On Jan. 2nd, Heather browses her draft articles.
She doesn’t feel like writing a complete blog post. Not this week.
Heather is surprised to find 31 drafts in her folder. Why did she never finish these posts? Surely, she thinks, one of them must be almost ready for publication?
Red-cheeked, with hope in her heart, Heather opens her documents. One by one. She reads an opening here, and scans the subheads there.
Slowly she loses her sense of optimism. These articles are no good …
Do you recognize the feeling?
Do you ever look at a first draft with despair?
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Unfinished work is a burden
Unfinished drafts weigh you down and make you feel weary.
After all, you started a piece of content because an idea mattered to you. But somehow you lost direction, or motivation.
The key to finishing your work is to avoid falling into despair. So don’t focus on what’s wrong with your draft. Instead, focus on what’s right.
When you find what’s good in your draft, you can, step by step, turn any ramshackle draft into shiny new content.
Strictly speaking, transforming a rough draft into good content requires revision, editing, and proofreading:
- Revision means getting the content right; it’s about the big picture.
- Editing means making each sentence flow and choosing the right words.
- Proofreading is about ironing out grammar and spelling mistakes, as well as checking punctuation.
In this post, I describe the whole 5-step process of revising, editing, and proofreading so you prepare your content for publication.
Revision step 1. Find your focus
What is the essence of your message?
In a blog post, it’s the crux of your idea; in sales copy it’s the most compelling reason to buy.
If you’ve outlined your content, you probably already know what the focus of your content is. You know what your reader should remember and you know what he should do after reading your content—such as implement your advice or click that Buy button.
But if you’ve freewritten your content, without a clear outline, the focus of your content might be blurry.
When I wrote my last post for 2016, for instance, the article started as a post about focusing on business essentials. I didn’t have a clear outline, but a few ideas about what I wanted to include. I more or less freewrote the article, and when I reviewed my draft, I found that the essence of my year was not about business essentials, but about learning to accept who I am and what my limitations are.
Finding the focus in unwieldy content can feel tricky. Try to read your draft quickly and ignore any badly written sentences. Focus on the big picture: What’s your writing about?
Questions you may find useful to find your focus:
- What action do I expect a reader to take?
- What’s the most compelling reason why my reader would take this action?
- Why does this article matter to me?
- What surprises me most in this draft?
- What do I find most fascinating in this piece of content?
- How does my reader benefit from this?
- Which problem does this article solve?
Even when you’ve outlined a post, you might discover a fresh idea or new nugget of wisdom while writing. Be open-minded and embrace these surprises because it’ll make your writing better.
Revision step 2. Create content flow
How does your content take your readers on a journey?
Their journey is about the logical order of your paragraphs, about the flow of your ideas and how you build your argument.
How much you need to change the flow of your content varies from draft to draft. If you have a clear outline, you may simply check whether you’ve followed the logical flow of your outline.
If you’ve freewritten your draft, however, you need to review how each paragraph contributes to the essence of your message. Some paragraphs may be redundant, and you may need to re-order the remaining paragraphs.
To check your content flow, read your content relatively quickly again. You’re still working at a high level, and rickety sentences are irrelevant, so ignore them.
While reading your content, list the key thought of each section and check:
- Do the key thoughts follow each other logically?
- Have you included any stray thoughts that can be removed?
- Are any important ideas missing?
A good flow keeps your reader glued to your content, eager to find out the next part of your story or argument. So be careful to keep your focus and prune all unnecessary content.
Revision step 3. Add substance
Writing is a process of expansion and shrinkage.
In the first two revision steps, you’ve pruned unwieldy thoughts to focus on the essence of your message. Sometimes, this may feel like a scary process, and you may wonder whether you have any enough content left after all the pruning.
Don’t worry. In step three, you add substance to clarify and illustrate your message. This step also helps boost your persuasiveness.
How do you add substance?
For blog posts, substance can be examples, case studies or quotes from authorities. For sales content, substance are specific details of your product (or service), or testimonials explaining how you transformed your client’s life.
Once you’ve finished step three, you know the content of your writing is right, and now it’s time to start editing sentence by sentence so you can make your content a pleasure to read.
Revision step 4. Sentence by sentence editing
Editing is when writing magic happens.
You transform ramshackle sentences into a pleasurable reading experience. You make your words shimmer and swing. You polish your words so you can communicate your message with piercing precision. You put a smile on your reader’s face.
Editing is best undertaken in various steps to focus on one task at a time. The most useful editing tasks are:
- Reduce average sentence length by chopping down long sentences as short sentences are easier to read
- Improve word choice to communicate your message with more precision
- Tighten your writing to make your sentences concise and clear
- Read your content aloud to create a pleasurable rhythm and smooth transitions
Editing is most fun when you nurture a sense of play. See editing as an experiment. Try different words and play with different sentence structures. See what you like best.
And remember, no one way exists to phrase your thoughts, so don’t strive for perfection. Consider limiting your editing time to avoid getting stuck and get your content ready for publication.
Revision step 5. Proofreading
During the revision process, dealing with our devilish inner critic can be tricky.
She keeps nagging us: That sentence sounds ugly. That word isn’t quite right. Oops, what a silly grammar mistake.
Shutting up that voice is hard because you know some of the criticism is valid. But revising your content goes quicker, when you outpace your inner critic and ignore her comments during the first three steps. Tell her she can help when editing and proofreading.
To ensure you don’t publish silly writing goofs, read your copy once or twice more. A few tips for spotting errors:
- Read your text backwards; this is the best way to spot typos.
- Use a spellchecker such as Grammarly.
- Proofread on paper as you’re less likely to skim the text; reading your content in a different font may help, too.
- Focus on common mistakes like “they’re” vs “their” vs “there”; and “you’re” vs “your.”
Spotting errors in someone else’s writing is much easier than in your own. So consider finding a writing buddy and proofread each other’s text. For important content, consider hiring a professional proofreader.
The magic craft of revision
When I started writing a few years ago, I kept frustrating myself.
I wasted time going back and forth. I corrected sentences before getting the flow of the content right. I experimented with word choice before figuring out what the essence of an article was. I despaired and doubted I could turn my rickety drafts into shiny content.
But I persevered. I learned how to move from the big picture to the nitty-gritty. I learned to trust the process.
Of course, we’re all human beings. So my process is never perfect. I still edit a little while writing a first draft.
But the more I trust my process, the more I enjoy my writing.
I’ve learned through writing the reward and the joy that comes out of just being really patient with a piece and patient with yourself.
~ Layli Long Soldier (in conversation with Krista Tippett in On Being)
Recommended course:
Write It, Don’t Fight It
A Step-by-Step Course to Become a Prolific and Joyful Writer
“The tools to master the writing process are helping me write and get unstuck faster.”
~ Isabel
Recommended reading on revision:
How to revise one sentence: An example
How to make your sentences clear and concise
How to edit your own writing like a pro
Great post. I’ve never seen the process so clearly explained, nor have I seen revision separated from editing. I like your distinction.
Patricia
Thank you, Patricia. Happy editing! 🙂
Hi! Henneke,
Your article help me to get the answer of a question, based on steps of editing a draft.
T̮̮ḫa̮̮n̮̮k̮̮s̮̮.
Great! I’m glad this article was helpful 🙂
You’re such a damn fine writer, Henneke! I want to learn how to write like you 🙂
You’re in luck, Disha, as I share most of my writing “secrets” on this website 😉
Thank you for your lovely compliment!
Hi Henneke,
That’s such an informative article. I was able to connect with the article the moment I started reading because there are about 30 odd drafts in my wordpress dashboard.
I really like that first point – finding your focus.
In fact, when we first sit down to write something there indeed is a lot of focus and you have that precise idea of what you are planning to write. But as you write, your focus diverges and there are multiple things that unknowingly gets into the article and suddenly you find that you focus has shifted, rather blurred. That is the point where you tend to abandon the article and it stays there in the draft.
Something that I have experienced over a period of time is that if you go back to your drafts after a few months and read through the post, you start regaining that focus. You are able to find that one pivotal point around which that post is revolving. At that point you are able to pick that piece of content up again and create a nice little nugget out of it.
Hence this is what I do a lot of times with article where the focal idea gets blurred.
Wonderful information and thanks again..
Regards
DK
Hi Dilip, I recognize the process you describe… thinking you have an clear idea of what you want to write, but by the time a first draft is written, the idea has been rather foggy. It’s amazing how you can go back later (for me often the next day), and then get back to clarity again.
Thank you for stopping by. I appreciate your comment!
Another tip noted!
Thanks indeed. I am going to use FocusBooster when I am writing for sure.
Thank you!
-Swadhin
Hi Henneke,
How are you?
You have clearly outlined the best way to get content sluggishness turn into flowing content. I write follow the exact strategy. I thought adding substance, research data to backup what I am saying/images or multimedia after writing the initial draft is best.
What gets me stopped is the first phase of focusing. I just cannot focus to write on a content and start procrastination until it is the deadline.
Thanks,
-Swadhin
Hi Swadhin
I used to suffer from the same problem—procrastinating endlessly before starting to write… at the very last minute. Writing for clients taught me how to improve my ways. What helped me most is to spread the work over multiple days, and make the next step always as small as possible. So instead of thinking about writing a whole article, I only pick a topic and write down a few ideas of what my post may cover. I’ve found that by spreading the work over more days, I can write faster (and writing is more fun, too).
The other thing that helps me is to give myself a clear time before which I want to start writing. Previously, I used to write in the evenings and late at night. Now, I write at least one hour before breakfast (actually, twice 25 minutes, but sometimes thrice 25 minutes – each time with a fresh cup of tea). I can get more done in my day this way. I may edit in the afternoon, but writing first drafts is almost always first thing in my day. Once I’ve got it out of the way, I feel much better about my day!
You also may want to experiment with small rituals. My ritual is simple. Switch on my computer, open a word document, make a cup of tea, sit down and write.
I hope this helps? Let me know how you get on?
HI Henneke,
Thanks for showing me this method. I think it will work like a charm because I know somewhere inside I am scared of doing the whole process at one go and this is the main cause that triggers procrastination.
Breaking it into chunks can surely help and I will let you know how this goes!
Thanks Henneke,
-Swadhin
Yes, please let me know how you get on, Swadhin 🙂
By the way, the other thing that helped me is tracking what I spend my time on. I use FocusBooster to track time, and when I see the minutes ticking away, I’m much less inclined to procrastinate.
Happy writing!
Hi Henneke,
Happy New Year!
I quite like editing. But before reading this I tended to bunch all the different elements together. I like the way you’ve separated them.
My main problem is starting to edit before I’ve finished getting everything written down. I’ll write a few paragraphs and then automatically go back and read them. And then start pruning and so forth.
I need to be more disciplined.
– David
PS – love the drawing – had to Pin It!
Happy New Year to you, too, David!
Some people are fine with writing and editing in one go; and if you have a clear outline, then it may not be a problem.
I’ve found it’s good to try out different methods and see what works best – and you may find it differs depending on what type of content you write. I write more personal posts in a different way than tutorial-style articles, and copywriting works differently again.
I’m glad you like the drawing! Thank you for pinning it 🙂
Hi Henneke,
I agree with your tips. We should handle a topic from the readers’point of view. And a writer should be able to provide what his readers expect from such a post. Simple and ideal approach for a successful content.
Proof reading is a big headache for me. Once a post finished, I am no more interested to read it again. If read, I will find a couple of mistakes in my writing. But again, without going for re-reading I will publish the next post. That’s what happens to me regularly.
I have often published blog posts with mistakes, too – even if I might have proofread it several times. I’m lucky that usually someone spots it and kindly sends me an email. It’s hard to spot your own typos!
Hi Henneke, thank you for a great reminder of the writing process. After a break, I find it difficult to even make an outline. Still looking for the main idea. It must be somewhere in my head.
I will listen to you and stop editing while writing until I’m satisfied with the content. Often it is unproductive because I’m wasting my time on sentences that later might not even be in the text. Not mentioning that it slows me down and distracts the flow.
I’m sending this article the pronter. 🙂
What I find useful when I’m stuck finding the main idea, is to think about it as AN idea, not THE idea. You don’t need to find your best idea, but an idea that fascinates you and that can help your readers. Sometimes it helps to think smaller (which simple question can you answer?) instead of bigger (writing the definitive guide on XYZ).
An idea instead of the idea?
A brilliant idea, thank you, Henneke! I’ll try to do that.
🙂
I so love your approach, Henneke. I am an outline lover as well. Almost every time I “freewrite,” (love that term) 🙂 I find I lose focus or the flow gets diverted. Even the simplest of outlines help. I’m keeping this gem of a post. 🙂 BTW, Happy 2017, Henneke!
Yes, I find that I almost always lose focus with freewriting, but, to look at it in another way: I find the focus I didn’t know was there. It’s definitely not a quick way to produce content, and mostly outline first.
Happy New Year to you, too, Cathy! Good to see you again 🙂
I am so excited about this unique opportunity to have a step by step instruction plan to help me get moving on my goal and stop hiding from the fear of failure. Thank you
Great! Happy writing, Kristin. Nice to “meet” you here!
Hello Henneke,
You are back with bang! Your post is calling me out 🙂 My natural bias is towards the big picture, interesting idea compilation stages. I love exploring, hanging out in and writing from Zones 1 – 3 (Focus, Flow and Substance). I struggle to get into the nitty-gritty of Zones 4 -5 (Edit and Proof Read) – boring (to me) yet necessary. I feel like procrastination is the bouncer on the gate to these last zones – giving me all kinds of reasons why I can’t enter. 🙂 I need to check emails, make a cup of coffee, call someone, pay bills on line – all very important!
To help me push past, I get a second pair of eyes to help me get into editing and proof reading before hitting publish. This person loves chasing the devil in the details (ugh!) and is an absolute pest, pushing me out of my happy zones and prodding me to make those needed tweaks and edits.
Hey Nicole,
I’m glad to be back 🙂
I seem quite a strange person, because I love the big picture and I love the editing, but my real weak point has mostly been writing first drafts – I’m getting to grips with it!
I think you’ve found an excellent solution to getting to publication: get a second pair of eyes to help with editing & proofreading.
Good to see you again!
Thank you Henneke, what a great way to start the new year by tackling my tickler file of drafts in process.
I have a huge Evernote folder of outlines and drafts from when inspiration struck but then they’ve floundered there like a ship graveyard, rotting away. Your simple 5 step process gives me a way to tackle them.
I love how you break down daunting tasks into simple steps, a true sign of a skilled expert, making the difficult look easy.
I’m glad you found this post helpful, and it would be great if you could turn your huge Evernote folder with outlines and drafts into a few enchanting blog posts!
I’d love to hear what happens when you evaluate your drafts and whether this process helps you turn at least some of them into finished articles. For instance, it’s happened a few times with me that I started posts without clearly vetting the idea, and then realized that it wasn’t a good idea so I either had to bin the draft or change direction quite rigorously. In most cases, I’ve found that with some more thinking about the essence of my idea I can turn almost any draft into final content.
Feel free to drop me an email with questions or feedback!
Happy New Year and big “Thank You!” for sharing this process with us, Henneke! What I liked most was the difference between revision and editing that you point out, this is something I need to work on as I’m usually trying to do them simultaneously…
Happy New Year to you, too, Antoniya! Thank you for your lovely comment.
I hope this process helps you turn your drafts into final content more quickly. Let me know how you get on?
Timely again, Henneke!
In the process of uncluttering my archives which might as well be drafts, there are 7 years worth. I will take notes from this and make very good use of it.
It doesn’t hurt to keep the short list recap–at the end of the article–in the front of our minds when we write comments, either. 🙂
Thanks so much!
I think Henrietta is missing from the drawn recap at the end of this post, but I didn’t know how to include her this time. I’ll do better with her next time 🙂
Uncluttering archives sounds like a job from hell to me. My archives are pretty hopeless. But you strike me as the kind of person who takes on jobs like that with gusto!
Thanks Henneke!
I may never eat an elephant (one bite at a time). But certainly I will improve my writing by taking your advice one step at a time. I’m thinking of the paradox of you writing this article by following the 5 steps, even as you were writing about them. Nice job!
Ha, yes! I do try to take my own medicine. In this case, I had a pretty clear outline, so I didn’t need to do a lot of revision – the focus & flow were more or less right when I had finished my first draft. I feel lucky when that happens. 🙂
Thank you for your lovely comment!
Hi Henneke,
Happy New Year, welcome back and thank you for this useful post. Funny enough, for the last couple of days I had been looking for a framework for revising, editing and proofreading for the children’s book I have written. Because it is longer than a regular post I wasn’t sure I was on the right track, reading for the story/the message first. This helps to remind me where exactly I am or should focus on, in the process.
Thanks as always!
Hi Mariken,
Thank you for your warm welcome on my return 🙂 And Happy New Year to you, too!
You make an excellent point – I’d say the longer the content, the more important it is to get the content right before spending a lot of time editing. I know exceptions exist and some people can just let a story develop on the go, but I’m imagining that doesn’t work for most of us. With books, I definitely need to get the content right before I get into editing the nitty-gritty.
Good luck with your book!
I savor your emails. I never read them immediately because I always know there is going to be sense in the email and I want to absorb and remember what you are saying. As usual this one was worth the wait until I had time to focus properly. It will be saved for future reference., I can’t remember when or how I met you but I am so glad I discovered you. Thank you for this…
Thank you for your lovely comment, Gogo. I’m glad you found this post valuable.
Happy writing!
First Henneke – a happy New Year, and thanks for your end-of-year 2016 post on free-writing. Your 5 step revision process is invaluable because it keeps the writing effort moving ahead to completion. All the best from sunny Sydney.
Yes, that’s key: “the revision process keeps the writing effort moving ahead.” Thank you for adding that.
I wish you a lot of writing joy in 2017, Paul! Thank you for stopping by again.
‘Writing is a process of expansion and shrinkage.’ I like that!
I never, ever work in the way you lay out here. I write and proofread at the same time.
Perhaps I should have explained this better. I think the process varies from writer to writer, and sometimes from topic to topic for the same writer.
In my experience, for straightforward topics, most people find outlining okay and they don’t need to do much revision, just editing & proofreading. And if they’re confident with their outline (either in their mind or on paper), they often edit while writing. For complicated topics, where people still try to get their head around an issue, people may use the writing process to think and find the essence of their idea. In this case, more revision is required.
I also find that more experienced writers find it easier to write & edit in one go. However, for beginning writers it’s often easier to follow the step-by-step process so they don’t go too much back and forth and can concentrate on one issue at a time.
But everyone is different, and we all have to figure out which process works best for us. I vary my process depending on the topic.
I agree. There is no best way. Best to differentiate.
Yep, different people, different habits, and different stumbling blocks 😉
I also find that length of content matters. I’m working on my next book, and I’m more disciplined than I was with my previous books. I try not to edit and get the content down first. Even though I have an outline, I’m still moving some content from chapter to chapter as I write. It feels like this process is a lot faster than when I was writing, revising, and editing all at the same time.
Hi Henneke,
Happy New Year. 🙂 Great post.
I can relate to Heather. Especially a couple years ago. I remember having 25 drafts at one point.
Loss of direction and motivation were definitely the reasons they weren’t posts.
Now, I still have a few drafts that have been sitting there since last winter.
But let’s see how this 5-step system goes. 🙂
Thanks, Henneke.
Cheers,
Julian
Yes, have a go and see whether you can turn those drafts into posts and publish them. 🙂
I’d love to hear how you get on, Julian. Drop me an email?
And Happy New Year to you, too!
Hey Henneke,
Happy 2017 to you. Hope you and your family had a great holiday.
This is a helpful post definitely. Looking at my drafts, I have way more than 20 there. But only 3 are good enough to continue on to post.
Not sure why I do that (create so many drafts)but it’s clearly something I need to fix.
You picked up right where you left off last year. Looking forward to more great content all year.
– Andrew
Hi Andrew
Yes, I had a great time. It’s good to switch off from the Internet for a few days, isn’t it? Happy New Year to you, too!
Interestingly, I never thought you’d have many drafts stuck in a folder. Somehow you struck me as someone who turns each draft into a published article.
When you have a chance to browse through your folder and evaluate the various drafts, I’d love to hear why you think you never finished these posts. Did you change your mind on the idea you had? Or did you lose motivation? Or did you feel stuck for some reason?
Hi Henneke,
Yes, I do have many drafts at the moment, but it’s not so much that I lose motivation or feel stuck, it’s just I start the writing process and halfway or 3/4 of the way through it, I realize that it wouldn’t necessarily fit for my blog. But that wouldn’t stop me from making it a future guest post.
So that’s what I have with the majority of the posts that are drafts. They’re potential guest posts while only a handful are to be published on my post.
Yes, now I understand!
I hope you’ll turn them all your drafts into great guest posts, Andrew. I appreciate your additional comments.
Welcome back, Henneke. I’ve been looking forward to your first post for 2017. As someone with an overloaded folder of semi finished ideas, this post spoke so loudly to me. Time for me to put fingers to keyboard and break out those ideas. So today, I’m starting with step 1 in your process to get me on track. Thank you. And Happy New Year.
It’s good to be back, Gay. And Happy New Year to you, too!
And yes, let’s get to grips with your overloaded folder with ideas. Let me know if you’re feeling stuck? I’d love to understand the stumbling blocks and see whether I can help out!
What holds me back I think is my content curation process (I think I have an information hoarding problem.) I collect some much content wanting to somehow use it to support my ideas. But I lack organization. I’ve got folders, bookmarks, spreadsheets, Evernote notes. You name it. I can call up an idea I’ve read about but then I have to find my source. The second problem I feel is having too many ideas. Another organization problem. I keep my ideas all over the place, including backs of shopping receipts. I wonder, are others out there having this problem too? Oh, and I also like to include examples. I feel those are key to quality instruction, which is my preferred type of post. So finding examples (and again organizing them) slows me down.
I’m bad at archiving, so I have to go trawling for sources, too. (It’s definitely something I need to address!)
What helps me get unstuck is to view a blog post (or a book) not as a definitive piece of writing, but a snapshot of a thinking in progress. A piece of content doesn’t need to contain all the best ideas, it needs to communicate one idea (or one tip) that’s useful and illustrate it with examples so it’s clear for the reader.
Also, when I want to quote an authority, I look for a useful quote rather than aim for the best quote.
I also always have too many ideas. I write them in a paper notebook. It’s totally unorganized, but it works for me. When I pick an idea for the next blog post, I look for an idea that grabs my attention and that I feel excited to write about. I then vet it to decide whether it’s useful for my readers and whether it’s not too big for a blog post. I don’t keep an editorial calendar as trying to decide the best topics for the next few months would be an impossible task for me. Sometimes I plan a couple of weeks ahead, but that’s rare. I usually take it one week at a time and try to keep the topics mixed.
I agree with you on examples. They’re great to have, but time intensive! I guess good writing is just time intensive …
I appreciate your additional thoughts, Gay!
Gay, have you tried the Pocket App? I find it so useful to just pocket an article when I read it, and add a tag if I remember. Then I have a library of articles to refer to for inspiration or linking to.
– David
I think this is a great process to follow. I especially liked your point about the getting the big picture right. I find having more focus helps me write better content. Outlining the sub-heads at the outset also helps maintain focus and makes writing easier. Thank you Henneke 🙂
I also tend to write subheads as a kind of outline before I start writing. That’s my common process for writing tutorial-style posts. For those posts I do less revision. However, for more personal posts (like the last post of 2016), I often freewrite more and I have to do more revision to find the right focus and flow.
Thank you for stopping by, Laura. I appreciate it!
I think I might pin your infographic and this article right above my computer so I can hear your voice in my head during the writing process, instead of my inner critic. 🙂 Your voice is so much more productive. 😀
Welcome back… you’ve started the New Year with a bang!
Oh my, yes, I do hope that I sound more compassionate than your inner critic!
And it’s good to be back 🙂
Thank you Kathy. I was thinking vaguely when reading the post that these ideas needed to be kept handy, rather than filed on my computer. So now I have a print copy.
Hi Henneke,
this is sooo helpful. Thanks for creating these amazing articles for us. Oh, and a happy new year.
Happy New Year to you, too, Kerstin.
Wishing you a lot of writing joy in 2017! 🙂
Hello Henneke,
What an useful post, I am guilty of starting articles that I never finish. The part I liked most and which will make me come back to your post is the question section on each point – so useful.
Thanks and happy week!
Virginia
Great! I hope these tips help you finish those unfinished articles 🙂
Happy revising!