Revision is rewriting, not tidying

Changing words is the visible part. Changing what a scene is for is the part that improves the book. A tidy draft of a scene that should not exist is still a scene that should not exist, only harder to cut because you have made it handsome.

Revise in passes, from large to small. First the order of events and the question of whether each scene turns. Then the point of view and the wants. Then the dialogue, read aloud. Then the sentences, the repeated words, the darlings. If you start with commas, you will polish pages you later delete, and you will feel the deletion as a waste. It was the order that wasted them.

Keep a list of problems in the book's own language, not in workshop language. 'The sister vanishes for eighty pages' is a problem you can fix. 'The pacing is off' is a mood. Translate every mood into a location: a chapter, a promise, a character who knows something too soon.

You are allowed to rewrite a chapter from a blank page with the old one closed. Sometimes the cleanest revision is to tell the scene again to someone who has not heard your favourite phrases. The old version remains in the file history, which is where favourite phrases belong until they earn their place back.

Stop revising when the changes are making it different rather than better. That moment is uncomfortable, because another pass always looks like virtue. Send it to a reader you trust, or to the envelope. A book can be revised forever in private. It can only be finished in front of someone else.