Why great revision means progressively cutting better and better material.
“I wouldn’t cut any of this now because I think it’s all good,” I told a writer after reading his latest chapter. “But if you need to take your whole novel to excellent, or it’s already excellent and you need to take it to outstanding, then you have the tools to do it later.”
The writer had just submitted an 8,000-word chapter that worked beautifully. The pacing felt right, the tone was perfect, the visual details brought 1950s Florida to life. But he was worried about the length.
“I wondered if the length was wrong, because it’s very long,” he said. “Over 8,000 words.”
This is the dilemma every writer faces eventually: you’ve written good material, but you might need to cut it. The question is: how do you know what to cut when everything is working?
The Good Problem
“Later on, if the length of it is a problem, then you have the luxury of starting to cut good stuff,” I explained. “And killing some of your darlings so that what’s left is better.”
This is what I call a “good problem”—the kind of revision challenge that means you’re doing something right. When you’re cutting weak material, you’re just cleaning up mistakes. When you’re cutting good material to make room for great material, you’re actually improving your work.
The writer understood this instinctively. “Just so you know, when I was in film, I was known for my editing chops,” he told me.
But even experienced editors can struggle with the question of what goes first.
The Revision Hierarchy
The principle of revision is deceptively simple: you start by cutting the worst material and work your way up.
“You start off cutting out the low hanging fruit, the bad stuff,” I explained. “Then what’s left is mediocre, then you cut the mediocre stuff, then you cut the good stuff. And then what’s left is excellent.”
This creates a natural hierarchy of revision:
First Pass: Cut the Bad
- Scenes that don’t work at all
- Passages that confuse rather than clarify
- Dialogue that sounds forced or unnatural
- Description that bores rather than illuminates
- Exposition that stops the story dead
Second Pass: Cut the Mediocre
- Scenes that work but don’t add much
- Passages that repeat information
- Dialogue that’s functional but flat
- Description that’s adequate but unmemorable
- Transitions that get the job done without grace
Third Pass: Cut the Good
- Scenes that work well but serve redundant purposes
- Passages that are well-written but slow pacing
- Dialogue that’s entertaining but not essential
- Description that’s vivid but not crucial
- Transitions that are smooth but could be smoother
Fourth Pass: Kill Your Darlings
- Scenes you love that don’t serve the larger story
- Your most impressive prose that draws attention to itself
- Brilliant dialogue that doesn’t advance character or plot
- Description that dazzles but distracts
- Anything you’re keeping because you’re attached to it rather than because the story needs it
The Luxury Problem
When you reach the point where you’re only cutting good material, you’ve achieved something significant. You’ve eliminated all the obvious weaknesses. What remains is the much harder work of choosing between things that all work well.
“It’s a good problem,” I told the writer. “I wouldn’t cut any of this now because I think it’s all good.”
This is the luxury of having written a strong draft: you don’t have to waste revision time fixing fundamental problems. You can focus on the subtle work of making good writing great.
The Specific Choices
To illustrate how this works in practice, we looked at the specific scenes in the chapter. The writer had created three distinct moments: his protagonist stopping at a gas station, staying in a cheap hotel where he hears a couple having sex through thin walls, and eating breakfast at a diner where he encounters an intriguing woman.
All three scenes worked. All three were well-written. But if we needed to cut for pacing or length, which would go first?
“The scene at the gas station is really good,” I noted. “Is the protagonist in the hotel drinking and hearing the sex as good as that? No. So if you have to trim, I start by cutting out the thing in the hotel room, keep the gas station.”
Then came the harder question: if we needed to cut more, what would go next?
“And then if I need to cut more, I would cut the gas station before I would cut the thing in the diner because it’s connected to the larger plot more.”
Notice the progression: the hotel scene was good but less essential. The gas station scene was better but still cuttable. The diner scene was crucial because it introduced a character who might matter to the larger story.
The Context Question
The revision hierarchy isn’t just about quality—it’s about context and purpose.
“To me, it’s not about length so much as it’s about pacing,” I explained. “And if we get to the place where you’re up to chapter 11, and it’s like 400 pages to here, then we’ve got issues.”
You can’t make smart cutting decisions without understanding the whole. An 8,000-word chapter might be perfectly paced in a 400-page novel but drag in a 600-page one. A scene that seems essential in isolation might be redundant when you see it in context.
“When you get the whole of it, then we figure out what’s going on with the length and where the pacing can be trimmed up.”
The Find-the-Whole-Thing-First Principle
This leads to a crucial insight about revision: you often can’t do the highest-level cuts until you have a complete draft.
“I think right now, this is the pace that you want to be writing in,” I told the writer. “And in revision… when you get the whole of it, then we figure out what’s going on.”
Worrying too much about length or pacing during the drafting phase can be counterproductive. You need to write at the pace that brings your story to life, that helps you inhabit your characters and world. Only after you have the complete picture can you make intelligent decisions about what serves the larger narrative.
The Progressive Challenge
What makes revision challenging is that it gets harder as you progress through the hierarchy. Cutting bad material is relatively easy—you know it’s bad, and removing it obviously improves the work. Cutting mediocre material requires more judgment but still feels productive.
Cutting good material requires courage and clarity about your larger goals. You’re removing things that work, things that readers might enjoy, because you understand they’re not quite essential enough.
Killing darlings—cutting material you love, your most impressive work—requires ruthlessness balanced with wisdom. You need to distinguish between attachment (keeping something because you love it) and necessity (keeping something because the story needs it).
The Comparative Method
One useful approach is the comparative method: when you’re choosing between two good scenes, ask which one is better. Not good versus bad, but good versus great.
In the writer’s chapter:
- The hotel scene was good
- The gas station scene was better
- The diner scene was essential
This creates a clear hierarchy even among scenes that all work well. If forced to choose, you know which ones can go.
The Character Connection Test
Another useful test is character connection. Scenes that develop important character relationships or reveal crucial character information are generally more essential than scenes that serve only one function.
The diner scene introduced Maggie, a woman who represented “what could have been” in the protagonist’s life. That thematic and emotional connection made the scene more valuable than the hotel scene, which primarily established setting and atmosphere.
The Thematic Resonance Factor
Similarly, scenes that carry thematic weight are generally more essential than scenes that only advance plot or provide information.
The writer had included a dream sequence showing his protagonist’s war trauma. “I think the dream sequence is important to keep, because it connects to some of the context about the protagonist, and the military stuff really connects to the colonel,” I noted.
The dream sequence wasn’t just backstory—it established emotional and thematic material that would resonate through the larger narrative.
The Revision Mindset
The key to effective revision is adopting the right mindset at each stage:
During drafting:
Don’t worry about cutting. Write fully, generously, at the pace that helps you discover and inhabit your story.
First revision:
Cut obviously weak material without sentiment. This is cleanup work.
Second revision:
Cut adequate but unmemorable material. This requires more judgment but shouldn’t be painful.
Third revision:
Make hard choices between good alternatives. This requires clarity about your story’s priorities.
Final revision:
Kill darlings that don’t serve the whole, no matter how much you love them individually.
The Luxury of Good Problems
When you reach the stage where all your revision problems are “good problems”—choosing between strong alternatives, cutting material that works well—you’ve achieved something significant as a writer.
“It’s a good problem,” I told the writer, and I meant it.
The journey from cutting bad material to killing darlings is the journey from adequate to excellent. Each stage requires different skills and different courage. But reaching the stage where you have to kill darlings means you’ve climbed high enough that the only way forward is to cut things you love.
That’s when revision becomes art rather than repair work.
Ready to start revising your draft with a clear roadmap so you don’t get lost in the details? My class Revision: From Draft to Structure gives you everything you need.
