REVISION: Is your bowl of porridge too cold, too hot … or just right?

How do you know when your story has reached the “Goldilocks Zone?”

Photo credit: Cleanlight Photo

When is a story good enough to stop working on it?

This is one of the most pressing questions facing the author of a revised manuscript (correction: a revised-and-revised-and-revised-to infinity manuscript). If you’re a conscientious and possibly obsessive writer who wants to produce the best possible experience for your reader, you won’t stop after the first couple drafts, regardless of how much organization and preliminary revision effort you’ve already put into them. You’ll keep re-visiting it, at first maybe making sweeping changes, followed by smaller and smaller alterations, sending it out to alpha readers, beta readers, critique groups, and paid professionals. Even after you’ve ceased finding anything wrong with it beyond an occasional typo, the people you solicit to look at it will make suggestions for improvement, every single time.

After looking at your manuscript so much that you no longer have any idea whether it’s good enough, and in fact might be getting worse with all the attention, I recommend a very simplistic formula to figure out the answer, which will place your work in one of three categories. It relates back to—big surprise here—going for a walk.

1. Your story’s too cold: Readers can’t connect to the unfeeling, underdeveloped, or commonplace characters, the plot meanders without actually going anywhere, the world lacks the spark of details. This is me when I first step out the door to go on a walk at dawn. The purplish air, even if it has the promise of heat in a few hours, turns my fingers to ice and my hands and forearms to the texture of cold marble. I’m so immersed in trying to stay warm that I enfold myself in my hood and pockets and trudge along looking only at my boots. I could be walking to the end of the driveway or I could be climbing Mt. Everest. How would I know? I’m too sunken within myself to notice.

Because of his short fur, Tock, too, wears a jacket when the temperature dips below freezing . Sometimes two jackets, if it gets down into the teens.

2. Your story’s too hot. You have so many characters and plot lines that readers can’t keep track of them all. Reviewers suggest that perhaps you have more than one book within your pages. The scenes overflow with backstory, info dumps, unnecessary dialogue, or superfluous adjectives. This overheated state creeps up on me about ten minutes into my walk. I find myself ripping off my gloves and wiping my sweaty hands on my pants. The sun hasn’t yet made its appearance and probably the air temperature hasn’t begun to change, but internally, I’m beginning to feel insufferably warm. My gaze jumps from one rock or tree or viewpoint to another, and I struggle to focus.

On hot, dry days, dogs need plenty of water breaks. Here, Tarzan & Tenzing take refreshment during a long-ago hike.

3. Your story’s just right. I prefer this phrase to “perfect.” Words, phrases, scenes, and stories are subjective, and every reader is going to like and dislike different things about them. Our stories won’t ever be perfect, because that state simply doesn’t exist. They’re not mathematical formulas. But readers will be most likely to enjoy them if there’s a nice balance of characters and plot, a thoughtfully paced mix of dialogue, interiority, and action, if there are enough details to see the world and understand why the characters do what they do, and if the character and plot arcs resolve themselves in satisfying ways. For me, this Goldilocks Zone on a walk happens most often on a calm, sunny-but not-too-hot day after I’ve reached a ridge or a lake basin. It’s a place where I can walk on mostly flat ground, still getting some brisk exercise in the invigorating fresh air, but not so much that I’m out of breath.

An alpine lake: my personal Goldilocks Zone

At some point during the revision process, it’s up to us writers to decide when we’ve gotten into the “just-right” zone. Any more tinkering beyond that point might start to suck the life out of our story, because we’re so far past that first euphoric flush of actually writing it. Yet I feel I’m a bit hypocritical to talk about this happy zone because I often have trouble turning off the self-editing mode for my own manuscripts. Even after I’ve reached the point where I have to re-visit my premise just to remind myself why I wrote the darned book in the first place.

Maybe I struggle with putting an end to revision because I hardly ever reach that state of satisfaction with the clothes on my back. Here’s my excuse: I live in the Rocky Mountains. Morning air is cold and often breezy, especially in the winter (wanna come for a walk with me at 12 degrees F—not counting wind chill—anyone?). Hills are steep and plentiful. Flat sections of trails are rare, especially near my house where I mostly walk. So no matter the season, I start out with multiple layers of clothing. Even in mid-summer on a warm morning, I need a little brisk exercise before my hands lose their chill and regain their function. And when it’s far below freezing in the winter, I’ve been known to wear five layers on my torso and two on my legs. Still, I’ll warm quickly and feel the need to tug my arms out of my sleeves, ending up at a single layer.

Ready to brave the wintry woods

My husband says I have poor temperature control. I say I’m being smart. Secretly, I know he’s right … to some extent. My body temperature seems to fluctuate a lot more widely than his, and my extremities routinely segue from frozen and numb to overheated and sweaty, over and over during the course of a walk, depending on whether I’m walking up or down hill. I envy him for only having to wear one or two layers, every time.

I’m even more jealous of my dog. Sure, he wears coats because I put them on him and he jumps into lakes because I throw sticks for him, but he’s pretty much always in the Goldilocks Zone. His fur coat, though short, is quite suitable for a range of temperatures. With the thick undercoat he grows in the winter, he probably doesn’t need a jacket nearly as much as I think he does. If Tock were a writer, he’d compose one, two, maybe three drafts … and be done. No more nitpicking and dithering; he’d be happy with what he produced and move on.

I can’t help but think about wild animals in this context, too. They don’t have owners to dress them and care for their every need. What if the summer is especially hot and dry, or the winter is filled with unpredictable and severe storms? What if animals can’t adjust to these changes in their environment in time? Evolution of adaptations is a long, slow process—far slower than the current pace of climate change. Most creatures have evolved to survive perfectly in the Goldilocks Zone of their current habitat, and they lack the ability to strip off their layers, or flee to a place with more shade, water, or warmth. Or less of those things. If they were writers, forget the revisions. Their stories might end before they finish the first draft.

Polar bears are the most famous of the many species that are running out of time, living on a planet with an ever-shrinking Goldilocks Zone for their particular needs. Photo credit: Peter Neumann

Astronomers are on a quest to find other planets with the same large-scale Goldilocks Zone as Earth, where temperatures allow the existence of liquid water. This is primarily part of the effort to search for extraterrestrial life, but I suspect many people think the hunt is valuable for another reason: as a way to find other places humans might relocate to when we’ve outgrown our home planet. To me, this is akin to throwing your story in the trash and starting over. Similar to Planet Earth, populated with almost nine million species, a draft is an incredible accomplishment, filled with thousands of words that have been organized to work in harmony. Let’s keep these stories, no matter the scale, and figure out how we can make them “good enough” for everyone to enjoy.

Photo credit: Klara Avsenik

Happy Tales!