Category: Editing Rant

Editing Rant: Drafts

Erin Penn

Image courtesy of Sira Anamwong at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Drafts are the self-editing phase of writing. If you participated in NaNoWritMo in November, my fearless author friends, you now have a ROUGH draft. This is NOT a final draft, not even close. What you have is the foundation to build your novel. Bet you thought those 50,000 words were the novel. Nope – average sellable novel on the low end is 70,000 for romance, mystery, horror, and urban fantasy; and 100,000 for science fiction and fantasy.

If you are like most, you worked NaNo without an outline. Time to put that together. A previous blog post covers the benefits of outlining here. Now you have your basic story flow, and the beginnings of a synopsis for later trying to sell the product.

Looking at the outline, combined with the Rough Draft, the Macro/Content Draft begins. Are there things missing – characters dropped, action slowing down when it shouldn’t, a plot line needing beefing up? Make notes on the outline of the fixes needed and take your Rough Draft to Macro/Content Draft. When done, an increase in word count should have occurred.

Update the outline, maybe start a Bible if a series is expected. What are the major characters and locations? Heights, clothing, props, eye color, etc. With the Book Bible beside you, go over the Macro/Content Draft and update it to a Micro/Line Draft. Check for consistency of character in dialogue and actions, verify permanency of props – do they appear before they are first used, and see if any “tell” can be flipped over to “show”.

It’s okay to do one or more passes for each concentration. For example, Macro pass one adds the scenes you thought you wrote, but never got around to, while Macro pass two you rewrite the Point-of-view character because you realize the story is really about the “side-kick” and not the leader.

(Mug can be bought at GearBubble and other locations)

Once you have reached the “I hate my life FINAL.docx” phase, time for the proofreading to start. I recommend using an on-line proofreader such as prowritingaid or grammarly. As mentioned in a previous blog, it’s hard to proofread your own work.

All done.

You have gone from Rough Draft to … BetaReaderDraft. You’ve lined up those beta readers, right? Beta reader blog post is here.

A revisit of the editing levels can be found in “Editing Rant: Choose a Color“.

Congratulations on completing the National Novel Writing Month. Now you can make magic.

Quote from James Maxey

Editing Rant: The Neighbors

Erin Penn

Image courtesy of digitalart at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Previous in the story, the character talks about paying homeowner fees, before the scene where he becomes “sunlight adverse”. A temporary solution following his new condition’s onset is to put cardboard up on all the windows. He gets no reaction from the HOA even though the temporary solution ends up fairly permanent for the three weeks of the story.

Modern contemporary story. Do you have a problem with this, because I don’t believe this would happen in the real world.

The neighbors. Today I was stopped by a neighbor while I picked up my mail. This is a fairly consistent activity in my neighborhood. People are nosy, especially where they live.

If you are building a world closely related to the real world and want people to believe it, remember the neighbors.

Editing Rant: Dead Words

Erin Penn

Image courtesy of lekkyjustdoit at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Kill, kill the passive.

Especially the “dead” words. Words which when removed make no change in the meaning of the sentence. All they do is slow things down. The worst offender is “that”. 

“That” is a pronoun and sometimes has a purpose for being. But most times, no, nope, nada, zilch, deader than a doornail buried in a graveyard.

EDITING EXERCISE: For your present work-in-progress (WIP), search on the word “that” and highlight all instances. Read each sentence where the word appears with and without “that” included. Do you need it for meaning? For dialogue, natural speaking flow may require it, but elsewhere, unless actively used – kill, kill the passive and the dead words.

Previous Editing Rants and other posts on passivity include:

  1. May 5, 2016 – Other Cool Blogs: Magical Words April 29, 2016
  2. November 2017 – NOT TO BE

Other Cool Blogs: Magical Words June 14, 2012

Erin Penn

Photo by paul morris on Unsplash, Cropped and color adjusted by Erin Penn

Gutting

After completing the first draft, you realize something is wrong with your manuscript. Not, oh yeah, there was this secondary character back in chapter five which disappeared. I mean seriously wrong wrong – pacing fail, POV change needed – gutting of 10%, or more like 50%, of your precious words. What you are going to have to do for the rewrite will be messy, nasty work. If only you were a better writer, these things wouldn’t happen.

Yeah, no.

Read about “Performing the Invasive Edit” by NY best-selling author AJ Hartley explaining how he had to fix one book – during the initial writing, over 50 K words in, long before the manuscript was ready to send to an editor. The comments to this Magical Word posts touches different types of invasive edits various people performed. From tone and pacing to adding new characters. Rearranging timelines to adding personal stakes plotlines.

Look it over here: http://www.magicalwords.net/really-i-mean-it/performing-the-invasive-edit/

WRITING EXERCISE: Think about your present work-in-progress (WIP). Is there a particular scene which has been bugging you? Why is it a problem? What could fix the problem? Rewrite the scene. If you don’t have a WIP, try this with a flash or short story #NotReadyForPrimeTime.

How about your WIP overall? Is there anything you’ve been arguing with yourself about fixing as too much work? Why is it bugging you? How should it be fixed?

If you got an outline, cut and save it to another file “Revised” and see what happens if you work the fix in.