Tag Archives: editing

Decrypting Critique Comments

When you seek comments about your writing from others, sometimes the feedback will confuse you. What do you do about that?

Feedback can come from critique groups, beta readers, editors, or anyone whom you’ve asked for a review. Often busy with their own lives, these commenters might, in their haste, provide comments you don’t understand.

They may just leave a question mark without explanation, or give you vague advice, such as ‘reword this’ or ‘this bothered me for some reason.’ Worse, their hand-written remarks might be illegible.

As you go through your manuscript incorporating their suggestions, how do you proceed when you encounter confusing feedback? Should you ignore it, dismissing it as irrelevant? After all, if they can’t take the time to give you useful comments, why should you waste time deciphering their code?

I recommend you take such comments seriously.

The most certain way to get the strange comment decrypted is to ask the commenter to explain it. Ask the person, “You wrote [whatever it was]. What did you mean?” Such direct communication should clear up the matter, or the critiquer might not recall the comment. Either way, you’re no worse off and possibly ahead of the game.

If you can’t get back in touch with the reviewer, or if doing so doesn’t clarify things, I still urge you not to dismiss the comment. For cryptic observations, it sometimes helps to revisit them a day or two later. A fresh look and some deeper thought might reveal the comment’s meaning in a useful way.

In his book Novelist as a Vocation, author Haruki Murakami gave interesting advice on what to do about comments with which you disagree. I think his guidance also applies to comments you don’t understand.

Murakami recommends making a change of some sort to your manuscript. If you disagree with the comment, you need not comply with the commenter’s suggestion, but make a change to some third way (different from both your original text and the reviewer’s proposed revision) with an eye toward improving readability.

His rationale recognizes that the reviewer did take the time to read your manuscript. As they did so, something tripped them up. Something yanked them out of your story. Since that happened to one critiquer, it could happen to one or many readers if you get your story published unchanged.

As I mentioned, this advice also works for confusing or illegible comments. In these cases, review your text again while imagining you’re a first-time reader. Read it aloud. You may well discover what the critiquer meant. Even if not, consider making a change intended to lessen confusion and enhance understanding.

Even the most bewildering comments can result in improvement to your stories, and those of—

Poseidon’s Scribe

November 12, 2023Permalink

Terrible First Drafts Reconsidered

A while back, I wrote a post urging writers to create terrible first drafts of their stories. I received some push-back from a writer/editor friend and figured I’d share that perspective.

In my post, I suggested you write first drafts in free-flow mode, unconstrained by your inner editor. Go at a breakneck pace, letting the passion and enthusiasm for the story carry you along. You can fix the manuscript in later drafts, but it’s difficult to get the passion back if you lose that.

My friend thought differently, and likened writing to making clay pots on a potter’s wheel. What follows are the points my friend made in countering my advice, summarized and put in my own words:

  • One process won’t work for all writers, and not even for the entirety of a single writer’s career.
  • I passed through many stages of writing, including creating horrible first drafts. It’s like shaping clay on a potter’s wheel. The first time, you end up with blobs of clay all over the art studio.
  • Over time, I developed the skill to shape the clay without spattering, to produce first drafts akin to what had been 3rd, 5th, or 7th drafts before. This new mindset took a lot of practice.
  • Even now, I sometimes have to sit back and gaze at my first draft with a critical eye to spot and fix flaws. But it’s usually no more than cosmetic changes—adding the final glaze to the clay pot.
  • Writing a good first draft keeps me from falling out of love with the story. It speeds the whole writing process and avoids the common problem of self-doubt and self-loathing some writers experience.
  • I no longer dread the editing process. Since I have less to do, it isn’t the colossal task it once was.  
  • I have conserved a writer’s most precious resource—time. In writing good first drafts, I now use the saved time to write the next story, or to edit the next anthology.
  • All writers, I believe, can and should try to reach this stage. After all, a good writer studies other aspects of the craft and strives to improve. Why not accept the challenge of writing better first drafts? You may find you can create a first draft at high speed, lost in the white-hot heat of inspiration, while still producing quality prose.
  • I suggest not leaving a lot of editing for later. Edit on the fly. That includes spelling, grammar, character name changes, whatever.
  • If you need to do some research, don’t leave that for later. Set a timer for ten minutes and do a quick Internet search. Chances are, you’ll find enough information for now, and the quick research will aid you in later sections of your story, too.
  • Some writers worry their voice, style, or tone will change as they write their book. Not me. I warm up for each day’s writing by reviewing the last few pages to get my brain tuned to the story, so my writing stays consistent. That review is another opportunity to perform minor edits, too.
  • If you work at making good first drafts, you’ll save both time and aggravation. You’ll no longer spend 90% of your time re-writing.

That’s my friend’s advice. I still think beginning writers shouldn’t beat themselves up about terrible first drafts. However, I agree it’s good to strive for more polished early drafts as you hone your craft.

My first drafts have improved over time, but this blogpost endured a few editing sessions at the keyboard of—

Poseidon’s Scribe

February 27, 2022Permalink

How to Incorporate Critique Comments

You sent your story manuscript—your precious package of prose—to some writer friends for comment. It’s come back, littered with suggestions. Your ‘friends’ just called your baby ugly!

Sad to say, you’d better get used to this. You’ll have to toughen up. First, before you tackle those comments, remind yourself that those friends were addressing your story, not you personally. They want you to succeed, and figure you’d rather hear the harsh truth from them than to undergo many dozens of rejections by editors.

Once you’ve taken that aboard, begin looking through the comments. Some may be editorial change suggestions. Others may be comments or questions in the margins. Still others may be overall impressions.

Whatever form they are, take each one seriously. After all, your friends went through your story as a reader will, word by word without knowing what comes next. The text might not conjure the same picture in their minds as you had when you wrote the story. They only have the words you’ve written, not the ideas you intended to convey.

What made sense to you might have confused them. The alternative interpretation you didn’t imagine might be the one they assumed.

On the other hand, maybe one or more of your friends didn’t read it as a reader might. If your group meets only once a month, they’re reading your story in short bursts separated by several weeks. What a typical reader might recall reading just last night, your friend read some thirty days ago, and forgot.

Some of their suggestions will be obvious, necessary fixes. They were right. You were wrong. Easy change.

Others you’ll have to think about. Did your friend just misread something, or forget something? Before you reject the comment, think about what you could do to help later readers understand the story better.

Often it helps to sleep on it. With a fresh outlook the next day, you might begin to see what your impulse reaction yesterday wouldn’t allow you to see. Your friend was right after all.

Sometimes a friend might be on to something, but her suggested fix won’t work either. You may have to create a third, better way, designed to address an underlying problem only dimly sensed by your friend.

If you had several reviewers, resist the impulse to play ‘majority rule.’ Every comment is worth your scrutiny, whether it came from only one person or several.

In the end, it’s your story. Your name goes on it, not theirs. You’re free to accept or reject any comment or criticism.

For more great advice about how to deal with comments from friends about your manuscript, read this blogpost by Morgan Hazelwood.

Yes, your friends called your baby ugly, in a sense. But this baby isn’t doomed to remain so. You can mold and change this baby. Perhaps your friends, through their criticism, will help to make your baby a wonder for the world to admire. Take it from the father of many an initially ugly baby—

Poseidon’s Scribe

February 20, 2022Permalink

Picking Up Where You Left Off

You’ve carved out some time to write, and you’re enthused about adding a new scene to that story you’ve been working on. You sit down and look back over what you wrote yesterday, so you can resume writing in that same mood and mindset.

But wait. As you review yesterday’s work, there’s a mistake you need to fix. And another. That whole paragraph needs to go. And you forgot to add some character motivation here. Some scene setting detail there.

Before you know it, your valuable time—the precious hour you’d planned for adding a new scene—has been squandered while you edited previous scenes. What a waste!

Or was it?

It’s an interesting question, and your writing style will determine the answer for you. Consider the two extremes:

Style A. There’s a time for writing and a time for editing. Turn off your inner editor when you write. Free yourself to write first drafts as quickly as you can. When you sit down to write, give only the briefest glance over what you wrote yesterday, ignore mistakes, and charge into your work on the next section, writing as fast as you can. Set aside other days for editing. Otherwise, you’ll be editing forever and never writing.

Style Z. Editing is part of writing. When you sit down to write, you shouldn’t ever ignore problems you see in yesterday’s draft. The changes needed there will affect what you plan to write today. If you ignore the mistakes you see in yesterday’s draft, you might miss them later; best to correct them now. Time spent in some light editing today is time saved, and consistency preserved, tomorrow.  

There’s an entire spectrum of options between Styles A and Z. Moreover, you can choose different options every day. Perhaps your choice will depend on the answers to questions like:

  • How terrible was yesterday’s draft?
  • How clear in your mind is the scene you plan to write today?
  • How much will yesterday’s draft affect today’s?
  • Do you have a deadline?
  • Do you outsource the editing chore to someone else?

A recent facebook post by author Lyn Worthen inspired today’s blogpost. Judging from the comments Lyn received, many authors aren’t bothered by the idea of reading the last few pages and editing as needed before continuing with unwritten portions.

If it really irks you to spend time editing previous sections first, but you can’t resist the urge to do that, well, don’t think of it as editing. Lyn suggests calling it a warmup, a method of re-entering the world of your story. She says you may find this cyclic looping process has the benefits of (a) refreshing your memory, (b), alerting you to previous mistakes, (c) maintaining consistency of tone and voice, and (d) saving you from an enormous pile of editing work when you’ve finished.

New day. Time to finish writing this blogpost. Where was I? Oh, yeah. I was about to close with my typical sign-off as—

Poseidon’s Scribe

May 24, 2020Permalink

Breaking Punctuation Rules

Recently, in a meeting with my critique group, I criticized an author for using too many em-dashes (—) in a manuscript. This author then acquainted me with an interesting online disagreement.

First, author Kate Dyer-Seeley posted a well-worded defense of the Oxford Comma. I, too, am a fan of inserting a comma after the penultimate item in a list before the ‘and.’

Then, author Kristine Kathryn Rusch (who had once been Dyer-Seely’s instructor) countered with a post of her own. Her objection didn’t concern the Oxford Comma, but rather Dyer-Seely’s willingness to add or delete commas from her manuscripts based on an editor’s suggestions.

For Rusch, punctuation is a tool employed in the service of the story, and useful for conveying an author’s voice. Therefore, if you beak a punctuation rule and an editor suggests a revision, you should be able to defend your punctuation choices.

Who’s right?

Here’s a list of ten famous authors who violated, even spat on, punctuation rules without any harm to their reputation. They would side with Rusch.

To be fair, I’ve over-simplified Rusch’s position. She did say a writer must first learn the rules of punctuation before breaking them. We’ve heard that confusing advice before—learn the rules before you break them. Huh?

Here’s the catch, though. If you’re an editor (or a fellow writer doing a critique), it can be difficult to distinguish whether the writer’s flouting of the rules is part of the writer’s style and is meant to serve the story, or if the writer broke the rules out of haste, laziness, poor self-editing, etc.

If you’re a beginning writer still struggling to find your voice, the recommendations of an editor can seem like a burning-bush pronouncement, complete with stone tablets. It can be intimidating to fight back and defend every punctuation violation, as Rusch advocates.

Until recently, I’d never understood the editorial side of the business, but as a first-time co-editor of an upcoming anthology, I’m beginning to appreciate it. Any submitted manuscript does provide certain clues about why a writer broke a rule.

For instance, are there other mistakes? Are there misspellings and grammatical errors that fling a reader out of the story? If so, chances are the writer lacks a defendable rationale for breaking punctuation rules.

On the other hand, as an editor, did you breeze through the story, caught up in the writer’s world, and only notice punctuation violations upon re-reading? If so, you know this author has an established voice, a solid command of when to break rules. Edit such a story with a light touch.

Rusch’s position is a strong one, and it should be the goal of every fiction writer. Convey your story using your voice. If that means breaking some rules, do so, and stand ready to defend your choices.

Not apologizing for this final em-dash, I’m—

Poseidon’s Scribe

May 3, 2020Permalink

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

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

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

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

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