Category: Editing Rant

Other Cool Blogs: Diana Urban (9/8/2015) – Words to Cut

Erin Penn

Photo by Ujesh Krishnan on Unsplash

 

“43 Words You Should Cut From Your Writing Immediately” by Diana Urban, published 9/8/2015.

This list is going to look familiar. I’ve ranted on several of them – That, Just, Very – kill, kill, kill. Start, begin – cut!

Go over this very through list and add it to your pre-edit list. Not every instance of every word needs to be removed, but your writing will be sharper by limiting these repetitive, unclear, or unspecific terms. Make your writing pop! Yes, you will need to reword some things, but it will be worth it.

Again, the article can be found here: https://dianaurban.com/words-you-should-cut-from-your-writing-immediately

 

Editing Rant: Transitions

Erin Penn

Photo by Lance Asper on Unsplash

I’m sure there are more College-English-Professor proper words for the two transition issues I’m about to Rant on, but for now less call them time-order issue and a skipped-step issue.

Most of the time when I say there is a “transition” problem with a manuscript, it is like skipping a logic step in math proofs – sure you came to the same place, but the reader couldn’t quite follow you.

I made a sandwich and poured myself a big glass of milk. Putting the empty dishes into the sink, I dropped the glass, and it broke.

While obvious that the POV character ate the food between making the food and putting the glasses into the sink, the information is missing and creates a jump – making the reader have to stop and fill in the blank with their own interpretation.

The other transition issue is sometimes the time-order was a little off. The below example is more extreme than what normally appears while I’m editing a manuscript, but you can see how the reader has to stop, back up, put in the new information in the narrative in their head, and then return to the story. Sure you want the reader to engage in the story, but you don’t want to work at the story – only be immersed.

I made a sandwich and poured myself a big glass of milk. Putting the empty dishes into the sink, I dropped the glass, and it broke. While eating, I went through my mail and found a check I had been missing. I drove to the bank after cleaning up the broken glass.

The order things actually happened

  1. Made sandwich
  2. Poured milk
  3. Simultaneous – Ate and went through mail. Found check.
  4. Simultaneous – Put dish in sink, dropped glass, broke.
  5. Cleaned up glass
  6. Drove to bank

For skipping-steps issues, the balance between boring people with every step of the process and giving them enough information that they can fill in the steps – but not work at filling in the steps, has to be created.

For time-order issues, things need to be in the correct order. Yes, when a story is shared aloud, often there are backtracks and foreshadowing. But often the audience gets confused with the backtracks and foreshadowing. A clear timeline without backing up is preferred on the small scale for clarity. A writer can drop in flashbacks and foreshadows when the information is needed to support the story; these are clearly separate from the main storyline and the reader can work it in. It’s the small within-the-same-sentence where the actions are out of order that makes editors rant.

Should it be:

I turned off the computer after finishing editing the manuscript.

or

After finishing editing the manuscript, I turned off the computer.

Which reads with better clarity? Did one or the other make you pause and rearrange things in your head?

Editing Rant: Finish My Book

Erin Penn

Photo by Adam Winger on Unsplash

Most of the February slush has been rejected. We are still working out way through the full manuscripts. And one just got slashed. The ending fell apart. After reading 70,000 words, I had to reject the work.

And when I did a personalized rejection, because it was a good story until then and I wanted them to understand why I couldn’t move forward with it, I got what amounted to:

“tee-hee, I just didn’t know how to end it.”

Really, I hadn’t noticed. o_O 

You knew you didn’t have an ending? So why are you submitting it for publication? <snarl>

You just wasted my time and yours.

Oh, I am so Ranting about this – but in “private”, with the other editors doing the slush reading with me.

Me: The author (don’t remember if male or female) thought we could help them fix it.

Editor who was up late with me: Yeah, ’cause that’s what we do, finish people’s books for them. Because we’re so desperate for new material. (sarcasm font.)

Me: Authors really don’t know the difference between developmental editing done by agents and authors under contract, and what are the requirements for unsolicited materials. In one case it is warm fuzzy “you wonderful wordsmith, let’s bounce ideas because we got a (legal) relationship” and the other is “nice but not there yet – NEXT!”.

The difference between one-on-one and one on 200.

(snipped for brevity)

And that is the important part of the conversation I want to share. When submitting to an open call, there is no relationship in place. The object is to get in the door while it is open.

An agent relationship or a relationship with a publisher, once under contract, has give-and-take. Ideas can be bounced for the SECOND book or series.

But that initial submission need to be great.

We can’t do your job for you. Sorry.

Editing Rant: Paragraph Lead Words

Erin Penn

84935978 © creativecommonsstockphotos | Dreamstime.com
Another Editing Rant from this year’s slush reading. Below is part of the post-script I added to the form rejection to the author.
(BTW, if an editor takes the time to add a postscript to the rejection, read it and take it for the complement it is meant to be. When the a submission editor takes the time to comment on your submission, at least two things have occurred – (1) they read your manuscript and (2) they liked it enough they would like to see it be the best it can be even if they don’t have the time personally to help make it so.)
Finally, watch out for paragraphs starting with the same word. This may seem strange advice. You may have heard be careful starting several sentences in a row with the same word because it creates a boredom with its repetition. Sometimes you want the beat for emphasis
He ran. He ran faster. He ran as fast as he could. He knew it would never be fast enough.
But for the most part, repetition of beginning words of sentence after sentence is bad.

Paragraphs create a similar boredom, but it is much more insidious because the reader’s conscious mind isn’t the one report it to the like-dislike-bored section of the brain. Their inner eye scans the page ahead as they read, processing information subconsciously – the words at the start of paragraphs stand out during this unconscious reading and register word after word being the same.

This function is related to the human mind ability to read words correctly based on the first and last letters.

FOR EXAMPLE:
It deosn’t mttaer in waht oredr the ltteers in a wrod are, the olny iprmoetnt tihng is taht the frist and lsat ltteer be at the rghit pclae. The rset can be a toatl mses and you can sitll raed it wouthit porbelm.

Try not to have more than two paragraphs in a row starting with the same word. One of the ways to fix this issue is by varying sentence structure so it isn’t all “noun-verb” or “pronoun-verb” to start a paragraph.