Speaker 1: Hey guys, I'm Kate. Welcome back to my channel. And today I want to share the results of the revision questionnaire I sent out. I received 821 responses before I had to stop it so that I could make this video. But by the time you're seeing this, I will have opened submissions again. So if you were not able to take the questionnaire, but you still want to, I would love to get your response too. So there were 16 total questions, 13 mandatory in order to submit the form, all regarding revision. Now I wanted to do this in part because I'm about to start revising a lot of stuff, more stuff, which is wonderful. But also because the revision process seems to be the most murky and confusing part of the entire writing story journey. There's a lot of advice on how to get that first draft written, but there's not a lot of advice on how to take that first draft and make it better. Other than knowing that at some point you probably need beta readers and like you're going to do edits. It's just kind of unclear on what there is to do. And in fact, some of these questions were inspired by my own process because it is changing. It often changes, like there's a couple things I do every single time I revise, but like, otherwise, it depends. And I'm always trying out new things. And so I did turn to my patrons over at Patreon, and I asked them what their revision process was. So some of these questions were born from that, like I hadn't even thought about color coding or using scene cards. Like, of course, I've heard of people doing this, but because that's not part of my own revision process, I was kind of like... Anyways, thank you so much to my patrons for helping me create this form. And thank you to the 821 of you or 820 because I did fill out the form. I took it myself. Thank you so much for taking the time to do this. I'm so excited to now share the results. So the first question was, do you revise or edit while you draft? I figured this was important to cover because there are people who kind of edit and tinker as they go on, or kind of return to the beginning when they're like at the middle point and they're confused or whatever. So 23.5% of people said yes, they revise or edit as they draft, which is actually a bigger percentage than I was expecting almost a quarter of writers. 32.5% with the hard no, but then 44% said sometimes or it depends on the project. I have one project that I've very purposely been editing as I write it just to try out something new to see if the draft is cleaner so that when I go to fully revise it, it will be better potentially or maybe the process won't take as long. It's kind of just something I'm doing for me as an experiment, but to be determined. Question two was how long do you usually take between finishing a draft and starting the next one? And this was a question I was especially curious about because I personally, I always tout the two month rule. I'm sure I heard that at some point. It is just felt right for me is that I purposely give it two months. It might be a little bit longer than that, but two months is what I'm aiming for to give it a rest. And the results show that 40.2% of people switch off with another project so they don't have a set amount of time. I was between that answer and the two months myself. Oftentimes I just kind of work on one until it's done for a bit and then turn to another and then like that's my focus. But always at least two months. 22.9% said a month. 18.1% says I don't take a break at all. I immediately begin working on the story again. I know for some people that I've heard, basically what happens is that by the time they reach the end of that draft, they feel so far removed from the beginning of the story that they just kind of start back again. I couldn't do that. But I think that's a very interesting take and to see it being the third most answered is really interesting. Especially if you're someone who only likes to work on one story at a time and work on for you means like two completion, including all the revisions, I could see why that would be the answer. 7.8% of people said about two months. 4.1% of people said about three months. 3.7% of people said about four to six months. And 3.2% said I purposely take more than six months as a break from my project. Question number three, do you reread your project in full before starting the next one? And I have this as kind of like in theory a sliding scale where zero is like I never reread it and five is I always reread before I start the next draft. I am a strong five personally. In fact, as I'm looking to revisit project death soon, that's going to be rather than the first thing, which it usually is, it's going to be like the second or third on my revision plan. So again, I'm shuffling things around a little bit from how I usually do it. But still for me a reread is necessary. So you can kind of see from this graph that like 35% of people it's like yes, of course I reread before starting a new draft and then people who are kind of in the middle 22% to four ish was 21.6. And then 12.2% felt like a two which is probably like occasionally or I have reread before starting the next draft. And one was 9.3%. Question number four, which I believe I got as a submission on my Instagram story, I think from Alvin Fraser, but I really like this question. When working on the second draft, do you completely rewrite the story, revise, edit the first draft, or depends on the story? I wanted to ask a question that was like, how do you define revision, but that seems to be even harder to nail down. But I think especially after the first draft in this kind of second draft period, there's a confusing time of am I fully rewriting it? Am I fully typing it out? Some people who handwrite the second draft is just typing and changing the story as they go. Like it's a really interesting time. And I think there's some amount of how cleanly you might potentially write the draft or how much outlining you did in advance. If you're like a hardcore plotter and you stuck to your plotting and your outlining, you might not need to quote unquote, completely rewrite your story, right? So 40.1% of people said they revise or edit the first draft. In my mind, that means kind of copy and pasting over the first draft and tinkering within that document. 39.3% said it depends on the story. And for once, I think I'm in the full minority opinion on this one. 20.6% completely rewrite the story. I am a complete rewriter. I might still have the first draft up. But the second draft is basically all new words with the occasional copy paste over if I thought I was particularly brilliant. And one little sentence. Sometimes a paragraph project death is unique for me. And that there's like whole chunks that I was like, that's pretty good. Normally, though, it's like a complete rewrite. Question number five, after which draft do you usually send the project to beta readers? This had the most potential options for people to pick that was not like a fill in your own thing. So 33.6% said I've never had beta readers before. And this was probably a good time to bring up that I did get a response from some people that they didn't fill out the form because they've never revised before. So while I included that on some questions, I didn't include that as an option on all of them. So I do think that might be something interesting to take into account that this is predominantly for people who have revised before, and may or may not feel like they have a whole process figured out, or may have tried multiple processes and like still don't know what they're doing. 33.6% have never had beta readers before. 21.6% said after the second draft is complete. 16.3% after the third draft is complete, which is usually where I personally fall. 7.9% literally every project is so different for me, I don't have a usual time to send it to beta readers. 5.4% of people said I like to have someone read while I'm writing the story for the first time, which I think is super fascinating to have that level of trust in someone. Like I don't even know what you would call that necessarily. I don't know if there's a term I'd love to know if you know if there's a term or if you're part of the 5.4% and you have someone who serves this purpose for you, what do you call them? Are they like a critique partner for you in that they're reading maybe a chapter at a time along the way? Or what is it an alpha reader, but like I feel like they're even closer than an alpha reader. Let me know. 5.4% after the first draft is complete. 4.6% I rarely use beta readers. 3% after the fourth draft is completed and 2.2% after five plus drafts are completed. The next question, have you ever printed out a draft before? I was actually pretty shocked at this number. 66.3% is yes. That doesn't mean it's regularly part of their process, but they have done it before, right? 9% said no, but then 24.7%, almost a whole quarter of the people who had not yet printed out a draft before wanted to. I cannot recommend this one enough. I don't even think necessarily it needs to be a printout, but like if you could see it on like an iPad or read it on your phone or something, just changing the medium with which you wrote it versus with what you read it, I find super helpful for catching things that you might not have noticed otherwise. And I think it helps you get out of that writer mindset and into a reader mindset. So of all the pieces of advice I give someone, it would be that. Again, not necessarily printed out, but just read it in a different form. Question number seven, do you use individual scene cards, either physical or digital like on Scrivener, to rework your plot while revising? 42.1% said no, 37.9% said yes, and 20% said I want to, but haven't yet. I tend to use scene cards while I'm outlining, which is something I do in later versions of the revision. Usually around that second draft time when I'm rewriting it is when I'll use scene cards. So there's truly nothing I love more than watching someone move their scene cards around, even the digital version. I just love it for some reason. The next question, do you use color coding to help you revise? 46.5% of people said yes, and if you're one of those people, could you please comment down below and let me know what your color coding system is, because I am fascinated by that. And I would just, I would love to know. I do it when I'm working on smaller pieces, even though the colors tend to change, but basically of whether this is like I want to keep it, but it needs to be shuffled around, or it's like keep the intent but completely reword it, or things like that. But usually it's for essays or short stories, not for novels, but I would love to know about everyone's color coding system. 36.1% of people said no, and then 17.4% of people said I want to but haven't yet. Then we get to another sort of sliding scale, and I love how crazy this one looks. I think it is so much more fun and really highlights, again, how murky revision is. So the question is, do you feel like you have a set revision process? And it was from one, which is like, I literally use a different process every time, and or I don't really feel like I have a process. And then 10 being, yeah, I have a set process that I stick to every time I revise. And so you can really see how different this is. You know, the most popular answer was a seven, but like the next most popular was a three, and they're very close. And I think the graph really you can see it almost like if you average it out is like dead center. So it's just fascinating to me. Again, please do comment down below. Let me know what your revision process is, or let me know how many different revision processes you've tried, or even like a process you would heard about, or a thing you'd heard about that you tried and didn't work for you. Like even though I think it's great to wait for two months or more than that. Maybe you've tried waiting and you hated it, that kind of thing, I would love to know. The next question, how many drafts does it take before you feel like the bulk of your revision work is done? So you may still have line edits to go, but all the foreshadowing, character arcs, plot points, etc, are where they need to be. This one also had a really interesting mix of answers. 33.3% said about three or four drafts. 25.6% I've never revised enough to feel like my story is mostly complete and or ready for publication. 15.2% I honestly couldn't tell you each project is so different and or some of the drafts start to blur together. I combine these two even though debatably you could separate them out. I'm someone where eventually the farther along in the drafting revising process I am, they do start to kind of blend together as I'm not making huge overhauls to any one thing, but still definitely changing it. So anyways, 12.1% said about five or six drafts. 11% of y'all said under two drafts, which I'm fascinated by. 1.9% said around seven or eight drafts. 0.6% said around nine or 10 drafts. And 0.4% said more than 10 drafts. Again, I think it's probably worth noting if you're someone who said more than 10 drafts or around seven or eight drafts, one of the higher number of drafts is that we all count the drafts differently. That's the other hard part. Like I have a friend that hates that I use the term zero draft, but it feels very fitting for me. And it's another one where I don't think we'll ever be able to agree on what counts or doesn't count as a draft. Some people like to start new documents when they know that only like a chapter or something needs to be changed, but because that would obviously reflect the order of the story, you know, that's a worthwhile change. Like, you know what I'm saying? For me personally, I feel like I'm in that murky spot of like around five or six to like seven or eight drafts before I start to feel like, okay, I'm getting to the point where it's just time to start tinkering with word choices and making it flow as well as it possibly can. The next question is what type of projects have you revised before? I wanted to see people who like let's say have only revised short stories before or only work on short stories have completely different answers than those of us who are writing novels or those of us who are writing poetry or like whatever else. I did let people fill in things. So some things like flash fiction, and fan fiction and stage scripts popped up a couple of times, but then we have a hodgepodge of other answers. But for the most part, 84.8% of people said they had revised a novel before 62.2% had revised short stories before 42.5% had revised essays before 32.9% had revised novellas before which was really cool because I don't know how popular novellas are sometimes but like I think there's a clear market for it and a lot of us like to write them as well. 29.2% had revised poetry before 11% screenplays and 8.8% for memoirs or other nonfiction. The next question I was especially interested in, do you revise chronologically by category or by biggest issue? So I might have not phrased this question the best way possible since there was a not required follow-up question where the numbers don't quite match up asking if you revise by category which do you tackle first. So in this first question the required question by category got 56 responses but then the next question that was not required specifically meant to ask the people who revised by category. I got 298 responses so I think I just didn't phrase things properly so take both of these questions with a grain of salt. But for do you revise chronologically by category or by biggest issue, 46.4% said chronologically which I am like maybe I'm not surprised. I feel like if you reread your project you usually reread it chronologically and so I could see how like you would flow from there potentially. I'm someone who does reread before the next draft but I also tend to work by category or by whatever the biggest issue is so and then I go chronologically so like it's kind of an interesting it's all just so fascinating revision is fascinating. 46.4% said chronologically, 27.5% said whatever the biggest issue is and my example for that was you know you need to change the point of view and the world building needs a lot of help and then you'll work chronologically or by category next. 19.2% said it changes each time or depends on the story and 6.8% of people said by category example world building first then character arcs then plot and like that's what they always do was what I was hoping I would convey with that question though again I don't think I did. So when asked if you revise by category which do you tackle first, 64.4% said the plot or timeline which I think is probably the only piece of data that I would fully take away from this. 20.1% said anything and everything characters and then 8.1% said setting or world building but people were able to fill in whatever they wanted. So some people jumped right to grammar punctuation issues, some people did theme and like overall storing characters, some people said everything at once. Anyways again I don't think that I was the best at conveying what I intended with the question so that's on me. The next one how do you track your revision or set revision goals? 54.1% said by scenes or chapters. 28.5% said I don't track or set goals for my revision. 8.9% said by topic and 8.5% said by word count. So I think it's really interesting with all this talk about word count within authortube but just with writers in general because we often track by word count while drafting it can be an interesting shift over when we're doing revision and the bulk of us are then talking about by scenes or chapters. I'm someone who does switch so when I'm drafting I do often think about it in terms of word count only because I'm trying to potentially hit a certain frame or expectation for the genre that I write and then I'm revising and counting by scenes. So like I did this scene within this chapter and I'm like okay I can call it that's what sometimes I'll set daily goals for my revision and I'm like okay if I need to get this to the editor by this date and I have 50 scenes that I need to revise to a day or something like that's how I tend to break it down in my head. And then the final two questions weren't required. One of them was what's been the biggest revision lesson you've learned or trick that has helped revolutionize your revision process that you'd like to share and I got 325 responses. The next not required question was what other revision questions would you like to ask your fellow writers and I got 197 responses. So I'm going to continue to dig through these and as I'm revising Project Depth I will have other revision focused videos to go through some of these tips and tricks that people have learned and also just questions that y'all have. Yeah that is gonna be it for me. Please do comment down below let me know if any of the results of this surprised you. Let me know what your own revision process is or any of the other questions I asked throughout this video. As always I have a lot of them. But thank you guys so much for watching. Thank you for filling out my questionnaire. These are some of my favorite videos to do because y'all know I love stats and I'm nosy and I just think it's so cool that we're all doing this same thing or attempting to do something so similar but just write stories and convey them to readers the best we can and we all go about it differently. Yeah but that is gonna be it for me. Thank you guys so much for watching and thank you especially to some of my new patrons this month. Ariana LaBoeuf, Christina G, Eleanor, Cara Rose Sky, Terry Coppell, Bea, and Andy. And I'll see y'all all very soon in a new video. Bye.