many drafts deep into revision already, you have the gumption it’ll take to get there.

Seek out perspective and revisit your process, and see how clear the path becomes.

Happy editing,

Alice

P.S. After many years of trial and error, I landed on a revision process that actually closes the gap between your vision and your manuscript. It starts with creating a scene list to help you gain perspective. Then, you’ll use that perspective to find the solutions your story needs. You can download my revision guide for free here.​
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