Revise & Resubmit
Don’t Cut Corners
So, you’ve received that email. The one which is simultaneously a rejection, AND an injection of hope. An agent has said no, but if you make the following revisions, maybe they’ll say yes.
I received R&R notes from my agent - Megan Manzano of D4EO - (still surreal) and the following months were a haze of panic, but I knew one thing all along:
R&R notes don’t mean a quick edit. They mean you tear it all up and piece it back together again. They mean you make major changes, you kill your darlings, and adapt your ideas.
How did I know this?
Well, a manuscript should be as close to perfect as you can make it before you query. That being said, it won’t ever actually be perfect. If an agent liked your book enough for you to only need to make small edits, they wouldn’t request an R&R; they’d offer. If you receive an R&R that means they see potential, that means they want to make you an offer, but you need to prove something to them first. It’s a test. If you can show that you’re willing to take criticism and make hard choices, an agent will feel more excited to work with you.
But I don’t want to make structural changes to my story. It’s as I’ve envisioned it and it’s staying that way.
Then don’t! This agent won’t make you an offer, but maybe another will.
Still, why not take it step by step and see what happens?
Step 1: Create A Copy
I had a minor panic when I received my R&R notes and I was immediately in my friend, Jennifer Iacopelli’s, DM’s freaking out. She calmed me in moments by telling me something painfully obvious that I hadn’t stopped to consider:
Just because you write the revisions, doesn’t mean you have to stick with them.
Save a copy of your manuscript and put the untouched original away for a moment. You have a fresh canvas on which to work. You can rip it to shreds and throw it back together however you want, and the original will still be there.
You’ll probably love the revised manuscript, because most agents know what they’re talking about, but on the off chance you don’t - you haven’t lost anything.
Step 2: Jot Down Your Immediate Reaction
Without details because I hope anybody reading this will get to read my book one day, let me show you the revision notes I received:
[REDACTED’S] POV didn’t feel fleshed out. It either needed to be enhanced or cut entirely.
An essential relationship didn’t land the way I intended and needed to be completely reworked
My final chapter, which was incredibly dear to me, was NOT the way to end the book
The entire middle section needed work
Just four things. Not so bad, right?
WRONG. And for each issue I could have chosen the easy road.
The POV issue: Megan didn’t tell me I had to cut the POV. I could have taken her suggestion as an excuse to add to the POV instead. The problem with that was my word count was already near a reasonable limit. Still, I loved that POV. I didn’t want to lose him! Easy road: Add, don’t cut.
The relationship issue: This relationship was at the core of the story and was one of the first I envisioned when initially daydreaming about the novel. If I cut it, wouldn’t I be losing what I’d intended my story to be? Easy road: Explain why the relationship needed to be as was, and hope other revisions make up for it.
The final chapter issue: This final chapter remains important to me even now. Sure, it was depressing as hell, but as a person with a chronic health condition it was cathartic to write and cathartic to read. Sage advice be damned, I needed this ending. Easy road: Cite my Own Voices status and push back.
The middle issue: I was given no specifics, no suggestions, because that’s how this thing works. The agent isn’t going to do the work for you! Yet I feared I wasn’t going to do the work for me either. Where to even begin? Easy road: Keep the structure the same, but line edit in the hope I’d make it more dramatic to read.
I’d been writing this book for four years. I’d already rewritten it fully four times (minimum) with countless edits in between. I straight up didn’t want to do it again.
Step 3: Let It Breathe
With that in mind, I knew I needed to take a step back. So should you.
Don’t immediately declare NO and put the suggested revisions from your mind, but don’t get to work straight away either. This advice goes for any revision you ever make (if you haven’t revised your novel at LEAST twice, it’s likely you shouldn’t be querying it) but take some time just to think. Muse, daydream, jot down ideas but nothing more. You NEED space from your manuscript before you can start to see it objectively. And once one block falls into place, the rest tend to follow.
Of course I’d cut that POV. Megan was absolutely right. He’s a good character, and the writing wasn’t bad, but his chapters didn’t add anything essential to the story. Ultimately, he was a tool to world build and just slowed everything down.
Besides, cutting his POV didn’t mean cutting the character.
And you know what? When I cut his chapters and realised I only needed to tweak a couple of lines late in the book to make his absence work, I actually laughed. Why’d I write all that in the first place?
And of course I’d change that final chapter. Yes, the scene is essential, but it absolutely makes sense to avoid ending what I hope to be my debut YA novel with complete misery. It’d be easy to rewrite the final scene so that it was more empowering. I can save complete misery for the sequel (dream big, Natalie)!
Done. Easy. Two revisions accepted, two revisions solved in a flash.
So what about the hard stuff?
Step 4: Take The Hard Road
The final two revisions meant completely rewriting my middle and my end (luckily, Megan noted that my opening act was mostly fine in her email, so I knew I didn’t need to make structural changes there at least). I’d taken the time to breathe, and I was ready to dive in, but being ready didn’t mean knowing what to do.
Changing that core relationship would impact so many other things, and every time I imagined editing something in the middle of the novel, I could see the butterfly effect spreading before me. My final act crumbled to dust. I wept over the remains.
I swept away the dust and created something new.
Getting into the specifics of a structural rewrite is a blog post unto itself. Suffice to say that I brainstormed, I scribbled notes and recorded voice clips. I rambled at trusted friends, picking and pulling threads apart.
Most importantly, I let myself go big. My characters emotions changed, then their locations changed, even their motivations. I brought back characters that had been lost and introduced characters I’d never intended to see in this book.
I killed my darlings, replacing them with new darlings.
There is NEVER one way to tell a story. Your book is never finished, and don’t let your ego tell you otherwise. When you have an R&R offer, embrace it fully. GO. TO. TOWN.
My saved copy of the original was always there waiting for me. I haven’t opened it since.
Step 5: Take Your Time
I get it. You’re so damn ready to have an agent. You just want to know. You just want to query everyone.
But you need to see an R&R as an opportunity. Take the feedback, get to work. There’s no rush. If an agent has taken the time to send you notes on your story, and if they’re offering to read it again, that means they’ll be willing to wait while you perfect it.
So, perfect it.
I received the R&R from Megan in early May. I sent her my revised manuscript in early September. If anything, the fact that I’d taken that time just made her more confident that I was an author willing to work hard and dig in.
Revise and Resubmit means an agent is willing you over the finish line, but writing is a marathon and not a sprint. Don’t shoot yourself in the foot.
Keep writing. Keep working. Soon enough, that R&R will become an offer of representation and the old version of your manuscript will be forgotten.
