Aug 17, 2011

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.

22 comments:

  1. Sounds interesting and worth a try. I know I'm at times bored with my sci-fi ms. I'm merely typing it onto my hard drive (I only have a paper copy), but it's very long & I know there are oh-so-cool scenes much further in, but I've been wading through the beginning, most of which will be dumped or much-revised in the future, but which I do want to hang on to in its original form. I should just dive into one of the ultra-exciting scenes just for fun ;-D Thanks for sharing the advice.

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  2. When it gets to the point where your killing yourself to keep at it, then skip ahead and refill your muse battery before going back to the grind. I would have never thought to do this, but like I said, it's working to maintain my motivation and I'm finding any issues with pace, flow and plot with those summaries.

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  3. I may try this if I get bored once I start editing. I think I'm unusual, though, in that I actually like to edit. Right now I am fighting a battle with myself. Part of me wants to finish my book, but the other part keeps trying to go back and start the editing process already!

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  4. This is a great idea! Thanks for sharing. Now I have to go back to writing my book so I can get to the editing phase! Hahaha!

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  5. Scott, That's pretty funny, and I struggle with that while I'm writing too. It's when I have nothing left to write, and just cleaning and polishing left that makes it a grueling tedious task to me. If you get bored, I hope this is helpful.

    Susie, I'm glad you like it and good luck getting to the editing phase. I remember typing my last line and feeling so accomplished then started going back to edit and wondering who wrote this manuscript that had so many things to fix up, lol. Writing is a wonderful educational journey.

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  6. Wow, this sounds like an excellent technique! I'm in the "final polishing" stages right now, and I'm definitely going to do this.

    Thanks!

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  7. Awesome! I hope it works as well for you as it does me.

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  8. I could have used this great suggestion ....aaaargh. Im on my very last edit and have 40 pages to go. I hate editing with a passion but boy am I glad that I do it. I have found so many pieces in the manuscript that screamed for attention - Im ashamed!

    Great tip to read out of sequence and i will be using it when i start editing the next one. Thanks Jeff

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  9. Oh, I do this. :) Sort of. Once I've been through the novel a couple of times, I'll know there are scenes that are pretty much fine as they are but other scenes that need a few more passes because I'm still tinkering with the story there.

    I use Scrivener for writing my ms, and it's nice because you can see all your chapter/scene titles over in the sidebar (makes it easy to jump to specific sections).

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  10. Thanks Lani, good luck next time. :)

    Lindsay, that Scrivener sounds interesting. I might have to look into that.

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  11. I've been doing something similar with my manuscript. Fortunately I never got confused by reading my chapters out of order but I was rather able to see more -- things that otherwise were hidden and didn't stand out. And sometimes it even felt like reading someone else's work :-)

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  12. I got that feeling last night while rewriting a section of a chapter I had been just glossing over as a necessary transition and realized I hadn't researched enough to make it realistic nor was it interesting. Scrapped and redone now with more character emotions and drama. Switched the setting to something I'm more familiar with too.

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  13. I have to thank everyone for all your comments and sharing this post with others, I've never had more traffic in a single day on one post ever.

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  14. What a great idea! I've heard about reading the MS from back to front, but not out of order. And the index card? Brilliant. Thanks for the tip!

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  15. Thanks and your welcome Tameri. I just wish I had more nuggets like these to share more often, lol.

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  16. These are fantastic tips! So glad I read them, if a little late (sorry!). It's funny you mention reading chapters out of order because lately I've started opening up the book I'm editing and picked a random chapter to work on, just like you suggested. I'm amazed at how much stuff I catch when I isolate my chapters. It really does work.

    Another couple of tips: Change your font (make sure it's readable and not totally annoying to your eyes) before you start a new round of edits. You see things you never noticed before. Weird, but works.

    Use a text-to-speech reader and *listen* to the whole book. This works best when you're in your final round of edits. It has to be someone else's voice though. Best to use a computer because it won't make mistakes - in other words, it reads your story EXACTLY as you wrote it - bugs, typos, and all.

    Keep these tips coming. I'm going to tweet this link now. Awesome!

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  17. I like this idea and will try it myself. The other useful thing about writing a summary of each chapter is that can be used for a synopsis if you want to query agents and publishers.

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  18. Awesome tip. I'm so going to try this!

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  19. Mind blown! This does sound like a great idea.

    On a more extreme note, I once found something online that you pasted your work into and it would re-arrange all your sentences by length. You could then proofread each sentence, out of context.

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  20. Thanks for the comments and thanks for the additional tips!

    Kendall, I'm going to have to try some of those tips too. Never thought about the font idea, and the Reader thing beats me reading it aloud to myself, lol.

    Collin, I thought about that too after I was typing up the third one. It'll be great for stuff like that.

    Dalyamoon, Hmm, now the sentence thing is extreme, but not a bad idea. I find a lot of fragmented sentences that should be attached to other sentences every once in a while. Sometimes I just redo the sentence to make it complete.

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  21. Your editor gave you a really great tip here! I think you touched on this, but this method definitely aids in finding things that may not make sense with the rest of the story.

    I also like Kendall's idea of using the reader. I have yet to try it as I'm usually editing other people's work instead of my own, and using a reader for others' writing would be dangerous, as I've got to focus on punctuation *as well as* story and flow. ;)

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  22. I've tried the reader recently and it was pretty neat to hear. I caught some bad grammar right off the bat.

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