Building my revision checklist - Emily Munro

Hello everyone! This week, you have a very special treat. The following post has been written by Emily Munro, creator of the blog Writing About Writing About Writing. I am really excited to be able to share her knowledge and perspective with you, and thoroughly recommend you check out her blog for more writing goodness! (You might just see a little something from me on there soon too...) Now, let's learn something about revision!

Hello friends, Jojo has handed me the reins today to share one of my writing secrets. This is the tool that changed revisions from something I dreaded to my favorite part of the process. I hope it will help you too. However, if this sounds too structured or gives you the ick, remember that you only need to pick up the tools that are useful to you. Good? Let’s get started.

In 2011, I read a book for grad school called The Checklist Manifesto. In it, Atul Gawande describes how doctors dramatically increase the reliability of their care by implementing checklists for repeating tasks, especially ones they do everyday. When doing tasks that have lots of complex steps, it is very easy to forget a step, and you are more likely to forget a step the more often you repeat a task. The solution is a simple checklist, preferably a physical paper one that you check off, but even a visible list of steps is helpful.

It almost sounds too simple to work, but it has been incredibly useful in my professional life (I work with databases) and also for my writing. About five years ago, I began making a revision checklist for short stories, and I’ve been adding and tweaking it ever since. We all know that every story is unique, but as writers we also have things we know we need to check every time. For instance, I cannot spell the word “recommendation” correctly on the first try to save my life. But we also tend to forget those things as we can go long periods between revisions.

What if, instead, you had a single document or piece of paper that listed all the mistakes you make most often, all the good advice you’ve accumulated, and all the things that threw you off last time? You would no longer be starting your revision from scratch every time. That’s where a list comes in. Making a list may take a little longer your first time through, but it is well worth it if you are working through a longer manuscript or if you are revising a short story on a tight deadline.

To begin is simple: as you revise, write down the kinds of changes you are making, not the specific changes. Instead of writing “removed actually, really, lovely” you would write “remove -ly words and make descriptions more specific.” Don’t worry about order to start, just work through your revision the way you normally would and take notes on what actions you take. The first step is just to capture all the steps you normally take, in whatever order they happen in.

When you are as done as you can be with your revision (and the story is sent off or trunked for later), take a look at your revision notes. Your next step is to organize the steps you took into groups. I suggest four categories: whole-story changes, scene-level changes, paragraph-level changes, and sentence-level changes. Whole-story changes are things like: “does the story start in the right place?” and “do the characters change across this scene?”. Scene-level changes are “does the character change somehow across this scene?”. Paragraph-level things would be “check if my descriptions are too long” and “is there too much dialogue in any one place?”. And sentence-level items might include “am I using too many commas?” and our reminder to “remove -ly words and strengthen descriptions.” By working from big changes to small, you avoid having to repeat steps as you work through your document.

When you are done organizing, you will have a document to guide you through your next revision. Start over with a new story, use your list, and revise the list as needed.

Don’t think of your checklist as a static document. Add to it as you learn new things, get good advice, or read something in an article that you want to work on in your own writing. If you can, print out a copy to keep by your elbow as you revise your work. If you are working on a longer piece like a novel, you might end up with a custom list just for that novel. But the thing to remember is that this is a tool unique to you, your revision checklist is going to be different from mine, and any other writer you know, because the things you are looking for in your work are different.

Whether you are using a checklist or not, the choices you make in revision are what shape your voice as a writer. Making a checklist can help you to be aware of your choices, so that your changes are deliberate rather than a product of chance and instinct. The goal is to make revision a repeatable process, so that when you are staring down a large task, like a novel revision, you already know the steps you need to take.

Example List

I generally don’t love giving instructions without an example, so here is an excerpt of my personal list for short stories. I’ve made some notes about where each item came from throughout the text, in case you’d like to read them for yourself. Please look at this as a place to begin. Your list can and should look different from mine.

Whole-story

• Does the piece have a beginning, middle, and end? Does the ending actually end the piece? Are there any gaps in the roller coaster? (You would be amazed at how often this is a problem with my first drafts)
• Is there a “strong image” to open the story? Find the strongest image, or the strongest voice line and move to the beginning. (from Writing the Breakout Novel by Donald Maass)
• Do the emotions hit at the end? Is the emotional arc of the piece landing? Do the main characters have a strong emotional arc throughout the piece? Can you make things worse somewhere to intensify those arcs? (from The Emotional Craft of Fiction by Donald Maass)
• Does the ending connect back to the beginning and middle in a satisfying way? Can you make that happen without stretching things too far?

Scene-level

• Is there a sense of story movement? Do character’s opinions and/or emotional status change across each scene? (from Crafting Story Movement by Kathryn Craft)
• Do protagonist and antagonist actions happen in proper order? Is the chain of who knows what and when they know it happening in sequence? (from Techniques of the Selling Writer by Dwight Swain)

Paragraph-level

• Are the "action, reaction, emotion" chains all happening in the right order? Do people react before they’ve perceived things? Screams come after gunshots. (Techniques of the Selling Writer)
• Check all character descriptions. Are they only surface descriptions? Are you using telling details? (Techniques of the Selling Writer)
• Is the description of spaces and people completely unique to that specific time/place/instance in a way that can’t be any other place/time? (Girl at the well example, Steering the Craft by Ursula K. Le Guin).

Sentence-level

• Read the piece aloud for rhythm and “song” of the words. Does the piece flow? Can I increase an effect in the piece through alliteration, repetition, or sentence length? (Steering the Craft).
• Check adverb usage - find -ly - remove 97% of them or more. (Be more specific!)
• Find weak single word adjectives and expand into more specifics. (Techniques)
• Check whitespace for rhythm and spacing issues. Visually, is one section more dense than others? Is one section too thin with dialogue? (Steering the Craft)
• Check all dashes are correct em-dash or en-dash. En-dashes only for time, dates, distance. Remove spaces around em-dashes.

Happy Writing. ~EM

Emily Munro is the writer behind the unwisely named WritingAboutWritingAboutWriting.com, a blog dedicated to reviews of writing books, catalogs of writing tools, and a monthly list of interesting articles of all kinds. She can be found scribbling in Brooklyn, NY, and on BlueSky @writingabtwriting.bsky.social. You can find her published works here.