Category: Editing Rant

Editing Rant: Clean Up #1 – Commas

Erin Penn

Medieval Manuscript - Rabbit hunting. Rabbit, hunting.

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Shared by Grammarly, but no original attribution given.

What to Clean Up before Sending to Editor #1

NaNo (National Novel Writing Month) is completed. You got 50,000 of the most amazing words ever created by humans all in one place. Time to send it off to a publisher right? Wrong!!!!

First thing is personal editing. Ready for editing rant #1?

Learn you commas … PLEASE. “Eat Shoots and Leaves” is the funniest, best-selling book on punctuation you will ever find and it is available at libraries everywhere. Read it – love it – buy your own when you can and mark the heck out of it. The kindle and the paperback version cost about the same so may as well go old-school on this one, because, believe me, you will mark it up.

Need a reason to learn your commas other than becoming rabbit food? Well, in 80K word book I edited, there was a whopping 6K of commas … over half were unnecessary. That means instead of line editing, I was proofreading. As a writer, if you get to the editing stage in a publishing house, you much rather have the editors editing, not proofreading. Don’t kill yourself about it until you are through content editing because you will be changing some of what you wrote, but don’t be lazy either.

Don’t make me proof your punctuation. You won’t like me if I am only proofreading for your punctuation.

Other posts in the Clean Up series
#1 – Commas
#2 – Double Spaces
#3 – Chapter Headings

Other Cool Blogs: Jody Hedlund October 2015

Erin Penn

Baby Carves Turkey Stock Art

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Stuffing a Story

“Show, don’t tell.” How many times have you heard that instruction? I can’t tell you how many times I have written it on a manuscript while editing.

Then I read my writing and realize I have completely stripped all description from a story. How much stuffing do I need to put into the story so the flavor comes through without making the beast pop?

Jody Hedlund shared “How to Balance Showing versus Telling” on her blog towards the end of 2015. I have previous pointed you toward this author with her 3 Stages of Editing way back in January. 

No, the posting does not give the exact balance – genre drives part of the balance; for example, thriller will have less telling than science fiction. The article does point out not all telling is bad and a balance is needed, a fairly unique voice among the publishing industry demands to make writing look and sound more like the visual media of television and movies.

Need the link again? Well, let me stop telling you about the post and show you instead: http://jodyhedlund.blogspot.com/2015/10/how-to-balance-showing-versus-telling.html

Editing Rant: Copper Pennies

Erin Penn

Fingers Holding A Penny Stock Photo

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What do your characters know?

So last editing rant I went off about Know Your Topic. You don’t want to lose readers because you presented parasailing or embroidery incorrectly. If you don’t know the topic find someone who does: topic experts, beta readers, at least a research librarian whom you are keeping in chocolates and coffee.

Equally important be aware of what you character knows.

This isn’t limited to the more common Point of View (POV) main character (MC) limitations; you may know character B dyed her hair yesterday, but MC doesn’t know yet so describes character B as a blonde. Don’t get me wrong, as an author making certain you only let your MC work from the information known to them rather than to you as the writer is essential. And challenging.

But you also need to limit them on what they are familiar with. Having a twenty-fourth century engineer know how to use a twentieth century keyboard to input information into a computer system is improbable.

Or a twenty-something person forty years after the zombie Apocalypse comparing the scent of blood to new pennies. Yes, this is a common comparison to the point of being clique. But someone born after coins stopped being minted isn’t likely to know what new pennies smelled like.

A person who has never seen the shore would not understand what the salty breeze meant.

Someone who had never been off a spaceship isn’t only going to be shocked by no sky – no walls is as big an issue. And the ship isn’t breathing. Could they even sleep at night? No mechanical noise means “we are all about to die”. How long does it take for the panic to wear off?

Back to the Smell of Blood – as an editor I couldn’t rewrite the line about new pennies. But I did find an article on the scent of blood. If you are describing lycanthropes, vampires, or just have splashes of blood throughout your manuscript you may want to follow the link to Writeworld – “Describing the Smell of Blood”. (AMENDMENT  on 10/24/2019 (original post 11/8/2016) – The link for the Writeworld article  is now dead. Search on “describing the smell of blood”, there are a lot of resources now.)

(sigh) … And it is research like this that puts writers on watch lists.

WRITING EXERCISE: Create a scene (500 words or less) where your WIP character describes a common day item on your desk s/he is not familiar with and what the actions are taken to discover its use.

Other Cool Blogs: Magical Words June 25, 2012

Erin Penn

Eraser On Pencil Stock Art

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Helpful Advice in Editing

If everything is going as I hope it will (I am writing this in June), I am elbows deep in NaNo again. I wanted all the blog postings prepped so I can concentrate on writing, therefore I went through the Magical Words archives. There I ran across Carrie Ryan’s obscurely titled post “Not that … but that”.

It’s on editing. The very thing I am trying really hard not to do. It’s a NaNo no-no during November…and my biggest weakness to meet the word counts.

When editing others, I’ve made a lot of tough calls. Should I provide another possible word or just tell the author to find a new word? Do I say information seems to be missing or do specifically state what I want added? If there is a hole, do I point out the hole (example: primary love interest is passive) or provide the author the shovel to fix the hole (example: add another love interest to fight)? In one case, I may be stepping on the author’s voice and creativity, and, in the other case, I work with a lot of new authors who are having enough headaches being edited I find giving vague solutions is more of a problem than a help. Should I provide both then – but editing is always on a tight schedule, most of the time I can only write one line and move on.

I love the “a-ha” moment Ms. Ryan shares on her first editing feedback. The editor tells her to add something which ended up sounding really strange to her, until she asked the editor “What problem does <making this change> fix?” Once she knew what the problem was, she was able to fix the issue her own way.

If you attend critique groups as a participant, receive editing feedback, or review beta reads, (as reader, editor, or writer) I highly recommend this blog. Again the link is here: http://www.magicalwords.net/carrie-ryan/not-that-but-that/

Second takeaway from the blog – don’t be afraid to ask for clarification. Stand up for yourself. That is not to say fight your editor, but remember to be a participant in the partnership to make your book better.

And if you are participating in NaNo – good luck!

WRITING EXERCISE: Specifically approach someone you trust to be honest and ask them to beta read, critique, or edit something you wrote (at least 500 words and no more than 3,000), letting them know you are using this for practice of the editing process. After taking a day or two to look over their responses and get over the grief stage (see blog here on critique grief), practice asking for clarification without confrontation. Once completing the clarification portion, ask for feedback from your reviewer on how you did.

READING EXERCISE: Read a short story and write a critique or edit the story. Set it aside for two days. Come back and now pretend to be the author. Where do you think the author would like clarification on your critique.

Editing Rant: Rosemary

Erin Penn 1 Comment

Rosemary Stock Photo

Image courtesy of Serge Bertasius Photography at FreeDigitalPhotos.net

Know Your Topic

Oh for the love of … if you write about something common from a historical setting that still is used today, at least get it right.

“She stripped rosemary leaves off a plant and dropped them into a woven basket.”

Leaves? Really? Rosemary Sprigs, yes – rosemary needles, yes. Leaves – no.

And in one sentence the author has thrown all cooks and gardeners out of the story. Amazing how simple it is to put in an epic fail into a book. With herbalist ability a popular part of magic and also historic medicines, I would recommend writers either find a Beta reader familiar with the material or study up on the topic.

This goes for all topics actually. A male friend of my mine had the misfortune to write a gun battle where a character thumbed off the glock’s safety. He didn’t know, his editor didn’t know, and his proofreader didn’t know. But his audience let him know loud and clear glocks do not have external safeties.

Another edit I had a person performed CPR on a character gasping for breath. CPR is to start a heart, not breathing.

Obviously a writer cannot know everything they write about, which is why a good stable of beta readers from a variety of backgrounds is essential. The worse things are the things you think you know about, but you don’t or they have changed since you learned them. 

Not everything is important to get prefect. Don’t know guns, then don’t be specific about guns. Not everyone is a gun owner. And really in the middle of a fight what does a character care if a 22 or 34 is aimed at them – there is a gun aimed at them. Details really don’t matter.

On the other hand – FOOD – food you need to get right. I have yet to meet a reader who does not eat.

Good luck.

WRITING EXERCISE: This one is a little different; learn something new … not through reading or YouTube. Take a class from a person. The class can be a one-hour course but needs direct interaction with a subject matter expert. Comb through your local newsletter, your town’s webpage, “what’s happening” at your library, the local gardening club, free classes offered at the community college or high school, or other sources and find something you think a WIP character of yours may need to know. 

READING EXERCISE: Read two non-fiction books on a subject related to your most recent Read-In-Progress. Examples: Reading about pirates in space – read about Chinese women pirates or Blackbeard; your present Urban Fantasy has Knight Templar, read about them; the mystery centers around monks in an herb garden – study herb gardening. Children books from the library’s non-fiction section have some really good information.