Please... Learn How To #Edit

Far too many writers rely on their generation-ago education for their sense of written English, forgetting that bad habits can creep in over the years. Worse, they abrogate responsibility in their own work: but the publisher’s editor will sort that. Only to a certain degree. If it’s too much of a dog’s breakfast, the work will gain a rejection slip. Editing is time consuming, and therefore expensive. The better self-edited a final copy the more likely an acceptance.

Reading aloud is the No 1 editing tool. Speak your own punctuation. If you are fighting for breath add in commas where needed. Could a long sentence be spoken more easily if split into two? Can’t get your tongue round the words, or the context sounds confusing? Check the sentence structure and rewrite to enhance fluidity.

Really look at what you’ve written and don’t read what you think you’ve written.

How many exclamation marks are used? When I was a reader for a literary consultancy I received a script littered with them. Picking a single page, I ringed each in red ink. There were 33. The writer emailed back full of apologies and thanks – the epidemic had not been noticed.

Software such as Grammarly or Pro Writing Aid will pick up such blindness, but so will Word via a global search.

This blogpost came about because I was handed a paperback novel. As many do, in the Acknowledgements the author had showered praise on the book’s editor. Was it justified?

Second page in (narrative only) – 5 adverbs: highly, cruelly, bravely, remorselessly, inexorably.

Two-thirds in (dialogue exchange) – 10 adverbs: curiously, anxiously, reassuringly, awkwardly, thoughtfully, embarrassedly, softly, numbly, eagerly, lovingly

Each list is from a single page, and all the pages I flicked through were the same.

Had it been me, I wouldn’t have showered praise; I would have complained – bitterly. There again, it’s the author’s own fault. If the author had undertaken a global search for ly[space] and highlighted in yellow each instance, the problem would have been more than obvious.

Study a couple of pages of your work, identify possible oversights, and undertake a global search to see how many times each is repeated. It could save blushes later.

#Editing Tip 4: Reading A Writer's Mind

This is the last in the mid-week series running concurrent with #NaNoWriMo, though there are more editing tips in Reading A Writer's Mind. Many writers work hard polishing speech in their fiction, but...

Are you making the most of dialogue tags?

Dialogue tags are important. Keep them simple and do not augment them with adverbs. Said becomes opaque in the run of a conversation, especially when it becomes necessary to delineate who is speaking in an exchange of more than two people.

A dialogue tag also acts as a pause in a string of speech, so take care where it is sited. Replace with action for weight, keeping it short so as not to detract from the spoken words. Readers will take the inference not just from the one line of speech, but in partnership with the narrative that surrounds it. Subtlety in pacing is the key.

‘No, I don’t think so.’

‘No,’ said Jerry, ‘I don’t think so.’

‘No,’ said Jerry, lifting his gaze to stare at me. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘No,’ said Jerry. He lifted his gaze to stare at me. ‘I don’t think so.’

‘No.’ Jerry lifted his gaze to stare at me. ‘I don’t think so.’

#Editing Tip 3: Reading A Writer's Mind

Continuing the series running concurrent with #NaNoWriMo, here is another question a writer should ask of a short story or section of a novel:

Does your story stay with the chosen viewpoint and distance?

Third person or first person viewpoint makes little difference. Almost everything that is seen or occurs should be filtered through the viewpoint character’s thoughts or senses. Omniscient viewpoint is a trap marked “Authorial”, and it is all too easy to cross the dividing line. Is this story about your characters or how you feel about your characters? Get off the page and let them do their own thing. 

If readers start a story close in to the third person viewpoint character, sharing his every thought, keep to that distance, don’t push readers to arm’s length during action sequences. If you have difficulty keeping so close in, return to the opening and match the distance to that used later in the story. The flow should be smooth, part of a single whole. Nothing irritates readers more than working their way through a text to discover near the end that the viewpoint character has been hiding a pivotal nugget of information when all else has been shared with the reader.

Check out other posts in this November series:

#Editing Tip 1: Does your story start in the right place?

#Editing Tip 2: Is your story overloaded with description?

#Editing Tip 2: Reading A Writer's Mind

Following on with editing tips from my writers' guide, here's the second in the series:

Is your story overloaded with description?

Do readers need to be aware of the different types of vegetation growing in every crack on the pavement, or the amount of rust on a beer can in the gutter? Or, indeed, that a character’s eyes are …a striking cornflower-blue… or …matched the rich cerulean of the Tasman Sea an hour before nightfall...? Which character is thinking in these descriptive terms? Often it isn’t a character at all, but the writer supposedly being… writerly. Description should enhance the story, not be the story. Deft touches filtered through a character’s viewpoint are what are needed, just enough for readers to gain an approximation and so allow them to mentally dress the scene from their life experiences.

For instance, if it is necessary in the story for characters to be delineated by their height don’t fall back on bald measurements. Have them step up onto a box to reach something that would be handy to most of us, or duck as they enter a room; have them be self-conscious or pragmatic about their height, just don’t state “the facts” as if it were written on a police report - or in your character notes.

Other editing tips in this November series:
Editing Tip 1: Does your story start in the right place?
Editing Tip 3: Does your story stay within the chosen viewpoint and distance?

#Editing Tip 1: Reading A Writer's Mind

When I was first published, my fiction edited professionally, it was a revelation, and I still have my old copy typescripts painstakingly marked in red to match the published versions. It became my goal, a point of professional honour, to submit a typescript that would match the published version. I wanted my name to be linked to fiction that would require no editing. Time is money, and editors are busy. If they know from experience that a submission from a certain writer needs minimal work on their part, not only does the submission rise to the top of the reading pile, but it will also be chosen over a better story that needs a lot of editing. Why? Because this is the real world.

When I became a writing tutor, then a fiction consultant, those same initial mistakes I’d made began to pass before my eyes, and it is those mistakes that I included in Reading A Writer's Mind... when I dedicated a chapter to self-editing. A few of these will be added to the blog over the rest of the month. Sign up for my Newsletter to get a free full chapter.

#1 Does your story start in the right place?

There is a lot of preamble in a writer’s thought processes when conjuring an embryo story, not least in considering a character’s past life so as to be able to portray that character true-to-life on the page. You might need to know that your character spent four years in the army, but if this information is not pertinent to the storyline, or pertinent to the character’s emotional responses in this story, then to readers it is superfluous information.

The same applies to the ongoing story. Do readers need to follow that character through a broken night’s sleep due to gorging on cheese and pickles, through the morning’s toilet and breakfast routine, through the trip to work, through saying hello to the receptionist… if the nub of the story is physically centred round the office water cooler?

Beginning at a moment of change, of decision, of minor crisis, helps hook the reader into the fiction. In your drafted story, if the moment of change, of decision, of crisis, does not erupt until a third, or halfway, through the typescript, you need to ask it why, and what can be cut. Readers, especially editors, will not hang around until the story gets into gear.

Other posts in this November series include:
Editing Tip 2: Is your story overloaded with description?
Editing Tip 3: Does your story stay within the chosen viewpoint and distance?