You’ll Never Finish Revising Your Novel Without This

Revise your fantasy or sci-fi novel with a strategic, layered plan that builds stronger drafts—without burnout or wasted edits.

Why Your Revisions Aren’t Working (and What to Do Instead)

Sci-fi and fantasy authors—revision and self-editing are not going to make your story better if it’s just making it different. And the worst part? These revisions will never get your book ready to publish or query.

What you’re probably doing is getting stuck in an endless cycle of editing because you don’t know what to fix. So let me give you a master revision plan in this article.

And I’ll show you how the authors I coach use it to revise purposefully—and finish books that are actually ready to send out into the world.

The Power of a Master Revision Plan

First, you need to know that while this revision plan covers everything your story needs—it actually makes the whole process way more manageable.

Revision without a plan is where overwhelm starts.

But this plan will help you revise smarter so you can finish revising this time, and that takes layers and prioritization.

Think of your revision notes like ripples in the cauldron your story is bubbling in.

Big Ripples vs. Small Ripples

Very simply, some changes—like fixing a weak character arc or restructuring a plot thread—make big waves that affect everything else.

Other edits—like renaming a character or trimming dialogue—barely make a splash.

If you start with the small stuff first, you’ll end up doing work you have to redo—or worse, keeping scenes that don’t belong anymore because you already put extra effort into them.

But if you start from the biggest ripples and work your way down, every revision builds on the one before it. You get a stronger draft with less wasted time—and more precious finishing energy.

Using “Ripples” of Change

• Big changes = big ripples (character arc, structure, major plot)
• Small changes = small ripples (wording, line edits, name tweaks)

Fixing small ripples first wastes time if big ones wash over them later.

The Most Common Revision Traps

I know it seems obvious, but here’s what I’ve seen over and over:

Even smart, talented writers fall into the same traps after their first draft.

• About fifty percent of the authors I’ve worked with rewrite their book almost entirely with every change.
• The other half is afraid of ruining what they have and stay on the surface level.

They try to “fix” everything at once in one or very few surface-level passes—or worse, tinker randomly, hoping the story will eventually click into place.

Neither is revision. That’s creative burnout waiting to happen.

The Middle Path: Strategic Layered Revision

That’s the biggest reason I teach this method I’m about to break down for you.

I want to get you somewhere in the middle of the perpetual complete rewrite authors and those that hardly make more than surface-level changes.

Revising in these strategic layers is so important.

Take it in steps from your plan—one that helps you:

• Map out your story’s problems
• Prioritize what matters
• Work scene by scene to make each draft stronger—not just different

How to Start Creating Your Master Revision Plan

Step 1: Compile Your Revision Notes

You need to gather everything you’ve learned about your draft so far. That might include:

• Critique partner feedback
• Beta reader comments (well, if you didn’t read my earlier article and jumped the gun on that step anyway, and you sent your story to betas before completing your most final self-edits)
• Notes from your readthroughs
• Things you already know you want to change

Don’t worry about organizing them yet—just collect them all in one place so you can work from a full picture. Maybe that’s just a bullet list in a document.

If you want to know what revision steps to take—and in what order—to help you pull out the right notes and build a strong plan, grab my free roadmap, The Word Wizard’s Journey.

It walks you through the process.

Step 2: Sort by “Ripple” Impact of Each Revision Note

Now it’s time to think through which notes create the biggest ripple effects in your story.

• Does this note change the plot?
• A character’s arc?
• The setting or structure?

That’s a big ripple.

If it’s something like “tighten the dialogue in Chapter 3,” it’s a smaller ripple. It still matters—but only after the big stuff is solid.

As you identify bigger and smaller ripples, place them in order from biggest to smallest on a fresh master revision plan document.

This “document” could be:

• A new bullet list
• Columns in a spreadsheet
• Your floor with notecards—if you’re the type who needs the tangible in front of you to make sense of it all and organize the chaos

And if you like the visuals but you’re earth-conscious—or haven’t sacrificed enough chickens to get your printer to work right—you could also use a program like:

• Scrivener
• Trello
• Asana in a Kanban-style board

That way, you can move digital cards around as needed.

I like to use digital cards in Scrivener, and therefore, I will be calling individual revision notes “cards” for this description.

When revising, I create a new folder called “revision master plan” to house my revision plan. From there, I create a new document for each revision note. These become cards on Scrivener’s corkboard view.

Start with the most obvious large ripples and small ripples that you can find in your revision notes to make this process easier. Put them on your board, document, or floor. Think of each card or list item as one change.

You’ll likely need to go through this step in passes, marking which notes you’ve grabbed. Maybe with:

• A strikethrough
• Different colored font
• A highlight on their original documents

as you copy them into your revision plan space.

Step 3: Prioritize by Ripple Size and Dependencies

Once you’ve sorted your notes by impact, now it’s time to look at how they affect one another.

Some changes need to happen before others can even make sense. Some will negate or reshape others entirely.

For example:

• “Cut at least 10,000 words for YA fantasy” appears in your overall notes
• From your structural assessment, you have: “Collapse the first two opening scenes into one to bring beats in line and bump up late inciting incident”

That second change likely contributes toward the first, so you don’t need to treat them separately. You can handle both by executing the scene collapse.

Track these overlaps as you go so you don’t waste time addressing the same issue twice.

As you’re transferring notes to your master revision plan, highlight each one, mark it in red or another flag of your choice, and add it to your folder or board—one note per card or document.

Then go back and check off or color-code what’s been handled, so your original note space doesn’t become cluttered or confusing.

Here’s another example:

• High-impact note: “Clarify character arc to focus more on trust.”
• Low-impact note: “Change the main character’s name to something that doesn’t start with a D.”

(Yes, that last one is a real example—I apparently start everything with a D!)

Because the character name change doesn’t affect the plot or emotional arc, it can be moved to the bottom of the list as a lower priority.

Once you’ve noted dependencies, organize your plan so the most foundational changes come first—and the smaller, scene-level tweaks come later.

That’s how you avoid wasted work and build momentum as you move through your revision.

Step 4: Assess the Revision Plan

Once you have all of your notes organized how you want them, view them all together. In Scrivener, if I click on the folder itself, it pulls up the corkboard view with all of them on display.

This makes it easier to assess the full plan and check for things that maybe can’t go strictly in bigger-to-smaller ripple order.

Let me show you an example of that:

Sometimes, even with a bigger-impact item in Act Two, I have a hard time deciding if I should work on First Act or Second Act stuff first, because I like to work chronologically.

However, collapsing my two opening scenes (if they’re already doing similar things) isn’t going to make a big difference in the rest of the story, so I should keep it lower than the Act Two items.

Act Two work—like fixing the timeline or adding stronger high points—feels like it’ll have a broader ripple effect across the story.

So I’m still going to keep the Act Two issues first, but knowing how I work—chronologically—I might inadvertently do the earlier fixes ahead of time. And that’s okay.

The plan can evolve, but it can’t evolve effectively if you don’t have one in the first place.

Having everything laid out visually has already helped me make some decisions I wouldn’t have made just looking at my scattered notes.

I can already see that some items:

• Will take care of others by default
• Are already more specific than they were in my general note-taking phase

So even just pulling the information into Scrivener helped clarify and prioritize my tasks more clearly.

At this point, I’m also starting to think ahead to how I’ll implement this plan during revisions—and what tasks might group together into a single revision pass.

Step 5: Revise in Focused Passes

With your plan in place, revise in layers. You can go into each revision session knowing your next steps—in order—which helps you avoid the overwhelm paralysis of not knowing what to do.

Your plan has your individual revision notes in a pretty optimized order, so now you can lump a few neighboring cards together when it makes sense. However, those higher-priority items—like structure or character motivation—may each need a revision pass on their own first.

Once those foundational layers are solid, then you can start grouping notes for things you can tackle at once, like plot clarity with a side of foreshadowing setup.

Save things like line edits and sentence polish for the end.

This method may mean more revision passes than you think you need, but trust me—keeping each pass focused on one distinct priority helps you move through the process efficiently.

It takes a little practice to keep your hands off other revisions that aren’t supposed to be part of that pass, but it’s worth the discipline.

You’ll build momentum, stay out of revision burnout, and each pass will visibly strengthen your draft. That visible progress helps you avoid spiraling into self-doubt and wondering whether any of this is worth it.

Why a Solid Story Foundation Comes First

But before this revision plan can work for you, you need something absolutely crucial in place first:

You need to have a solid foundation to know that your story is strong.

If your story isn’t strong, it doesn’t matter what’s in your revision plan. It won’t get you to a marketable book.

This is exactly why I work with my authors in Enchant Your Readers—to make sure they have:

• A strong foundation in story craft
• A practical, customized revision plan
• Back-and-forth edits with feedback throughout the process

When you’re in this program, you’re no longer revising alone or guessing at what comes next. No busy-work writing exercises either.

Just practical progress, applied directly to your manuscript.

You’ll finish your revisions better and faster because you’re using proven frameworks and tools I’ve already created—like the scene outline template and revision trackers I talked about in my previous article.

These tools are reverse-engineered from the science of reader experience, so you’re not just finishing your book—you’re crafting one readers will love just as much as you do.

Ready to Finally Finish Your Book?

In Enchant Your Readers, I’m with you through every part of the journey. Whether you’re stuck in the middle of a draft or deep in revisions, this program meets you exactly where you are—and helps you get your book to publishable status easier and faster.

If you're serious about finally finishing that book you’ve been tinkering on, join Enchant Your Readers now.

Categories: : creativity, editing, manuscript stages, revision, self-editing, writer mindset