Romance Revision Checklist

Going from the rewrite to the revision

Welcome to my (@raveenaromance) revision checklist!

If you haven’t been keeping up, I’m writing a contemporary solarpunk romcom where two Gen Z tech consultants who reaaaalllyyy don’t like each other are assigned to work together on a wildfire response project in San Francisco.

Draft 2 was a complete rewrite, so I have no checklist for that; just vibes.

Draft 3 will be where the heavy revision happens, hopefully.

Draft 4 and onward? I’m not sure, but you’ll be the first to know. Enjoy, and DM me on IG if you have any questions, or email me at raveenaromance@gmail.com.

Love,

Raveena Raju

The checklist is below copied from my Google Docs; I will update the doc periodically but I will not be updating this post so it’s best that you click the button that leads you to the doc! Credit to CeCe Lyra, Matt Bell, and Robert McKee for some of the things that went into this:

• https://cecilialyra.com/ & her courses

• https://bookshop.org/p/books/refuse-to-be-done-how-to-write-and-rewrite-a-novel-in-three-drafts-matt-bell/17243106

• https://mckeestory.com/books/story/

Happy revising!

Worldbuilding and setting

• Are there enough fun and distinct details on their adventures?

• How is the setting currently, how does it evolve, and is setting a character?

• Is the setting described through the lens of the protagonist? Is each MC noticing distinct details about their world?

• Pretend to be a camera and sweep through setting

• Are micro setting things linked to macro messages

Character building and emotion

Off-page

• Know the stories each character tells themselves

• Know each MC’s wants, needs, wounds, and upbringing

• Know what they are most proud of

• Root experiences for emotional makeup are clear and inform their personality traits

• Unexpected combinations of emotional makeup

On-page

• Describe their greatest strength and how it can be a weakness

• Clearly communicate their goals and obstacles to the goal

• Are habitual actions turned into specifics?

• Are MC’s emotions existing in relation to something/someone?

• Are MC’s emotions connecting w/ power dynamics in their world? Superiority vs. inferiority? Challenge vs. care?

• Are MC’s emotions layered? E.g. with every celebration there is grief

• Are emotions conjuring memory and interweaving elegantly with backstory?

• Sensory cues that trigger emotional backstory?

• Sensory cues that trigger emotional imagining, catastrophizing, dreaming?

• MC is experiencing, expressing, examining, and eliciting emotions

• Are emotions active? (Fear + desire conveyed through surprise)

• Are emotions appropriately calibrated? (Feeling before consciously processing)

• Have unexpected emotions follow the expected ones to constantly keep the reader curious

Plot and pacing

• Do the actual timelines and numbers make sense? In the context of the plot and the world?

• Does each scene have a different charge (positive/negative) than the one it started on? Changes in roles, power, expectations?

• NO BORING BITS!!

• Does every single event DO SOMETHING for the story? Otherwise cut

• Are emotions stretching and shrinking time appropriately?

• Minor characters adding surprise to the plot by changing up their care-to-challenge spectrum spots

• Identify if and where insert chapters are needed: text messages, news articles, billboards, event pages, press releases, etc.

• Do foundational wounds evolve at the right pace?

Rhetorical choices

• Unexpected/character-specific verbs and verbal tics (e.g. if MC has abandonment issues, someone doesn’t walk away, they “neglect” or “dump”)

• Diminish thought tags (thought, wondered, understood, knew)

• Diminish sensory verbs (go through for each sense)

• Diminish “to be”

• Avoid obvious pairings of words

• Replace or cut weasel words

• Dialogue flow should reflect characters’ chaos vs. calmness. E.g. a chaotic and self-absorbed MC would interrupt often whereas an observant and quiet MC would pause

• Action beats that are character and setting-specific

• Story-specific figurative language

Drop me a comment on Substack under this post / at Raveena Raju; better yet, DM me on IG @raveenaromance or email me raveenaromance@gmail.com if you have more resources, thoughts, or questions!