self-editing

Quick Link: 5 Steps to a Thorough Book Edit

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Quick links, bringing you great articles on writing from all over the web.

Editing a manuscript can be cringe inducing, right up there with getting a root canal.  But it needs to be done to move you forward.  Good thing has some great tips so you can do a thorough job and perhaps not spend as much time on editing. Helping Writers Become Authors

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 5 Steps to a Thorough Book Edit

December 16, 2016 by

Nothing can strike fear in the hearts of writers like editing. But if you’re going to improve your story, a thorough book edit is something that must happen. With the right tools, mindset, and preparation, it doesn’t have to be scary at all!

The fun thing about the writing and editing process is that everyone approaches it differently. Sometimes writers approach different books with different methods, since each new book is not the same as the last. You’ll take bits and pieces of what you’ve done in the past and mix it up with tips you’ve read in a book or blog, trying to find the magic that makes this book sparkle.

My own editing process continues to evolve as I grow as a writer, and as I learn more about the craft. Most recently, I tackled the edit on my just-released novel Omission, the fourth book in the Darby Shaw Chronicles. You’d think by now, I’d have my path mostly set in stone, but life has a tendency to force change, and this time was no different.

Inspired by my most recent round of editing, here’s how you can tackle a thorough book edit, based on suggestions made by your beta readers.

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If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com or leave a message below.

Self Editing 4 Fiction #1 ~ Intro

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Today’s post by Stef Mcdaid, off of her blog WriteIntoPrint . It is the first part of a nine part series on content editing, but the whole series is available now and well worth reading.  I have bookmarked it myself to go back and reread.

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A lot has happened in the publishing industry over the last 25 years. The traditional industry has contracted due to competition from independently published authors (and the surreptitious surge into the publishing market by Amazon).Two angry men with crumpled paper

But even 20 years ago, publishers had (mainly) gravitated to being “printers”, in that they no longer provided their authors with editing services – perhaps a proofread, but authors had to edit for themselves and/or hire freelance editors to ensure their novels reached full potential.

And now we have ePub.

We have technology and communications that have reduced the editing fees of freelancers by more than half (think MS word ‘track changes’ tools rather than printed-out manuscripts edited redline style; e-mail rather than snail mail). Nowadays, editors can provide a good (much faster) service for as little as $10-15 per thousand words if the manuscript they deal with is in reasonable shape.

Reasonable shape.

Which is why self editing is important even if you intend to employ an editor to polish your work – the quotation you receive will be in direct proportion to the time the freelancer estimates it will take to complete the work. Also, the end result will sparkle more brightly as a consequence.

And even if you are yet to put pen to paper, the tricks and tips you will learn in the series will be well worth reading before you begin to write (prevention is better/easier than cure).

Of course, many writers cannot afford an editor, but that doesn’t mean their end result will suffer unduly – the trick is to learn to think like an editor; learn the artifices and apply them (invisibly) to your work.

Which is the object of this series. I will format the advice in the same style as one of my old favourite books written for authors who intend to self edit: Self Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King. Twenty years on, and the book is still the best all-round guide for new authors, in my opinion.

Introduction.

Firstly, please remember that the guidance given comprises general principles only; there are no rules to writing but it pays to know the general principles before deviating from them as an experienced writer.

Are you ready to edit? This is the most important question.

“Do I feel happy with it?” is the first filter to apply.

In a perfect world one would put the manuscript away for at least a few months and peruse it with fresh eyes. But perhaps that’s not viable, maybe the premise will be out of fashion or whatever – things move so much faster with ePub.

Did you rush the ending? I’m asking this because over the years I have encountered a lot of rushed endings. You know who you are – now go back and fill it out properly…

Have you tied up all loose ends? Look, I invested a lot of time at Uncle Ernie’s bedside after he dived in front of that bus to save the MC – you could at least tell me what happened to him…

Read the full series on WriteIntoPrint.

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If you liked this article, please share. If you have suggestions for further articles, articles you would like to submit, or just general comments, please contact me at paula@publetariat.com

How to Find an Editor as a Self-Published Author

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This post originally appeared on Jane Friedman’s site on 8/18/15.

In today’s guest post, indie author Teymour Shahabi explains how to find an editor for the draft of your self-published book and what to look for in an editing relationship.

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In traditional publishing, submitting your draft to an editor is an inevitable step on the road to bookstore shelves. But how much editing is required for self-publishing? Does a self-published author need to find an editor? And if yes, when and where, and how?

First things first:

Do you need an editor?

The answer is yes.

The greatest benefit of an editor is that he or she is not the author. An editor is someone else. Some editors are professional writers, but every single one of them is a professional reader. As a writer, you’re probably a voracious reader, but you can never be a true reader for your book. By bringing forth a book into the world, you’re asking other people to read something you’ve never read. If you sincerely want the book to be the very best that it can be, then you must ask someone else to read it first. You owe it to your book, to yourself, and to your readers.

What an editor does is discover your characters, your situations, and your images without seeing any of the creative process that brought them to life. Where you might see all the crossings-out and labors, all the accidents and decisions, the editor sees only a page. This is the clarity you need, and you can never achieve it for your own writing, simply because you envisioned it first. The editor will tell you what an attentive, an educated, and, most importantly, a new reader will experience while reading your book.

When should you hand your manuscript over?

 

Read the full post on Jane Friedman’s site.

 

Genius Time

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This post by Jennifer Crusie originally appeared on her Argh Ink site on 7/10/15.

I looked at Lavender Blue‘s first act and realized it was 46,244 words long.

That’s too many.

I’m not really that fixated on numbers, but I know that readers are going to need to be turned into a new story long before the halfway point. I’m not sure how long this book is going to be, but 46,000 words is definitely the halfway point or close to it. (It was contracted at 50,000 words, but that ain’t happening). I need the murder at the halfway point, end of Act Two, so really, just no on that length.

So I did what I always do. I made a list of the scenes with their word counts, which showed me that eight of them were really transitions, not scenes (too short, no conflict) and then studied the remaining, twenty-five actual scenes, looking for what I could cut (over 10,000 words had to go which was around four scenes).

 

Read the full post on Jennifer Crusie’s site.

 

The 10% Rule – Or How Stephen King Made Me A Better Writer

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This post by Erin Whalen originally appeared on her site on 8/25/15.

When I was a kid, I was a HUGE Stephen King fan.

I read The Shining in grade four. Carrie and Salem’s Lot and The Stand in grade five. Cujo in grade six. (Still can’t bear to think of the ending to that one.)  Different Seasons in grade seven. Christine in grade eight. And so on…

As I grew older and developed an appreciation for books that strove to do something more than scare the pants off people, I left Mr. King’s works behind. But I’ve always had great appreciation for his ability to create compelling characters and spin a yarn that could captivate and terrify me and leave me wanting more.

So when a friend recommended his book On Writing, I decided to check it out.

Turns out Mr. King’s book on the writing process is just as captivating as his novels. He offers fabulous advice and a compelling account of his own experience of becoming a writer and honing his art.

One of the best takeaways I got from his book was “the 10 percent rule.”

It goes like this:

Whenever you finish a piece of writing, check its word count then go back through it and ruthlessly remove at least 10% of the words.

So if it’s a 750-word article, delete 75 words. If it’s a 500-word article, take out 50 words, etc.

 

3 Tips on How to Shrink Your Word Count

As you implement the 10% rule, you’ll become aware of words in your writing that don’t add essential meaning to what you’re trying to say.

Here are 3 specific examples to look for:

 

Read the full post on Erin Whalen’s site.

 

A Checklist to Evaluate Your Story After You’ve Written It

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This post by Jodie Renner originally appeared on Killer Nashville on 5/21/15.

Once you’ve got the first draft of your short story or novel down, it’s time to go back and reassess each scene to make sure the characters are engaging and the scene is as compelling as it can be.

Besides advancing the storyline, every scene should:

  • Reveal and deepen characters and their relationships;
  • Show setting details;
  • Provide any necessary background info (in a natural way, organic to the story);
  • Add tension and conflict;
  • Hint at dangers and intrigue to come;
  • Enhance the overall tone and mood of your story.

Remember that every scene needs conflict and a change.

To bring your characters and story to life, heighten reader engagement, and pick up the pace, try to make your scenes do double or even triple duty – but subtly is almost always best.

For example, a scene with dialogue should have several layers, including:

  • The words being spoken;
  • The character’s real thoughts, opinions, emotions, and intentions;
  • The other speaker’s tone, word choice, attitude, body language, and facial expressions;
  • The outward actions, reactions, and attitudes of both.

Here are eight key ways you can intensify your writing and enhance the experience for readers:

 

Read the full post on Killer Nashville.

 

Avoid Holes In Your First Draft

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This post by Ksenia Anske originally appeared on her blog on 5/24/15. Warning: strong language.

Boy, the things The Badlings is teaching me. I don’t know what it is about this book. Maybe it will be my watershed moment and I will look upon the chasm cleaved in my life, on one end of it written “before The Badlings,” on another “after The Badlings,” and I will see the middle of it a thousand fiery dragons spurting up pillars of fire to remind me of what it was like. And I’ll tell you what’s it’s like. It’s gruesome. I’m learning one very valuable lesson writing this book.

Most of the story is handed to you in the first draft.

I think I’m paraphrasing Terry Pratchett as he said something along these words and I have read it somewhere and can’t find it now. No matter. It’s true. As shitty and cumbersome and as absolutely detestable your first draft might be, the foundation of the story is there. Your job is to lay it all down, like a groundwork for the future philandering with your story, because no matter what you will add or subtract, the core will stay the same. It doesn’t have to be complex, it can be very simple. In fact, the simpler it is, the better. But here is the catch. If you miss this core, or if you gouge pieces of it out later (I did both), you will suffer in the clutches of ruthless editing as a consequence until you bleed out of your nose.

The same holes you will have in the core of your story at the very beginning will show up like festering sores in all consecutive drafts no matter what you do. I have heard horror stories from writers about how they had to abandon a manuscript because no matter how many times they rewrote it, it was flawed. It was an ugly child born maimed and it could not be cured.
 

Read the full post on Ksenia Anske’s blog.

 

Never Complain, Never Explain—Craft Tuesday at Write on the River

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This post by Bob Mayer originally appeared on his Write on the River site on 5/5/15.

I think Henry Ford uttered the famous line: Never complain, never explain. This applies in the writing world in several ways.

One thing I do when critiquing material is ask a lot of questions. I tell writers, ‘You don’t have to answer those questions to me’ (in fact I would prefer they don’t), but rather they are to get the writers to think. At my Write on the River workshop, it’s an exchange of ideas and a lot of questions; and a lot of contributing to answers from all participating.

Remember, you don’t get any opportunities to explain your book once it’s on the shelf in a store or downloaded. You also don’t get any opportunities to explain your submission when it’s sitting on an agent’s or editor’s desk. So if they don’t “get it” the first time around, they won’t get it. Get it? All your explanations and defenses mean nothing because you not only won’t get the chance to say them, you shouldn’t get the chance to say them.

I’ve gotten long emails back from writers answering my questions or challenging points I made in critiques and my reaction is that such letters are a waste of paper. If I couldn’t figure it out from the material, it needs to be rewritten. This ties in with my theory about the original idea. If you can’t tell me what your story is about in one, maybe two sentences, and I understand it from that, then you are going to have a hell of a hard time selling it. You don’t get to put those emails in the front of your published book. You must incorporate those answers in the novel itself through rewriting.

 

Read the full post on Write on the River.

 

My 4 Golden Rules of Writing

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This post by Nicholas C. Rossis originally appeared on his site on 8/26/14.

I’ve been wanting to write this post for a while now. The main reason is that I keep coming across several writing rules that make little sense to me. Then, I came across a gem of a post by Constance Hale, “When Shakespeare Committed Word Crimes” on TED.

Constance confirmed what I long suspected: when there is tension in a language between what comes naturally and the rules, it’s because someone has tried to shoehorn the language into their idea of conformity.

Does this mean there are no rules? Not at all. It just means that the ones we are taught in workshops and classrooms are not necessarily the ones that matter to actual readers – as opposed to teachers, agents and editors. So, here are my golden rules; the ones no fiction writer should ever break, in my view:

 

Rule #1: Don’t let your writing get in the way of your story.
I know I say this all the time, but it bears repeating. Fragment your sentences. Break the rules. Hemingway is considered the “master of the short sentence,” but when his stories reach a climax, he will suddenly write long sentences—as long as three or four hundred words even. So, throw caution to your wind. Have fun with the language.

 

Read the full post on Nicholas C. Rossis’ site.

 

One Rule To… Er… Rule Them All

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This post by Greta van der Rol originally appeared on Spacefreighters Lounge on 4/16/15.

On Facebook I belong to a number of different writers’ groups. Recently, this meme was posted on one of them.

Elmore Leonard on writing

There is nothing more likely to have me doing expletives deleted than seeing a list of “thou shalts” telling prospective authors that this is how they have to do it. Especially with a famous name tagged on to the end. Don’t get me wrong, GENERALLY speaking, I would agree that each of these points deserves consideration. But the only one that is really, absolutely, no-holds-barred, TRUE is number…

See if you can work it out.

I particularly object to the word NEVER in these ‘rules’. Never is black and white. Let’s look at the ‘nevers’ in this list.

 

Read the full post on Spacefreighters Lounge.

 

15 Terrifying Things That Will Make You A Better Writer

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This post by Chris Brecheen originally appeared on Writing About Writing on 9/6/12.

Ready to do some things for your craft that will terrify you even more than a sewer-dwelling clown?

Tired of the same ten articles online giving you the same twenty bits of advice about writing punchy verbs or sitting down at the same time each day? Are the thousands of clones of “How to be a Better Writer” articles getting you down? Do you think, “Okay, already! I’m already carrying the damned notebook everywhere I go. What’s next?” Ready for some new advice?

Then this list is for you!

But be warned. This is not a happy list, an easy list, or a list filled with fluffy easily-implementable things you can do in an afternoon to make yourself feel incredibly productive. It’s not a list for those who want to think themselves writers without doing the work. I have a list like that over here. This is a list for people ready to take their writing, and possibly their craft to the next level but aren’t sure how. Maybe they’ve run into a wall or two or maybe they just feel like there’s something they could be doing to write better. Many of these things will not be fun or enjoyable or may even add an “unpleasant” dynamic to your writing.

But they will make you a better writer without ever using a word like “punchy.”

There are hundreds of craft books that will help you dissect every word choice of your prose, and there are millions of articles with those same 20 bits of advice. But somewhere between those two is this list: things you can do that are less well known, but that writers swear by.

1- Write When You Don’t Want To/Keep Going When It Hurts

This is the flip side to “write every day.” This is the side no one talks about. This is the shitty reality of that plucky wisdom.

Eventually even the best writer doesn’t feel in the mood. No matter how much joy and pleasure the simple act of writing brings you, one day, you will face the fact that you won’t want to. And you won’t want to a lot. Some days it’s like your desire to just take a day off is Aragorn wielding Narsil and your motivation is one of those comic relief orcs. But these are the days when it’s most important to do push through and do something. Even if you just write a couple of pages. Even if it’s just a freewrite.

 

Read the full post on Writing About Writing.

 

The Seven Deadly Sins of Dialogue

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This post by Susan DeFreitas originally appeared on Lit Reactor on 2/23/15.

Ursula K. Le Guin has said that scenes with dialogue are where emotion happens in fiction. According to the emerging body of neuroscience on fiction, such scenes are also where fiction most clearly approximates actual lived experience, that “vivid and continuous dream” of which John Gardner spoke.

That may help to explain why readers love dialogue—some so much so that they’ll skip right over your meticulously written descriptions and summaries to get straight to the goods: people talking to each other.

But dialogue is also a place where things can easily go south. As an editor, I have become far too acquainted with all the ways that otherwise competent writers can absolutely hamstring their fiction—precisely at the point it counts most.

 

1. Said Bookisms

Say what you will about the Bible, The Prince, and Fifty Shades of Grey—as far as I’m concerned, one of the documents most destructive to the project of civilization is Said Is Dead. Starting in the eighties and continuing to this day, many elementary-school English teachers have seen fit to foist this guide upon their hapless students, to the detriment of us all.

In it, the writer is instructed to throw over plain old said and asked for such highfalutin alternatives as queried, snarled, intoned, and god help us, even cajoled. Which, after all, are more specific verbs, and they help us avoid repetition. So what’s the problem?

 

Read the full post on Lit Reactor.

 

Corrections Are Good: How to Take Critique Like a Dancer

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This post by Kim Bullock (link goes to a site for Carl Ahrens, a major character in her current novel) originally appeared on Writer Unboxed on 1/30/15.

My daughter, who had not known a plié from a tendu until age nine, was understandably terrified when she entered her first class at one of Dallas’ most prestigious classical ballet schools.

She had been the prima dancer during her one year at a beginner studio, performing front and center in the recital. “Work hard and you can go anywhere you want in the dance world,” her teacher had told her privately after ballet lesson number three. I was in the room at the time, and I watched that spark of a dream ignite in her eyes.

I feared her passion for dance might be snuffed out by trying to compete in a room full of girls who had been on tiptoe since toddlerhood, but my sensitive perfectionist emerged from class dry-eyed and grinning. She did chinés turns all the way back to the car, narrowly avoiding trash cans and hedges.

As she twirled, she rattled off an extensive list of things she had done wrong in class that day: everything from her hyper-extended elbows to her weak turnout and lazy fifth position. Her old teacher had apparently failed to correct her bad habits, so she would need to relearn everything

Though she did not seem upset in the least, I had to ask. “Did you receive any roses with all those thorns?”

“She didn’t name my butt. If it sticks out when you plié, she’ll give it an old man name,” my daughter explained. “The girl next to me was told to ‘put Fred away’ three times.”

 

Read the full post on Writer Unboxed.

 

Self Editing for Fiction #9 ~ Sophistication

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This post by Stef Mcdaid originally appeared on WriteIntoPrint in October of 2014.

Sliding off of his bunk, Richard slipped on a dirty T-shirt that lay on the floor and hastily acquired a fresh pair of boxer shorts from his bedside table before circumnavigating the accumulated piles of junk strewn all over his bedroom floor to find out who the f*ck was bothering him at this ungodly hour. Ricky was not the tidiest of people, and certainly not a morning person.
As he looked at his Rolex Cosmograph Daytona wristwatch, he went into the kitchen and splashed some water over his pounding head. If only that f*cking jerk would stop ringing the doorbell! he thought.

This passage I cobbled together contains quite a few style sins. I will list them in order.

 

‘as’ and ‘-ing’ constructions: starting too many sentences with these is nowadays regarded as hack writing by some industry professionals – plus, the simultaneity they sometimes suggest makes many of them technically impossible. In the first sentence Richard dons a T-shirt and rummages in his bedside table *at the same time* as he slides off his bunk. Similarly, in the second paragraph he’s looking at his wristwatch all the while he’s going to the kitchen and splashing water over his head. There are, of course, instances where they are suitable, but be careful not to overdo their use, and look out for simultaneity paradoxes.

 

Word order:

 

Read the full post on Write Into Print.

 

Fired Old Man Angry at World, Ranting About Something or Other

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This post by Ken Wheaton originally appeared on The Word O’ Wheaton on 1/18/15.

Leon Wieseltier, recently run out of The New Republic as a gang of Silicon Valley nitwits took over and tried to fix it, has a piece in The New York Times Sunday Book Review that starts thusly:

Amid the bacchanal of disruption, let us pause to honor the disrupted. The streets of American cities are haunted by the ghosts of bookstores and record stores, which have been destroyed by the greatest thugs in the history of the culture industry. Writers hover between a decent poverty and an indecent one; they are expected to render the fruits of their labors for little and even for nothing, and all the miracles of electronic dissemination somehow do not suffice for compensation, either of the fiscal or the spiritual kind. Everybody talks frantically about media, a second-order subject if ever there was one, as content disappears into “content.” What does the understanding of media contribute to the understanding of life? Journalistic institutions slowly transform themselves into silent sweatshops in which words cannot wait for thoughts, and first responses are promoted into best responses, and patience is a professional liability. As the frequency of expression grows, the force of expression diminishes: Digital expectations of alacrity and terseness confer the highest prestige upon the twittering cacophony of one-liners and promotional announcements. It was always the case that all things must pass, but this is ridiculous.

I’m sure after reading that bit of succinct and too-the-point prose, you’re just dying to read the rest of it. Good luck with that. You see, Leon is what I’d call a writer’s writer — or, as he’s also known, the “last of the New York intellectuals” — someone much more interested in showing off — his skill, his education or his connections — than getting to the point already. There is, of course, a way to do both without looking like you’re trying to hard to do either. But Leon, who IS a smart guy whose writing I’ve enjoyed in the past, isn’t getting it done here. He also seems to be suffering from selective historical amnesia.

 

Read the full post (which is actually about the need for editors) on The Word O’ Wheaton.