Writer Ramblings: A Tip From My Editor

How many writers out there finished a manuscript for the first time or just finished rewriting it for the fifth time and now you’re avoiding the self-edit and polish phase? You read over it about three or four more times to make sure you get all those kinks out and that it flows and so on and so on. You know it needs a real thorough pass through, or maybe you haven’t edited it at all because you hate grinding back through what you’ve written again. A lot of writer’s take a break and come back later. Although that helps, it didn’t make me want to edit any more than I wanted to before.

Long story short, most writers hate editing for one reason or another. I have the story memorized so when I go through it over and over, I generally know what’s going to happen and it becomes monotonous and dull to pick at. When I just read the story I’m excited, but editing is not really reading casually. I’m looking for anything I can do to improve what is already there.

I shared my disdain for such a grueling tedious task with my editor. He decided to share a method with me that could help with editing something that’s been read several times already.
He said, “Read it out of order.”
I was stunned. How you could you do that and keep on top of the story? It would just be confusing. So he explained. And once I put it into practice, I started enjoying the editing. It added a sense of adventure and mystery because I never knew what part of the story I was going to be editing next. So instead of a constant stream of the same story, I saw flashes of it, and I am learning which ones need to be more entertaining as well.

The idea is to pick a random chapter. Comb through it for all the things you want to improve on. One chapter at a time isn’t so bad and since it’s been ripped out of the middle of your book, you might catch something that doesn’t make a ton of sense or is too vague, because it was continued from a previous chapter. I found this with the first one I pulled. The first word was “She.” Ok, I looked at it and the first paragraph never mentioned a name. I knew who it was because I wrote the scene, but that sure might confuse a reader.

Once you’ve edited that chapter, write out a short summary on what occurred and any key points that were in the chapter. This is important for later. If you can’t really come up with a summary nor have any key points, then this is a good time to think hard about deleting the chapter or rewriting it.

The method I used to randomly select my chapter is index cards. I wrote down the chapter numbers each on separate cards and then shuffled them. Flipped them over and started at the top. So far I’ve increased the speed I’m editing at from one chapter a week to one a day.

Once you have completely gone through your manuscript, go back and read the summaries in the proper order to make sure the story flows at a steady pace and so on. Go back to chapters where the summary feels dull or out of place or maybe just doesn’t fit into or have a true purpose to the plot. Another good use for the summaries is titling your chapters. I enjoy attempting to create titles for my chapters and if I can come up with good titles for every chapter then I’ll keep them, otherwise I toss them all. The summary will absolutely speed up that process.

Thanks for reading. I just couldn’t keep this editing tip to myself. I hope some of you find it useful. Now back to editing.