Hi Reader,

I’m working on a new guide to revising a novel. In it, I’m sharing a method to revise your novel and solve your story’s biggest challenges without getting stuck in line editing purgatory.

Creating the guide seemed so simple and straightforward when I began. But as it turns out, this is a major creative process. I’m several drafts in, and I can tell you it doesn’t feel simple anymore!

I’m going through all the same challenges you go through when you revise a novel. I’m making big decisions like . . .

. . . What am I actually trying to say? What is this really about?

. . . What point of view am I using? What does my reader (you!) need to hear?

. . . Where does the scope start and end?

This guide began as a one-pager, expanded to thirty-three pages, and is currently hovering around a manageable five.

Because that is the creative process, right? Have you ever turned a seed of an idea into a 250k-word manuscript, and then had to wrestle it down to 90k?

(At least half my clients are nodding their heads ruefully right now. I see you.)

The natural byproduct of this process is a lot of material that gets left on the cutting room floor.

That doesn’t mean it’s bad. It just means that it doesn’t fit where you originally put it.

It might fit somewhere else:

• It could become a short story that you share for free on your website, enter in a writing contest, or publish in an anthology.
• It could go into a wiki that you share on your website for eager fans to explore.
• It could become the seed of a prequel, sequel, or companion novel to the story you cut it from.
• It could go into an entirely different novel, repurposed and transformed into a different story altogether.

And it’s always possible that you’ll find it does have a place where it originally appeared! I always recommend that you save your old drafts and the scraps you cut. That way you can easily retrieve any words that earn their way back into your manuscript.

That said, suppose something stays on the cutting room floor.

It might be an idea you love. It might have felt really fun to write at the time. It may be something you fought to keep around, but eventually realized it simply must go. It might resist repurposing in any form, no matter how hard you try.

Even then, it has already served its most important job of all:

It paved the way for you to discover what your story is truly meant to be.

You couldn’t have arrived at the level of clarity you have now without writing that cut scrap.

You wouldn’t understand your story the way you do now without exploring those ideas.

You wouldn’t know those words don’t fit—and which words you need instead—without writing them.

This is simply the nature of the creative process. We may wish the way were more straightforward. We may wish that every word we write were the right word on the first try.

But that’s not how writing, or any creative process, works. Especially for something as open-ended, as free from constraint, as non-formulaic, as deep and meaningful as a novel.

So let the words go. Let sentences, paragraphs, scenes, chapters, entire plot threads fall from your story so that you—and especially your readers—can see what really matters.

Perhaps they’ll find another home in another form someday.

But even if they never do, they have already given you their highest service.

Every word I cut from that thirty-three-page behemoth of a guide will be hidden between the lines of the five pages I keep.

Just as every word you leave behind in an old draft or someday swipe file will hide between the lines of your novel, each one a necessary step to reach the story you truly want to tell.

Happy editing,

Alice

P.S. In my case, the scraps from my guide can be transformed into exclusive behind-the-scenes bonus content for you! Click here for a snippet from my 33-page draft that you won’t* find in the final guide »​

*P.P.S. Probably. I’m still revising the guide, so it’s entirely possible I’ll realize this does have a place inside it. Keep an eye out in July for when I share the finished guide. We can discover together whether this stayed on the cutting room floor or not.

P.P.P.S. I’m right in the middle of revisions, and I’d love your feedback. Do you find this snippet helpful? Hit reply and let me know!
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