My Editing Process Part II

This what I’m doing on my current project, based on things I learned both from the last project and from a business writing course I took.

Phase One is where I’m at.  I’m going through the manuscript (which is not completed yet), and searching for places where I short-changed the story or could legimiately expand.  I’m even paying attention to placement of subplots, which I’m adding after the fact.  For whatever reason, I can’t put subplots in during the initial draft because it will derail me.  But now I see where I need to put them to change the pacing and give the reader a break.

Other expansions have been to fix problems or shake out an element of the story a little better.  There’s been a couple of very difficult areas, and this, combined with the subplots, will help with that.   I remember during the original drafts how hard it was and how I never felt like I would get it to work.  Now I’m telling myself that all I need to do is add two chapters to solve it by filling in a few gaps.

Once I get all of this fixed, it’ll make it easier to set up everything for the end of the story.

For Phase Two, right now I’m guessing it’s going to be an Omniscient Viewpoint pass.  I’m going to look for problems with:

• Too distant.  This seemed to be a problem when I introduced a new character the camera was following.
• Too much telling.  I’m not sure this is a problem.  The viewpoint tends to use telling, and most writers seem not to like the viewpoint in general to start with.  So it’s hard to tell from any comments I’ve received whether it’s appropriate for the viewpoint or if I need to work on it.  I’m erring on the side that I might need to work on it.
• Any head hopping.  I don’t think I’m going to have a problem with this, but I want to keep an eye out for it anyway.

I’ll probably do a repetition pass during this phase, but it’ll be different with this project.  I’m not doing the kinds of repetitions I did in the last book, like where I would say it was cold, and then a few sentences later say it was cold again.  This time, I think I’m going to find them primarily where backstory is brought it.  Omniscient allows me to bring in the more complicated aspects that would come across as tedious in showing by telling them.  The minus of this is that it’s easy to bring it back a couple more times, and that’s what I have to watch out for.

Phase Three will be a general check of sentences, structure, grammar, and such.  Maybe catch any repetitions I didn’t pick up on the previous pass.  Probably continuity errors, too.

Phase Four will be proofreading.  Sure, I’ll fix a typo if I spot it at any other time, but I’m not trying to weed them all out at every phase of the story.  I’ll take care of them here.

My Editing Process Part I

The topic came up on the Absolute Write message board about the process of editing.   Everyone pretty much had a top down approach–big stuff first.  Mine follows the same path, but it does vary, depending on the project.  I’ve also made some adjustments on it based on what I’ve learned.

From my last project, a historical thriller (this was written with a cowriter):

Phase One was the major editing of the story.  Almost 15K got lopped off as we realized that one whole section of seven chapters wasn’t necessary.  That meant we were 15K too short and had to go through each chapter, looking for places to add material.  Sometimes I’d find a chapter that ended near the bottom of a page and would spend several days trying to find additions to get it to pop over.  The problem, of course, was that the additions needed to be legitimate, not just padding.  Sometimes it was easy to get it to pop over, and sometimes I couldn’t make it happen.

I even found a chapter that I realized didn’t quite have a point to it.  I gave it one, and ended up adding several chapters to do that.

Phase Two ended up involving two separate parts.  The first part was a search and destroy for repetitions.  I literally went through the manuscript on the screen and hunted for them everywhere.  Just them.  I didn’t look for anything else. I think I learned a lot by doing it like this because I don’t do as many of them any more. 

The second part was an idiom search.  I went through the manuscript just looking for idioms.  Once I’d spot a potential idiom, I’d look it up in my idiom dictionary.  The dictionary gave me the date the idiom originated, and if it was outside the timeline of the story, it was either gone or replaced with something else.

Phase Three was proofreading and general clean up.  I hate proofreading, so I try to catch all the typos I can through any phase.

Next is what I’m doing on the current project.

Types of Repetitions

A couple of years ago, I was reading an agent blog when I ran across an entry where she said she would reject a manuscript if she saw repetitions.  She saw it as a sign the writing wasn’t ready.

Repetitions?  I thought about it, then looked at mine.  Yup, I’d done it.  Specifically, troublesome areas were the phrases “It was cold” and “the bad guys are lurking.”  Also “look” and variations of it.  So I had to go through a 350-page manuscript, searching for anything that looked like a repetition.  Now I look for it when I crit and nearly always find it.  Here are the types:

1. No Story.  Sometimes a point or an incident gets discussed repeatedly because there isn’t anything else to keep the story moving forward.

2. Emphasis.  Repetition can become an issue if the writer wants to emphasize a point.  A couple of well-written sentences or even scene will emphasize the point far more than repeating the point seven times in two paragraphs (that, unfortunately, is a real example).

3. Sentence Structure.  Sometimes I’ll see a story where the structure of the sentence is repetitive.  Like every sentence is strung together with a coordinating conjuction (i.e., and) or starts with a gerund (i.e., Turning around, he went back inside).

4.  Character Actions.  This one comes from a weakness in narrative skills.  The characters are always looking at each other, sighing or shrugging. 

5. Forgetfulness.  Just plain forgetting you mentioned it earlier, and you mentioned it again.  I have to watch out for this one because I tend to do this a lot.