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Two Novelists on Revision — What You Cut and What You Add Back

52:44
Format: interview
Published: March 24, 2026
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AI Summary

Two working novelists compare revision practices. One rewrites from scratch three times. The other deletes and rebuilds sentence by sentence. Both agree the first draft is a lie you're telling yourself so the real book has permission to exist. A patient conversation about what changes between drafts, what stays, and why no novelist believes in outlining until they've finished a book without one.

Chapters

  1. 00:00

    1. First-draft voice

    Both novelists describe the voice of their first drafts — looser, more indulgent, less certain. The revision is where the book learns who it is.

  2. 11:22

    2. What gets cut

    Exposition, repeated information, scenes that explain feelings the reader already understands. One of the novelists has a rule: if two characters agree, cut the scene.

  3. 24:08

    3. What gets added back

    Specificity. The second draft is where you go find the exact word for the exact thing. Also sometimes: a scene that was missing the whole time, usually involving a minor character whose silence was a lie.

  4. 38:50

    4. When you stop

    Both novelists describe the moment when the book starts pushing back against further revision. They both call it 'the book getting tired of me.'

Notable quotes

“The first draft is the draft where the book is a liar. Every sentence is trying to convince me it belongs. Revision is where we find out which ones actually do.”

Novelist A•05:14

“I cut every scene where two characters agree. Agreement is a narrative dead end. The book doesn't move forward because two people in a room concur.”

Novelist B•19:47

“The best thing revision does is make minor characters refuse to be minor. You look at page one forty and realize the waiter has opinions about the thing the protagonist is worrying about, and those opinions are the scene you've been missing.”

Novelist A•30:02

Transcript excerpt

[00:00]
Host:You've both talked about revision as if it's the whole job. That's unusual. Most writers I know talk about drafting. You two talk about the part after.
[00:18]
Novelist A:Because the draft is the part anyone can do. You sit down, you push words out. The part that makes it a book is what happens in the second year, when you go back and start asking which of those words were telling the truth.
[00:46]
Novelist B:My drafts are terrible. I don't mean charmingly messy. I mean actually bad. And I've made peace with that, because the draft isn't the book. The draft is the scaffolding that lets me find out what the book is.
[01:20]
Host:What's the first thing you do when you sit down to revise?
[01:28]
Novelist A:I print it. The whole thing. I put it in a drawer for three weeks and I refuse to look. Then I take it out and read it like I bought it at a used bookstore and I don't know who wrote it. That's draft two.

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