Before and After—Revising Your Manuscript from James W. Ziskin

Choose a block of your writing—past or present—and walk us through its revision journey. What worked? What didn’t? What did you learn in the process?

I believe that good writing is the result of careful revision. Sure, there may be a couple of writers out there who spit out perfect first drafts, but I’ve yet to meet one. And I’m certainly not that guy. In fact, I probably revise more than most writers. Typically, I go through three drafts of my books before I even let anyone look at them. Then I continue to edit while my beta readers do their stuff. In the end, I usually perform eight to ten heavy revisions before submitting to my agent or a publisher.

My latest book, The Prank (July 2026), is an exception in an interesting way. Since I completed the book long before I found a publisher and, since the publisher’s lead time was longer than usual for me, I found myself with many extra months to polish my manuscript. I recently finished the seventeenth complete revision of the book, which means it might be worn to the bone, more so than any of my other eight published books. But I also know it’s in better shape at this point than those other books.

Here’s the thing with revision: if you do it diligently, it’s both a line edit and a developmental edit at the same time. That’s a bargain—two for one. Over the course of nine books and several short stories, I’ve collected many examples of what you might look for/find/fix/improve during the revision stage. These may and should sound familiar to writers because I didn’t invent them.

1. Flesh out characters’ backstories. That adds depth, realism, complexity, and unquantifiable worth to your story. Readers may not even know they appreciate those elements in your work, but they do. The best stories are the ones that seduce you before you realize you’ve been seduced.

2. Root out repeated words and phrases. These pesky repetitions are like holes in the dike. As soon as we find one and plug it, Yikes! there’s another one!

3. Discover missing words. The ones your eyes skipped over while you were writing your magnum opus. Or editing it for the fifth time. I recommend using a text-to-speech app to catch these omissions. I catch about thirty missing words in a book manuscript using this technique. If you don’t do this step, phantom words will remain in your manuscript. Guaranteed.

4. Rhythm of your narration. Text-to-speech programs—Word has an excellent one built in—will also help you improve the flow of your storytelling, sentences, and paragraphs. With these apps, you can adjust reading speeds for a more natural pace, or select different voices to read back to you. The quality is not as good as a trained actor can do, but you can’t afford to pay one to read your edits anyway. Use this tool!

5. Timeline. During my latest pass on The Prank, I discovered continuity errors resulting from my not having paid close enough attention to the dates in my plot. I had written some newspaper stories into the book to dole out information to the reader. Problem was I had some of my characters reacting to those news stories in the morning or early afternoon. But the newspaper was an evening daily. 

The fix was easy enough, right? Just move some action to the next day. Problem solved. Except it wasn’t. It was the butterfly effect wreaking havoc on my novel. When I moved my characters’ actions forward one day, I inadvertently tore the fabric of the universe—the real one, not my fictional one—and nearly caused Armageddon. Okay, maybe it wasn’t quite that bad, but I found myself juggling dates in the calendar to wrestle my story’s timeline back into submission. And, since The Prank takes place in 1968, moving the action forward one day meant my characters were no longer watching Daktari on TV. They were watching That Girl.

6. Writing multiple narrators can also mess with the timeline, especially if you alternate them in each chapter. You can easily lose track of an hour or two—or five—when you switch from Narrator A to Narrator B. Then, when it’s Narrator A’s turn again, you may find it’s 2:00 a.m. instead of 9:00 p.m. in your story. And Little Johnny should be fast asleep by then. Or the ship has sailed without your heroine aboard.

7. Other issues you might find and fix during careful revision include incorrect word choice, plot holes, logic problems, and cringe-worthy turns of phrase. Or clichés. You should avoid those like the plague. (And, yes, I’m aware that using that cliché as a joke is a cliché itself.)

8. Better ideas. You might just find that you’ve come up with new twists or choices over time. Revision affords you the chance to include those ideas in your story.

9. Names. You should also check to be sure your characters haven’t snuck off and changed their names without your approval. From my first draft of The Prank to the fifth, I changed nearly every character’s name. In one case I decided to switch one character’s name for another’s. Fabric of the universe… again. Apologies if the loud boom it created startled you.

10. Miscellany. There are so many other benefits to revising your manuscript. The more times the better. Your attention might be more focused one day compared to another. Maybe you got smarter. Cleared your head. Got into the zone. Whatever the reason—and there are too many to count—revising your work is just good practice. Take musicians. Or actors. Do they rehearse? Of course they do. Think of revision as preparation, not unlike rehearsals.

11. Concrete example. But for this week’s question—no, I haven’t forgotten—we were asked to provide an example from our work. To that end, I offer one more area for improvement during the revision of your story: cutting the fat.

Below is a flabby passage from The Prank. The protagonist, a troubled thirteen-year-old boy, must sneak into his late teacher’s garage and retrieve a friend’s bike before it’s discovered there. (To find out how the teacher died, you’ll have to read the book.) He gets distracted from his mission by the teacher’s hot red Mustang. He climbs into the driver’s seat and wishes he could take a photo of himself. The text highlighted in yellow was garbage that I cut, with no damage to the story or to the fabric of the universe. That’s how you know it’s fat.

You can gasp in horror at the before, then coo with admiration at the after.

Before (Click on image for a clearer view.)

After  (Click on image for a clearer view.)

As you can see, the description of the car’s interior stinks of research and is unnecessary. It breaks the rhythm of the prose, slows the pace of the story, and bores the pants off the reader, who really should try to maintain decorum and keep it zipped. This isn’t a Roman orgy after all.

I’d love to see your snarky comments below, but I reserve the right to edit them out during revision.

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