Mastering Book Editing: How to Effectively Edit a Novel Scene by Scene

Editing your novel can feel overwhelming. Once you've finished editing the big picture of your story and made major revisions that affect the story as a whole, where do you go next? The second stage in the Level Down Revision Method is the Scene Level! In this post, we’ll share how to approach the scene-level revisions and fine-tune each scene in your novel. 

What is a scene?

Scenes are the building blocks of a story. Each scene has a beginning, middle, and end, focusing on one event or situation. They incorporate storytelling elements like action, description, dialogue, reflection, and exposition. Each scene must move the story forward, reveal new information about the hero or world, set up future plot points, or aid the hero's character development. Every scene must also lead naturally to the next scene, and so on. 

What are scene-level revisions?

In the writing process, the scene-level revision–also known as the detailed edit–ensures that each scene captivates readers by including all necessary components. This level of editing comes after story-level revisions (also called a developmental edit) and before the page-level revision (or line edit). Examples of scene-level revisions include adding tension, balancing pacing, checking consistency, and starting scenes in the right place. Keeping readers engaged and immersed in your story is essential during this stage. Note: to avoid unnecessary work, complete all story-level revisions on your first draft before moving on to scene-level revisions. Avoid perfecting scenes that may not fit into your story's structure.

How to edit your scenes

Take a short break and prepare

Unlike story-level edits, where you take a break to forget your novel and return with fresh eyes, scene-level edits require keeping the story fresh in your mind. This is so you can drill down into the scene structure and still keep the big picture in the back of your mind. This time, take a short break—a week, a few days, or even just a few hours if you're ready to jump right back in. The purpose is to reset your mind and change focus. In story-level revisions, you analyzed the overall story and its moving parts, but now you're zooming in to focus on the individual pieces comprising the story arc.

Once you've taken a break, prepare your revision tools and workspace. Here are some strategies to do that:

Clear workspace: A cluttered physical environment can breed anxiety and mental clutter, depleting brain power and focus. So, before diving into your manuscript, take time to declutter your workspace, get organized, and tidy up.

Clean up your storyboard: You’ll need your latest draft storyboard. If you're using a digital board, archive the snapshots; if you use physical index cards, store them away. Avoid deleting or discarding them; you might want to refer back to them later. Reset your storyboard for the next draft. Create new labels for your scene cards: "to review," "to revise," and "complete." There should be few (if any) "to write" scenes since you shouldn't be adding many new scenes at this stage. Change all current cards from "completed" to "to review."

Clean up your story bible: Make sure your story bible is up to date and matches what’s in your most recent story-level draft.

Consider the elements of a scene

Does each scene in your book belong there? Editing each scene of your novel requires you to examine the crucial elements of a scene to ensure solid structure, engaging endings, and effective transitions between scenes. 

Remember, each scene needs a purpose, a goal, conflict, and a shift. You might need to edit a scene to add a goal and/or conflict, change the beginning so it starts in the right place, combine two scenes, or add more emotion and tension during an action scene.

For detailed checklists of each scene element to look for, check out The Complete Novel Revision course inside Writing Mastery Academy!

Review, plan, and edit

Once you're familiar with the checkpoints, apply them to your scenes. Review each scene in your manuscript, identifying areas that need work. Read each scene carefully and be honest with yourself. Use a checklist to track what your scenes already have and still need.

Create a revision plan by brainstorming ideas to address any missing elements. For instance, if you think the scene doesn’t have enough conflict, what can you throw in your hero's way to ensure their scene-level goal isn’t so easily achieved? Record your ideas on the scene card to keep them organized and in one place.

Once you have a complete revision plan, it's time to edit the scene. You can choose to revise immediately after reviewing the scene, build revision plans for all scenes and make edits at the end, or review and edit scenes in clusters. There's no wrong approach, so do what works best for you.

Complete a hands-off read-through and determine next steps

In this editing process, you’ve been zoomed in and looking at each individual building block of your story. Now it’s time to zoom back out and make sure that everything still works together and the story feels cohesive. In this final step, you’ll be doing another hands-off read-through and determining where to go with your manuscript next. Do you need another pass at the scene-level revisions, or can you move onto the page-level revisions? Or, in some rare cases, do you need to go back and do another pass at the story-level revisions? Unlike the hands-off read-through at the story level, at the scene level, we recommend taking notes in the manuscript itself and marking up things you want to change on the actual page. If you have very few scene-level notes, or the scene-level notes are small enough that you won’t have to rip the entire scenes apart and stitch them back together, you can decide if you want to repeat the scene-level again or if you want to move onto the page-level and tackle those notes there.

You’re ready to edit your novel!

So, to recap how to approach and fine-tune your scenes, you’ll want to start by taking a break and preparing for your scene-level revisions, review, plan, and revise–carefully analyzing each scene, and considering the pacing, conflict, and overall coherence. Finally, complete a hands-off read-through and determine your next steps. For more guidance and to watch the checkpoint lectures that go along with scene-level revisions, check out The Complete Novel Revision Course in the Writing Mastery Academy!