Category Archives: Editing

Quit and Start Over?

Songwriter Robert Lopez once wrote, “The temptation to quit and start over infects every creative process I’ve ever been in. Frustration and boredom always fuel this self-doubt.” Let’s analyze this as it applies to writing fiction.

First of all, I think we can agree Mr. Lopez speaks with some authority about the creative process. He’s won multiple Emmy, Grammy, Oscar, and Tony awards, the only person to have done so.  

I suspect nearly every fiction writer knows the experience he alludes to. You get partway into a story, then pause and reflect on what you’ve done so far. Your story looks terrible now. You think it would be better to abandon that draft and start fresh. You’re torn between the fear that no amount of editing will improve the current version and the fear that a new draft won’t be any better.

It’s appropriate that Mr. Lopez used the verb “infects,” invoking the metaphor of viruses and sickness. The temptation to start over does seem like that—spreading inside you, overwhelming your immune system, and making you miserable.

We’ll get to the frustration, boredom, and self-doubt soon. First, let’s examine what happens initially in the process of creating a short story or novel. You come up with the idea, then add to it in your mind. Enthusiasm takes over as the mental picture of the finished work crystallizes. It’s going to be great.

You begin to write, but you find out enthusiasm is a tough emotion to sustain, certainly for a novel, but sometimes even for a short story. The words you’re writing don’t match the gloriously perfect story in your mind. Compared to that ideal vision, the real version stinks. That gap in quality between real and ideal causes the frustration.

As your enthusiasm continues to fade, you lose interest in the story and become bored with it. Your muse moves on to shinier objects and even the thought of continuing the story becomes too much to bear. You’ll do anything to avoid working on it, including the most hated household chores. In this way, boredom has fueled your self-doubt.

Now that Mr. Lopez has put his finger on a very real and universally experienced problem with the creative process, is there a solution? When these negative feelings overcome you, should you edit the draft you started with, or abandon it and start over?

I suspect it’s a very rare occasion when the right answer is to quit and start over. The real problem is, you are no longer in the right frame of mind to write well. What the situation calls for is a break. You should stop editing that story and do something else. Look at the story the next day with fresh eyes and a sunnier mood. You’ll see some things wrong with it, but just maybe the original enthusiasm will return, that zeal you felt when the story was just an idea.

Maybe you’ll decide the problem isn’t a gap between the ideal vision and the faulty reality. Perhaps the vision wasn’t so ideal after all. Don’t be afraid to alter it and work to capture the new vision. This isn’t starting over; this is making a change in light of a new realization.  

Even though writers aren’t immune to the problem Robert Lopez identified, and self-doubt is bound to infect you at some point, you can pull yourself out of it. Most likely, you can salvage the draft you’re working on and won’t have to abandon it to start over.

That’s been my experience with the creative process of—

Poseidon’s Scribe

November 13, 2019Permalink

Connecting those Interesting Bits

Alfred Hitchcock said, “Drama is life with the dull bits cut out.” True, but you can’t just write the interesting bits and call that collection of scenes a story. You must connect those scenes in a smooth, seamless way. Today’s post is about these connections, called transitions.

I Iike the way Jody Hedlund described transitions in her post, as tunnels for transporting readers from scene to scene. Without these tunnels, readers would feel disoriented and confused. However, the tunnel itself is boring, so it’s best not to linger there. Keep your transitions short.

In Beth Hill’s post on the subject, she cites the three usual types of transitions: (1) change in time, (2) change in location, and (3) change in point of view. She also discusses transitions as a way to show a (4) change in mood or frame of mind. You can also use these types in combination.

With time transitions, a subsequent scene takes place at a different time than the previous scene. You can separate your scenes by minutes, weeks, months, years, centuries, or millennia. In the case of flashbacks, you can even go backwards in time. It’s important to make clear to the reader how far in time, and in which temporal direction, the new scene is from the previous one.

Location transitions shift the new scene to a different place. Once again, make it obvious to the reader that the story has shifted elsewhere. Spend only as many words as you need to describe the new setting, so the reader feels she is there with the characters.

Point of View transitions can be tricky. It’s best to mention the name of the new POV character early in the scene, in the first sentence. Since no two characters think alike, start by having the new POV character think about something the previous scene’s POV character wouldn’t have, to make the transition more obvious to the reader.

You can combine mood transitions with the other types, and often a change in time or location explains the change of mood. If a character alters mood within a scene, you need to make reason for the change clear to the reader.

Some writers find transitions difficult to write. If that’s true for you, consider writing your scenes first and just skip the transitions. Then go back and write those transitions, focusing on helping the reader understand when the new scene is, where it is, and from whose point of view she’s seeing it. Make the change obvious and brief.

As you edit transitions, read the end of the previous scene, the transition, and the beginning of the following scene. Is the change clear? Is it too abrupt, or too long?

So, follow the advice of Alfred Hitchcock and cut out the dull bits, but make sure you transition well between the remaining dramatic scenes. Now, transitioning to my usual sign-off, I’m—

Poseidon’s Scribe

February 24, 2019Permalink

Your Editing List

You finished that first draft of your story. Whew! What’s next? Most likely, you’ll need to work on second and subsequent drafts, like a sculptor smoothing and texturing a statue. How do you do that?

In a previous post, I recommended you create a personal editing list. It should contain things you want to check in each story as part of your editing process.

Why is it a personal editing list? Every writer has different strengths and weaknesses. Your editing list should focus on your known weaknesses, while ensuring your strengths remain strong.

How do you find out about these weaknesses? You consult people you trust (including yourself). These people can include other writers in your critique group, Beta Readers, and editors of previous stories. You may also include weaknesses noted by those who commented online about your previous stories, especially when you agree with the comments.

Obviously, as you keep writing and getting more comments on more stories, your editing list will change. It’s not only personal, it’s flexible.

For those just beginning, I’ll propose a starter list. Add items as you discover your weaknesses, and delete (or disregard) items that haven’t been a problem for you.

  • Overall Aspects. Who is the protagonist? What is the protagonist’s problem? Does the story pass the ‘so what?’ test? How would I briefly answer the question: What is this story about?
  • Point of View. Have I chosen the right POV for the story? If other than Omniscient, have I selected the right character(s) to narrate it? When I change the POV, are the transitions clear?
  • Characters. Are my characters compelling? Why should readers care about them? Are my characters too stereotyped, and if so, what can I do to correct that? Have I conveyed the thoughts and feelings of the POV character?
  • Beginning. Does the first sentence, or at least the first paragraph, hook the reader? Does the beginning hint at the problem, convey the tone of the story, and include the protagonist? Does the story’s beginning foreshadow the ending without giving it away?
  • Plot. Does the plot convey the protagonist’s efforts to solve the problem? As the plot proceeds, do I build and release tension effectively? Is the story suspenseful? Do all the events and all the narration in the story advance the plot, or have I gone down rabbit holes?
  • Ending. Does the ending include a resolution to the problem? Is the ending too predictable? Does the ending go on too long after problem resolution?
  • Setting and Description. Is the setting clear from the start? Have I included too many details or too few? Have I grouped the setting details into an info-dump, and if so, can I sprinkle them throughout? Do my descriptions appeal to all five senses?
  • Dialogue. Is my dialogue appropriate and realistic? Have I conveyed a language accent with too many misspelled words? Does each major character have a distinctive (and contrasting) manner of talking, and vocabulary? Have I used dialogue tags effectively?
  • Show, Don’t Tell. For the key plot points, do I show rather than tell? Do I convey emotions, feelings, and impacts of events on characters? Do I merely relate events through narration? Do my characters react to events and actions appropriately?
  • Style. Have I strengthened the prose with similes and metaphors? Are there adverbs I can cut out? Have I used active phrasing? Can I choose verbs that are more powerful? Are there clichés I can delete or modify? Do I vary my sentence lengths enough? Is my vocabulary appropriate and consistent?
  • Spelling and Grammar. Have I corrected all unintentional misspellings? Is my grammar correct? Do I still have any awkward sentence structures? Do I have any misplaced modifiers?

There’s your starter list. Happy editing! Now it’s time for me to chip away at the next masterpiece by—

Poseidon’s Scribe

February 10, 2019Permalink

6 Reasons Your Story Stinks

That story idea was so good, wasn’t it? While it remained an idea, it radiated beams of perfection across your mind. It screamed “Classic!”

Then you wrote it down. Now it doesn’t look so good. In fact, it stinks.

How could the same story that seemed so ideal when it sat upon a pedestal within your bran, end up so pathetic when you wrote it down?

Here are some reasons for that large ideal/real gap, and what to do about it:

  • You only completed a first draft. There’s no reason to expect your first draft to be good. You wrote it in a rush, not wanting to lose sight of the broad outlines of the story idea in your mind.
    Solution: Keep editing the story. In subsequent drafts, it will approach closer to the ideal version.
  • The emotions faded. You felt some powerful emotions while thinking about the story. Somehow, during the writing process, those passions abated. Now the real manuscript lacks the fire of the mental one.
    Solution: Put away the manuscript. Just think about the story again and try to recapture the feelings you had when you first thought of it. If you can do that, you may discover ways to improve the real version.
  • You got sidetracked. While writing down your story, you thought of some new characters, or a different setting, or a new subplot or plot twist. Whichever it is, that marked a deviation from the ideal story residing in your mind.
    Solution: You’ve got a decision to make. Does the deviation make the story worse, or better? If worse, delete it. If better, keep it.
  • A character demanded a bigger role. Somehow, during the writing process, one of the characters started stealing the show. That character developed a deeper personality and started speaking unimagined lines and taking unforeseen actions.
    Solution: As with the previous problem, you’re facing a decision. Think in terms of the story. Does this character’s expanded role improve the story or not? If so, keep that character as is. If not, you can either reduce the character’s part or substitute a different character. (Consider using that scene-stealing character in a different story.)
  • That mental story only seemed ideal. You discovered some things while writing the story. That story idea contained some serious flaws, like plot holes, actions without motivations, unnecessarily complex solutions to problems, or loose ends. Sometimes an idea only seems good until it sees the light of day.
    Solution: If you fixed the problem while writing the story, go with the one you wrote. If you got stuck partway through, shelve the story for a while. Someday, your muse may suggest a revised idea you can work with.
  • Your ideal is unattainable in reality. That mental version of the story is so clear, so perfect, but you just can’t match it in the real manuscript. You’ve been through several drafts now, each one better than the last, but it still doesn’t quite measure up.
    Solution: You can be like Leonardo da Vinci if you want, and dabble with your Mona Lisa for over a decade, making little improvements here and there. But consider declaring that story good enough and start writing another one.

We all struggle with the gap in quality between the ideals in our mind and the flawed reality of our tangible creations. It’s part of the human condition for our mental reach to exceed our physical grasp. Perhaps the Mona Lisa never matched da Vinci’s idea of her, but his painting still leaves most of us in awe. 

Now that I read back over it, this blog post falls far short of the one imagined by—

                                                                                Poseidon’s Scribe


January 13, 2019Permalink

Bending Heinlein’s Rules

You submitted your story to a market and the editor rejected it. Should you edit the story before submitting it elsewhere? Some say yes and others say no. Let’s examine both schools of thought to see what’s best for you.

Last week I blogged about whether to write many stories fast, or take the time to perfect fewer stories. That prompted a Facebook discussion with a fellow author who makes quick edits to every rejected story before submitting to other markets. He said he sees flaws to fix each time.

At a critique group meeting this week, another fellow author asked, “After how many rejections should you consider editing a story?” I said, “I’ve heard of stories getting upwards of 70 rejections before getting accepted, so ask me again after you hit 70 rejections.” Here’s a fun list of well-known books that many editors rejected before acceptance occurred. Robert M. Pirsig’s Zen and the Art of Motorcycle Maintenance took the prize at 121 rejections.

Another fellow critique group member said she has edited stories after rejections, but only to fit the rules of a particular anthology she’s aiming for.

My glib response at the critique group meeting stemmed from my understanding of the Rules for Writing Fiction, developed by author Robert A. Heinlein.

Of interest, Heinlein and I graduated from the same institution, a few years apart. Both of us ended up writing fiction. There, any similarities end, I’m sorry to say. I still aspire to attain a fraction of his writing skill.

I’ve blogged about Heinlein’s Rules before, but I’ll list them again here:

  1. You must write.
  2. You must finish what you write.
  3. You must refrain from rewriting, except to editorial order.
  4. You must put the work on the market.
  5. You must keep the work on the market until it is sold.

I interpret Rules 2, 3, and 4 to mean you finish a story to some level of satisfaction, submit it to a market, and upon rejection, immediately submit it to another market (without editing), and repeat. If an editor says she’ll accept it with some rewrites you find acceptable, then and only then do you edit the story.

Others interpret RAH’s Rules differently. Robert C. Worstell says Heinlein’s Rule 3 discusses rewriting, which is different from (and more extensive than) editing. In other words, he believes minor editing doesn’t violate Heinlein’s Rules at all.

Let’s summarize the thinking behind both schools of thought:

  • The Always-Edit School. Don’t keep throwing a bad story at different markets; you’re wasting your time. What if your story is just a few edits away from being great? It doesn’t take that much time to re-read a story and correct the errors you see before sending it out again. As your writing matures, you’re improving your older stories with each edit session.
  • The Never-Edit School. Have some pride and faith in your stories. Time spent re-editing old stories is time not spent on your current Work in Progress (WIP). All that editing is slowing you down. What if your edits are making the story worse?

Which school of thought should you join? I offer the following questions to answer as you make your choice:

  1. Can you spare the time to re-read that story and edit it?
  2. Have you received rejection letters with suggestions for improvements (admittedly rare these days) and do those suggestions make sense?
  3. Are you sending the story to an anthology, and will it require editing to meet the antho’s submission guidelines?
  4. Has the story received more than X rejections, (where X can be 20, 30, or any value you choose) and you’re running out of pro and semi-pro markets to submit to?

The more of these questions get a ‘yes’ answer, the more you should consider re-reading and editing the story before you send it out again.

I don’t take this bending of RAH’s Rules lightly. After all, he’s Heinlein, and I’m just—

Poseidon’s Scribe

July 1, 2018Permalink

Write More or Write Better?

Choose one: you could write the most novels ever by a single author, none of them great; or you can write only one, but it’s the best novel ever. Most of us would choose to write one standout novel.

It’s not a realistic choice, though, in guiding how you should write. A novel doesn’t get to become a classic until after its publication, and often not until after the author is dead. In other words, at the time you’re writing it, you don’t know whether your novel will stand the test of time.

But we do face the real problem of deciding whether to spend our limited time being prolific (writing a lot), or polishing a small number of stories.

We need to manage what I call our 1/E Ratio. The ‘1’ is the time we spend writing first drafts, and the ‘E’ is the time we spend editing those drafts.

At one extreme, 1/E could be very small. In this case, you might spend twenty years polishing a novel, editing and re-editing draft after draft. Your final product might be very good and might become a classic, but you couldn’t repeat your success too many times.

Or your 1/E could be very large, nearly infinite. You could spend all your time writing first drafts and never editing them. Just self-publish them immediately. You’d be very prolific, limited only by the number of story ideas you have and your available time.

Writers at both extremes seem to have solid rationale:

  • For Writer One, a small 1/E ratio is best. She seeks top quality with small quantity. After all, editors always say they want your best work. Writer One finds her story improving with each draft, greatly increasing its chances of entertaining more readers. Few people remember the most prolific authors, she says, but everyone can name some great ones.
  • Writer Two keeps his 1/E ratio large and goes for maximum output. He claims he’s honing his craft with every novel, and believes it’s still possible that one of his many books will strike the right chord with readers. In fact, by writing so many books, Writer Two thinks he’s maximizing his chances of being successful.

Remember, 1/E is a ratio, and there’s a wide spectrum between near-zero and near-infinity. You don’t have to choose one of those extremes.

In my analysis so far, I’m ignoring some factors that come into play when selecting how to spend your writing time. Some authors write for their own enjoyment, and aren’t aiming for high quality prose. Others don’t generate enough story ideas to write more than a few books, so their time is best spent editing the few stories they can write.

Your situation will be specific to you and will be constrained by your talents, your preferences, your end goals, etc. I have some general advice to offer, though:

  1. If you’ve been polishing and editing the same novel for over a decade and it’s never quite good enough, try dialing your 1/E ratio a little higher on the scale. Declare that novel done, send it out, and start writing another.
  2. If you’ve written a fair number of stories that just aren’t selling, try nudging the pointer toward a slightly smaller 1/E value. Spend more time editing each of your stories before sending them out.

Helping you adjust your 1/E ratio for optimum performance is all part of the free service provided by your writing mechanic—

Poseidon’s Scribe

June 24, 2018Permalink

Writing by Number, Part II

Are you the type of writer who measures progress through word counts? If so, here’s today’s question: how do you measure your progress in the second draft?

I first explored the metrics of writing in this post, but I was thinking of first drafts as I wrote it.

It’s easy to measure progress on your first draft. The manuscript was x words long at the end of yesterday, and y words long at the end of today; therefore, today’s word count is y – x. Any word processor can count those for you. There are several blog posts where you can compare your words/day count to those of many famous authors.

That’s fine for the first draft. There was a blank screen before, and there are words on it now. Easy to see and measure the difference.

What about the second draft, and all subsequent ones? For me, those are the more difficult and time-consuming drafts, and therefore it’s even more important to find a way to measure progress. But despite the crying need for a good metric in these drafts, there doesn’t seem to be a reliable one.

Let’s illustrate the problem with some numerical examples. Let’s say the first draft of your short story contains 6000 words. At this point, you don’t really know how long the finished story will be. That first draft might have been too verbose, so cutting will be necessary. Or you might have left out some key points, so it needs to be longer.

You start the 2nd draft editing process, using whatever technique you’ve grown accustomed to. At the end of the first day of this, you reviewed 1000 words of that first draft. To that, you added 100 words and cut 200. Those 1000 words are now 900 words (1000+100-200), with 5000 remaining to review.

How do you measure the work of that first day of editing?

  • Do you count added words as positive, and cut words as negative? That would be -100. On days when you cut more than you add, your ‘progress’ will be negative.
  • Do you count the percentage complete for editing the entire story (900 ÷ 6000 = 15%)? In that case, how long do you think the final story will be; what number do you put in the denominator? 6000 was the length of the first draft and most likely won’t be the length of the second.
  • Since both adding and cutting represent work on your part, do you add the adds and subtracts together (100 + 200 = 300)? That may not be easy to get your word processor to do.
  • Do you count all 900 words as the finished portion of your 2nd draft?

To me, the last option seems the best. It’s easy to get your word processor to count, and does represent completed work on your part. On the other hand, some days, you may not have much editing to do and will nevertheless get credit for quite a bit of work. On other days, you may cut most of what you read, and will end up with very little credit for all that work.

I offer the question up to the wisdom of the web. Comment and let me know how you measure your daily progress through 2nd and subsequent drafts. If there’s one writer you can count on who can learn from others, it’s—

Poseidon’s Scribe

April 1, 2018Permalink

Sense, or the Censor?

Say someone just changed the words of your book because they were offended. Whether you call it censorship, expurgation, bowdlerization, or comstockery, this practice always seems so wrong…to authors. Is it ever the right thing to do?

Allow me to define what I mean by censorship. It’s the deliberate alteration of text, without the author’s permission, to make the story less offensive to the censor. This is not what a normal editor does. Editors collaborate with authors to correct errors, to make the book as good as it can be.

To me, changing the text of a book seems a little less egregious than banning the book entirely. Banning prevents readers from reading the book at all. With censorship, some version of the book’s thoughts gets transferred to readers.

Why censor at all? It’s usually for one or more of five different offenses: profanity, political, religious, racial, and sexual. Let’s call them 2P2RS for short. These five areas are likely the topics your mom told you to avoid at parties upon first meeting someone. 2P2RS can be sensitive for many people.

Throughout history, censors have altered books for each of those five reasons. They’ve taken strong curse words out and substituted mild ones. They’ve cut out the author’s political text if it’s not in keeping with government doctrine. They’ve removed religious references that cast certain organized faiths in a bad light. They’ve deleted words they interpret as racial slurs. They’ve eliminated sex scenes and altered the sexual proclivities of certain characters.

Examples are too numerous to cite, so I’ll merely mention the censorship inflicted on one work of my favorite author, Jules Verne. When translating it into English, W.H.G. Kingston cut out and rewrote much of Verne’s novel, The Mysterious Island. He likely felt the anti-British motivations of the character Prince Dakkar of India would be too objectionable to British readers, so deleted and rewrote those passages. Unfortunately, for English language readers, Kingston’s edition ended up being the predominant one for a century.

Publishers have treated the elements of 2P2RS differently over time. In the past, they permitted less sex and profanity than they do now. However, certain racial and religious slights used to be easier to publish than now. As for political censorship, that seems to vary from country to country and is roughly constant with time.

From the viewpoint of an author or a reader, a censor seems forever a villain. I can conceive of one narrow example of good censorship, but it must meet all of the following conditions. The publisher:

  1. wishes to put out a children’s edition of a book, and
  2. cuts out parts of the book deemed unsuitable for children while retaining as much of the essence of the story as possible, and
  3. is unable to obtain the author’s consent to the necessary cuts, and
  4. ensures the children’s version is clearly labeled as such on the cover, and
  5. ensures that the uncut, unabridged, version of the book is on sale and available to the public.

Of course, authors sometimes make it difficult to condemn censorship entirely. Writers occasionally push the edge of the envelope on one or more of the five aspects of 2P2RS. Some are out to shock, to make a name for themselves.

Editors and publishers once kept the more scandalous and shocking 2P2RS pushes away from the public by rejecting the authors’ manuscripts. Only when they deemed the writing excellent in quality, and when they felt the public might be ready for a new boundary line, did they release such a book. In these days of self-publishing, however, those gatekeepers can no longer hold back the pressing throng of writers who recognize no 2P2RS restraints.

I’m against most censorship, other than the narrow example mentioned above. Let’s treat the public like adults. Our self-publishing era may lack gatekeepers, but it teems with readers who can post comments. Let the ideas and counter-ideas flow, says—

Poseidon’s Scribe

March 18, 2018Permalink

4 Ways to Fix the Boring Parts

Alfred Hitchcock once said, “Drama is life with the dull parts cut out of it.” Is that the secret to good fiction writing? Can it be that simple?

Let’s say you’re looking over the story you just finished writing and you see a section where the action really drags. While writing, it seemed necessary to describe a scene fully or explain a character’s backstory so later plot actions would make sense. Now you’re torn. Should you follow Hitchcock’s advice and just cut that section, or leave it in at the risk of boring your readers?

I recommend using the following process to deal with boring sections of your story:

  1. No matter what the nature of boring part, and no matter what attribute makes it boring, ask if you really need it at all. If readers can still follow the plot or identify with the characters without that part, or if it’s some superfluous tangent, then obey Alfred and cut it out. (Okay, you can save the text in some ‘deleted darlings’ file for use in a different story if you want, but cut it out of this one.)
  2. If the boring part of your story feels like the action is dragging and it could use some interesting twist, see author Steve Parolini’s entertaining post. He’ll delight you with 12 plot twists you can use. As you read them, you’ll realize there are many more; the dozen he gives you may suggest others that will fit your story better. Note: these twists may well send your story in unplanned (but definitely unboring) directions.
  3. If the boring part is a setting depiction, or a description of character backstory, or a detailed explanation of some aspect of the story, it’s possible you really do need to convey that information somehow. That part, though currently boring, is necessary for the reader to enjoy or understand the story. For this situation, turn to this post by mooderino, (which also has a wonderfully fitting image), who provides three options for that boring part:
    1. Move it later. Don’t put it at the beginning, but save it for a point when the reader is hooked on the story and the protagonist.
    2. Move it to a scene when that character is alone. The reader isn’t expecting much action in these scenes, and the reader is catching her breath from a previous action scene.
    3. Split it up and sprinkle it around. Perhaps you can insert pieces of the information into more interesting scenes, thus allowing those details to emerge as the story moves along.
  4. If none of the preceding steps really work for you; if that boring part reveals something important about the plot, character, or setting; then take the risk and leave it right where it is. That’s the advice of author Richard Riley in this post. You might just want to edit that boring part to put more energy in the words, but other than that, just leave it.

If this has helped you deal with a boring section of your story, leave a comment, but be careful not to wake up—

Poseidon’s Scribe

December 17, 2017Permalink

Those Blue Pencil Blues

What’s that about a blue pencil? It’s the traditional implement of editors, dating from the days of paper manuscripts. Yes, I’m dealing with editing today—your editing.

That’s right. You must edit your own work before submitting it. Attack it with all the dispassionate, ruthless vigor you can. Hack, cut, and tweak until you fashion it into a story that makes you proud. Only that will make it publishable.

I’ve discussed editing before, but have learned more since then. I read the book Getting the Words Right, 39 Ways to Improve Your Writing by Theodore A. Rees Cheney, and recommend it as a great rulebook for editing. The folks at The Write Life blogged about 25 tips for editing, then put those tips into a handy checklist form.

That checklist contains many items that aren’t problems for me and left out things that are, and that got me thinking how editing is an individual thing. Each of us has our own quirky flaws and our own strengths. Any checklist I develop must be different from yours. And also ever-changing, as we discover new things to beware of.

Moreover, the ordering of items in that online checklist bothered me. I sought a checklist that started with the big, story-shaping editing aspect, and proceeded to the fine-tuning parts of editing.

Anita Mumm wrote a post describing the four different phases of editing. Developmental Editing refers to the big stuff, including whole sections and scenes, overall style and tone, major characters, plot arcs, etc. Line Editing is all about tackling the paragraphs and sentences, improving their structure and flow, making the work more readable. Copy Editing focuses on punctuation, grammar, and word use. Proofreading is the last check for anything missed in previous edits, and works best when you read your story aloud.

Here’s my editing checklist, provided as a starter for you to modify, altering and tuning it to your needs. I’ve divided it into the four types of editing, and it contains items I’ve found useful for my short stories. Each phase of editing works best when some time has elapsed since you wrote your first draft, ideally weeks or even months. That provides the right emotional distance for a critical editing job.

Developmental Editing

  • Choose the best voice for telling the story (first-person or third, close or omniscient)
  • Choose the best POV character
  • Endure main characters are appealing, relatable, 3-dimensional, not stereotyped
  • Ensure each main character has a motivation, a goal, an external or internal conflict, and an epiphany
  • Ensure secondary characters are necessary, and still secondary. Should one be promoted to lead?
  • Ensure scenes are in the best order for telling the story
  • Cut unnecessary sections or scenes
  • Ensure each section is about one thing
  • Maintain a single tone and style
  • Fill plot holes
  • Fix story threads that go nowhere
  • Pace the action and create tension where appropriate

Line Editing

  • Craft an irresistible hook
  • Make sure sentences vary in length and structure
  • Ensure each word in a sentence has a purpose
  • Phrase things positively
  • Chose simple words, the precise words needed
  • Use strong verbs in place of was/is/has/be/etc.
  • Phrase sentences in active voice
  • Introduce each scene to orient the reader to characters and setting
  • Put the reader in the scene by reaching all five senses
  • Sprinkle setting descriptions throughout scenes, with the right details
  • In each scene, ensure all the dialoguing characters want something
  • Let the reader know what the POV character is feeling and thinking
  • Ensure characters react to what other characters say and do
  • Use appropriate and distinct character dialogue, but don’t overdue accents
  • Don’t shy away from “said,” but have characters do things while talking
  • Find new ways to word your favorite, overused words and phrases
  • Delete or twist clichés
  • End each section with a cliff-hangar
  • Transition logically and smoothly between paragraphs and sections
  • Use, but don’t overuse, repetition for emphasis

Copy Editing

  • Use “that” and “which” appropriately
  • Delete “that” when you can
  • Use commas and periods correctly in dialogue
  • Make each adverb earn its place
  • Select the correct word (further/farther, continuous/continual, nauseous/nauseated, etc.)
  • Find and correct the misspellings the spell-checker missed

Proofreading

  • Read the story out loud
  • Correct anything that trips you up, throws you out of the story, or sounds odd

Feel free to steal my list and modify it to suit you. Delete things that aren’t problems for you. Add items that your critique group and other editors have commented on in your work. Now you know the one with the cure for those low-down blue pencil blues; it’s—

Poseidon’s Scribe

January 29, 2017Permalink