How to Revise Objectively
- 22 hours ago
- 2 min read
At a conference recently, I approached an exhibitor's table with a question about her services. I'd barely gotten the first few words out when she interrupted me — certain she already knew what I was asking — and launched into an answer for a question I hadn't asked and wasn't going to ask. She wasn't willing to listen. I walked away with none of the information I'd come for.
Our drafts do this all the time.
We know our writing so completely — the world we've built, the characters we've lived with — that we read what we meant to put on the page rather than what's actually there. Being too close to our writing is the single biggest hurdle to quality revision. We've been inside the story so long that we hear things that aren't on the page, fill in gaps without noticing, and answer questions no one asked. All the while, we forget to ask those all-important questions of ourselves.
The fix is a specific kind of revision pass, one that forces you into a state of remove where you must objectively note what actually appears on the page. Read your draft from the beginning and annotate every time you address these five items, whether specifically or by implication:
Where are we? What details of place draw this picture for the reader?
When are we? The era or moment sets the stage with necessary context.
Who are they? How do characters connect to the world and each other, and how do they reveal themselves?
How do things look? Visual details let readers picture the environment as it is or as characters perceive it.
What's happening? What are the key plot points or conflicts, internal or external?
If you can't identify these five items in a passage, neither can your reader.
That said, their absence isn't automatically a problem. These elements aren't always needed equally in every scene — the question is whether their presence or absence is intentional. Just as we edit what's on the page, we need to consider what's not.
That exhibitor never noticed she'd answered the wrong question. Don't be her.
