How to Revise Your Novel Like a Pro (Without Losing Your Mind) With Alice Sudlow
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You've finally done it. After months of wrestling with character arcs, plot holes, and that stubborn middle section that refused to cooperate, you've typed those magical words: "The End." Your first draft is complete, sitting there on your computer like a 100,000-word monument to your persistence.
But now what?
If you're like most writers, you probably opened that document the very next day and started fixing sentences. Maybe you rewrote Chapter One for the fifteenth time. Perhaps you got lost tweaking dialogue tags and obsessing over whether you used "said" too many times. And three months later, you're still stuck in the same five chapters, polishing the same scenes over and over while the rest of your manuscript gathers digital dust.
This is exactly what I talked about with Alice Sudlow, a developmental editor and book coach, on the Fiction Writing Made Easy podcast. Alice and I have been in the editing world for nearly ten years, and we've both observed this pattern repeatedly. The problem isn't your writing ability. It's that nobody taught you how to edit a novel.
The Manuscript Editing Mistake That Keeps Writers Stuck Forever
Most writers approach editing like they approached writing their first draft: they start on page one and work their way through. It seems logical, right? After all, that's how you wrote the book in the first place.
But as Alice explained in our conversation, editing a book is a completely different beast from writing a book. It requires a different process, different tools, and most importantly, a different mindset.
When you jump straight into line editing (fixing sentences, adjusting word choices, polishing prose), you're essentially trying to put wallpaper on a house that might need new foundation work. You end up with eighteen versions of Chapter One and a growing suspicion that your story structure is fundamentally broken, but you can't see the forest for the trees.
Alice calls this "line editing purgatory," and it's where most writers get trapped. They spend months perfecting individual scenes without ever stepping back to see whether those scenes actually serve the larger story.
The Novel Editing Rule That Changes Everything
Here's the editing rule that Alice swears by: forget the words on the page.
I know that sounds backwards. You spent months crafting those words! But as Alice puts it, those words served their purpose. They helped you get your story idea down. Now you need to zoom out and look at the big picture.
Alice's most effective editing process starts by taking a break from your manuscript. Not a day or two, but a real break. Alice and I both recommend four weeks as the sweet spot that gives your mind enough time to shift from writer mode to editor mode without losing momentum on the project.
After that break, you come back to your manuscript with fresh eyes and a specific mission: create an outline of what you actually wrote.
The Power of the Reverse Outline Method
This isn't the outline you might have created before writing. This is what Alice calls a reverse outline, and it's a summary of what's actually on the page. And here's the crucial part: you're not reading to make changes. You're not even looking for things to change. You're simply documenting what exists.
For each scene, write a brief summary that captures both what happens externally (the action and plot events) and what happens internally (how it impacts your characters emotionally and psychologically).
When Alice describes this process, she explains that you capture both the external action (Katniss attending the reaping, Prim being selected, Katniss volunteering) and the internal impact (how watching others get selected creates stress but doesn't directly threaten her, then how Prim's selection forces her to choose between her sister's life and her own safety).
When you capture both elements, something happens that Alice and I see with our clients all the time: you start seeing patterns. You'll notice scenes where you can describe the external action but struggle to explain why it matters to the story. Those blank spots in your summary? They're showing you exactly where your story needs work.
Why This Story Editing Approach Actually Works
Alice's reverse outline process accomplishes three crucial things:
First, it makes your story manageable. Instead of trying to hold 100,000 words in your head, you're working with a 5,000-word summary. Your brain can actually process that amount of information and see the big picture.
Second, it reveals your story's true structure. You might think you wrote a romance, but when you outline what you actually put on the page, you discover you wrote a friendship story with romantic elements. Or you realize your "hero's journey" is missing several crucial beats.
Third, it separates thinking from execution. As Alice explained, when you try to analyze and fix your story at the same time, you get overwhelmed. But when you separate the problem-solving phase from the implementation phase, both become much more effective.
The Deep Story Analysis That Most Writers Skip
Once you have your reverse outline, here's where most writers want to jump back into the manuscript and start making changes. But Alice has one more step that's absolutely crucial, and it's the step that creates the real magic in your story.
You need to go back to fundamental questions about your story. Alice asks her clients things like: Why are you writing this story at all? What's the point? What is your character's goal, and what are the stakes if they fail? How will your character be different at the end than at the beginning? What genre does your story actually belong to?
Alice calls this "the heart of revision" because stories evolve during the drafting process. Your characters surprise you. Plot threads develop in unexpected ways. Themes emerge that you never planned. So even if you did this foundational work before, you need to do it again based on what you actually wrote.
These aren't abstract academic exercises. Alice describes them as "the hidden keys that are woven in underneath everything else that you've written." When you take this work seriously, when you allow yourself the time to think deeply about these questions, you'll discover layers of meaning and connection that were already there.
Building Your Story Structure Architecture
With those foundational elements clear, Alice recommends building your story architecture. This means taking what she calls the "five commandments" of your global story (inciting incident, progressive complications, turning point, crisis, climax, resolution) and expanding it into an act-by-act structure, then scene-by-scene editing.
Alice uses a four-act structure, breaking the story into beginning (first 25%), middle part one (second 25%), middle part two (third 25%), and end (final 25%). She maps out the five commandments for each act, which gives you a framework for understanding what each section of your novel needs to accomplish.
This isn't about constraining your creativity. As Alice puts it, when you know exactly what each scene needs to accomplish, when you understand how each chapter fits into your larger story arc, the actual rewriting becomes so much clearer.
From Overwhelmed to Confident in Novel Revision
Alice's systematic approach transforms editing from an overwhelming slog into a manageable process. Yes, it takes time up front. Yes, it requires you to think deeply about your story before you touch a single sentence. However, it's the difference between spending months trapped in revision limbo and efficiently navigating the editing process with confidence.
As Alice told me, the writers who skip this foundational work end up spending years cycling through endless drafts, constantly second-guessing themselves, never quite sure if their story is working. The writers who embrace this process discover that editing can actually be the most exciting part of the writing journey.
Alice put it perfectly: "You're both the puzzle maker and the puzzle solver. When you wrote your first draft, you created the puzzle. Now you get to solve it."
When you approach that puzzle with Alice's tools and process, you'll be amazed by what you discover hidden in the story you've already written. So before you dive back into those opening pages for the twentieth time, try Alice's approach. Create that reverse outline. Ask those fundamental questions. Build your story structure.
Your manuscript will thank you when you're confidently typing "The End" on a draft you're actually proud to share with the world.
If you want to learn more about editing your first draft, you'll love this blog post: Novel Editing: 10 Steps to Editing Your First Draft.
