Bettering Your Editing
Creating imaginary worlds filled with whatever weirdness your thinking-noodle cooks up is (if you’re doing it correctly) fun. Sure, forcing yourself into the chair to sling words onto paper can be hard some days, but once you’re in the flow and ideas start plopping out of your word-hole, the act of writing becomes a fairly fun activity.
Some people write because they have a syphilitic story-burn in their nether regions. They have a story chewing up their insides, begging to be loosed upon the world. If they don’t somehow expel said story, it will literally consume them. Or so that’s how they feel.
Personally, I’m not one of those writers. Nothing clamors to crawl out of me. I just love stories. Whether it’s telling my own, or losing myself in somebody else’s, there is nothing better than a good story.
So when it comes to writing, sitting down and churning out a first draft ain’t no thang but a chicken wang (<– obligatory peculiar phrase for the day). Unfortunately, first drafts are rarely any good. In fact, I’d go so far as to say that 99% of first drafts are abominations. Which is why most are rightfully thrown into a pit of hyenas and left for dead.
Which is too bad. How many great stories has the world been denied simply because the author didn’t sit down for that most painful of steps: Editing.
I can’t remember who said it, but this gets to the gist of it:
Great writers are great rewriters.
Editing sucks. Not because it means descending into the literary depths of our current Masterpiece of dookie and absolutely eviscerating it, but because most of people simply don’t know where to begin the editing process.
Perhaps you’ve spent days, weeks, months, years, perhaps even decades, getting that first draft out. The words are a jumbled mess sprawled across hundreds of pages and you haven’t a clue where to start.
Most people quit right about here.
Of those mighty few who stick it out, I’m afraid a good majority dive into the editing process in the least efficient way conceivable.
Don’t be one of those writers who wanders back into the story forest without a clear plan of action. Don’t read your story from beginning to end correcting commas and unruly apostrophes as they come. Ignore minor word changes, and for the love of all that’s holy, don’t bother cleaning up unclear sentences. If you do, you’ll reach the end of the edits having done a significant amount of work, but none of it productive.
This is important, so it bears (bares? Someone help, homonyms are hard) repeating:
You are doing a a lot amount of work, but none of it productive.
You’re driving along Highway 1 in your Miata. The top’s down and your flowing mane is dancing with the ocean breeze. It’s a beautiful day: the sun is shining, birds are chirping, you have a little Jason Mraz blaring through the speakers. But then the unthinkable happens, the engine sputters. The chassis shakes uncontrollably and smoke billows from the hood.
You pull over, because while you don’t know much about cars, you know smoke is bad. Besides, it totally smells bad and it’s stinging your eyeballs.
Now you’re on the side of the road, poor Miata refuses to go any further. You pop the hood and take a look, but your car know-how ends somewhere between “put gas in gas hole when empty light comes on” and “smoke is bad”. You’re staring at that overheated engine like you might discover the meaning of life somewhere in its greasy manifolds, but in the meantime, you haven’t a clue what’s wrong.
So what do you do?
*shrug*
Depends on the sort of person you are.
Maybe you grab a chamois and Armor-All and start buffing the paint.
Maybe you pour some oil in the oil-hole while pretending to be Zorro with the dipstick.
Hell, maybe you jack the car up and change a tire or two.
Now, perhaps your tires are bald and it really is time to change them. But has your engine suddenly picked up a smoking habit on account of a flat tire Unlikely.
But this is what writers do with their manuscripts all the time. They start by fixing random things that probably do need fixing, but aren’t the main priority.
Case in point: there is little to be gained by giving your Miata a car wash if you never manage to get it running again.
I’ve dragged this analogy out too long, let’s get concrete.
How To Be More Effective With Your Edits
Get Distance
Before you can engage in any sort of meaningful edits, you have to diagnose your story’s problems. After finishing your first draft, put it aside for a couple weeks in an attempt to gain some time, distance, independence, and a modicum of sanity, or at least a bit of perspective.
After a suitable cooling down period, return to the manuscript and read that sucker from beginning to end as quickly as possible. On this read through you’re trying to cram the whole story into your brain at the same time to see if it actually makes sense. At this point, you can note the really big changes needing some attention
For instance:
-Billy Jean needs more characterization
-Suzy’s sex change isn’t foreshadowed enough
-Joey chapters make me want to gouge my eyeballs out with dull pencils
-Archibald’s stripper-for-hire subplot doesn’t really fit with this Young Adult book
Notice these are pretty big/general changes. You can’t just go to page 134 and fix the problem. For most of these you’ll have to sprinkle new scenes and details across the entirety of the book like the Fairy Godmother of Diabetes with powdered sugar.
Get Surgical
So now we’ve got a list of really big issues we need to work out, right? Good. Before you get hog-wild with that word processor, I want you to read your story once more, this time slowly and critically. Note the places where you could squeeze in that additional characterization. Circle the places where you can slowly excise Archi’s illustrious stripping career.
The goal of this second read is not to add new material, per se. It’s to refine your plan of attack so that your editing on the third read-through can be surgical.
Identify the BIG/GENERAL problems before worrying about the little things like sentence structure, language, and grammar.
Why?
Because it’s a waste of time to make sentences sparkle if they are only going to be cut later on (as is the case with Archibald for example). Save yourself time and energy by locating and fixing your stories big problems first.
I keep track of all necessary edits in a journal with three columns; one for big changes, medium changes, and small changes. Always tackle the big changes first.
Once you’ve diagnosed your story’s problems, start at the top and pick them off one-by-one. The great thing about this method is that as you get deeper into the edits, the easier the fixes become. Yay for life’s little gifts.
After crossing everything off your list, go for another read-through and create ANOTHER list. This time paying attention to whether or not your original fixes actually work. Sometimes trying to fix a problem only makes it worse. At other times you just didn’t go far enough and you need to slap a bit more duct tape on there.
Whatever the case may be, you need to keep repeating this process until YOU as the author can no longer spot any glaringly issues.
Then comes the painful part: Send it to your beta readers and editor. Get as many sets of eyeballs on your story as possible.
You’ll be surprised by just how much you missed. It’s part of the process. We all do it. Take the feedback from your readers/editor, ignore the stuff you don’t agree with, and dive back in for another round of edits.
This is your structural edit and it is, by far, the most difficult part of the editing process. But once you get all the cogs in place and the engine turning over, it’s smooth sailing. All that’s left is a little polish.
Make It Shine
For this, read each and every sentence very, very carefully, paying special attention to word usage, clarity, and originality.
Clarity
Clarity is obvious, right? Make sure the sentence says what you intend it to say.
Originality
Originality is obvious, too, but it’s hard to be… objective and honest with yourself. We all know to avoid cliches, but what’s even more insidious are personal turns of phrases that we subconsciously fall back on. For me, I love using the phrase “Hugged him like a baby koala.”
You’d be surprised how often I find an opportunity to throw that sentence into a story. Problem is that’s the sort of line you can only ever use once.
I know this because my beta reader caught me trying to sneak my baby koala sentence into Mind Breach. Whoops.
Word Usage
Word usage is tricky and comes down to personal preference. In my fiction I hate using the same word multiple times in the same paragraph. In fact, I go so far as to avoid using the same word multiple times on the same page.
Why? Because it draws attention to itself and pulls the reader out of the story.
By the way, we’re not just talking about big show-offy words like indubitably or inexorably, which we all know to avoid overusing. I’m talking about really simple shit like:
“Bob walked over to the table where Kate sat reading her newspaper. She looked up from her newspaper and scowled. Bob circled the table before taking a seat. A bowl sitting on top of the table jangled as he sat spilling milk onto the newspaper in front of Bob.”
I’m being really obvious with the words I’m trying to overuse here, but the thing is, I’m not really exaggerating. This type of paragraph crops up all the time in new writer’s fiction.
I hate it and you should hate it.
Use your word processors Find Keyword function and whenever you notice certain words appearing more than seems natural, search it out and annihilate it.
Saving The Best For Last
If you could only do one exercise before releasing your Kraken’esque manuscript into the world, it would be this:
Read your story outloud!
Do this.
Do it at least once, if not twice. Reading your words outloud lets your ears pick up on things your eyes glossed over. Stilted dialog stands out like a sort thumb and wandering exposition slaps you in the face like a wet mackerel.
Doesn’t that sound like a hoot? Sure does, now go do it.
I lied, this is the last thing. Promise.
Use that Find Keyword functionality on your word processor to search out a list of your most commonly overused words. Examine each instance of that word and decide on a case-by-case basis whether it actually needs to be there.
If so? Fine.
If not?
Here’s the list I use:
OVERUSED WORDS
cause, as, was, however, though, actually, really, likely, of course, as well, perhaps, probably, there is, always, almost, entire, very, quite, already, surely, certainly, obviously, just, maybe, stuff, things, got, seemed, but, like
Cut out the majority of these words to tighten up your prose.
Tight prose = good prose.
A’ight, Folks. That’s all I got for you. Before you leave, waddle on down to the comments and tell us about your own editing process!
Got a friend neck-deep in the editing process? Share this article with them. As an author, your support means the world!
