It's Revision Time :)

Well, I got my edit notes the other day and I was happy to see they weren't as bad as I'd feared :) I actually really enjoy revising. Major rewrites can be stressful (I'm in the middle of that for my current WIP) but just regular old revisions....love 'em :)

Maybe because they are less about getting the story out and more about polishing the story. I've got something to work with and I just need to go layer by layer to make sure everything is as it should be.

Right now I'm working on the little stuff - the line edits and minor tweaks. This is often something I'll save for the end, however I need to pare down the word count a bit, so I want all the new stuff in there so I can see exactly how much I need to cut.

So, little stuff up first. Then the big edit I need do do (some tweakage on the setting and background). And then...time to murder my darling a little bit and trim some wordage :) I think I've actually gotten pretty good at this. Oh, there are a few scenes I'd fight to the death to keep. But then again, those scenes are scenes that work well in the story, scenes that I made SURE worked well :)

For everything else...well, I've gotten good at loping anything from words to massive chunks of manuscript. I save it all in a file, just in case :) but it doesn't bother me so much anymore.

How do you edit? Do you go through the manuscript and do it all at once as you come to places that need work? Or do you do things one at a time (going through the ms with one edit in mind and changing everything pertaining to that particular edit before moving on to another one)? Is it hard for you to cut things?

Things I have Learned in the Editing Trenches

I now have two finished novels and one almost finished non-fiction book. And I think it is safe to say that I have spent a lot more time editing these manuscripts than I did actually writing them. Though there are times I enjoy editing, sometimes it can be one huge pain in the butt.

However, I have learned so much from this process…mostly from my fabulous critique partners. Things they don’t teach you in writing classes. Things you only really learn when you make the mistake and are lucky enough to have someone point it out to you.

Here are a few things that I have learned while mucking through the messes that are my pre-edited manuscripts:

1. POV –

Point of View…..wow….now this used to be something I was horrible at. Not just mildly bad at with the occasional mistake. Oh no. When I made POV mistakes, they were epic. I literally had four POVs in one paragraph before. And I was notorious for head hopping every other paragraph or so.

My first critique group whipped that out of me. I am now pretty sensitive to POV problems and do fairly well at avoiding them myself. But it took some work. One of my crit buddies told me to imagine a camera on the head of my main character (if that is the POV I am writing in). Then she told me that I couldn’t describe anything that that particular character couldn’t see, hear, feel, think, etc. If I wanted to get in another character’s head, I needed a scene or chapter break. It really helped curb my head hopping tendencies.

2. Getting rid of sentences that start with “I” –

This is something I’ve struggled with lately. My awesome crit partners have been breaking me of this habit. My current novel is the first I’ve written in first person. It’s taken a little getting used to. I start a LOT of sentences with the word “I.” Now, that isn’t always bad. It is in first person, so it’s going to happen.

But I have a lot of sentences that say things like “I felt,” “I heard,” “I saw.” My crit buddies point out that if I reword these sentences to get rid of the “I’s,” the sentences end up much stronger, more active. For example, one of my sentences was:

“I inhaled, breathing in the sandalwood scent of him .”

I changed it to – “The sandalwood scent of him filled my senses, making me slightly dizzy.”

A small change, and the first sentence wasn’t bad or wrong (in my opinion), but the change makes it a little more active…and gets rid of yet another sentence starting with “I.”

3. Telling vs. Showing
This is something I still struggle with. Especially when it comes to emotions. Part of this problem stems from when I write my first drafts. I tend to use a lot of narration and I also use phrases like “I was scared” or “I was mad” as place holders, intending to fill them out more with action when I go back through the second draft. Sometimes I just miss these, but there are a lot of instances when I think what I have is fine on the first read-through, when in reality, I just need to show more and tell less.

Now, sometimes it is actually better to tell than show; you can’t show every tiny thing that happens. But for the most part, if you can show the reader something with your descriptions rather than just spelling it out for them, it will make your book much stronger. (One of these days I’ll get this one down…. :D )

4. The dreaded Adverb

Okay, now don’t kick me out of the writing club, but I actually like an adverb every now and then. One of my dreams is to make it big enough that I can toss adverbs in anywhere I want and not have anyone say a word about them ;-D But yes *sigh* these are technically no-no’s, and in many cases unnecessary.

This was another thing I was horrible with when I first started writing – my first crit group gave me the very unwelcome news that editors didn’t like adverbs. It was a surprise, and not a pleasant one. But I’ve learned to do without them whenever possible. I do like to use them as placeholders during my first draft, but I try to weed them out in subsequent drafts.

Although, to be honest, I left a ton of them in my current book. I like some of them, but I also wanted to see how many I could get away with :D Not many, I’m afraid. My crit buddies have started highlighting them LOL Oh well. Some day :)

5. Repetition –

Again, something I was, and still am, horrible with. Actually, I have gotten much better. But I do tend to repeat words and phrases. And each book seems to have its own group of words that keep popping up. With my first book, it was the phrase “a bit.” I also once had a paragraph where I was describing a table. I used the word “table” six times in that one paragraph. And I was always saying my characters’ names when saying “he” or “she” would work just as well.

With this book, it is the words “though” and “headed.” Every time I have someone going somewhere, I say “they headed.” It’s horrible. I’m working on it :D

What’s interesting to me is that I am now very sensitive to this problem in other people’s manuscripts, and even in my own. Yet somehow, those words crop up and fly under my radar and my manuscripts end up peppered with them. Good thing I’ve got great crit buddies with awesome eyes :D

How about everyone else? What are some things you have learned since you began writing?

How to Walk The Fine Line of Editing

Quote of the Day:

Listen, then make up your own mind.
~Gay Talese

As I am once again embarking on that long road of editing and revising, my mind has been much occupied of late by what my crit buddies will do to my poor little fledgling manuscript. Make no mistake, I want them to shred it to pieces. I want to see it covered in so much red that I think it’s bleeding. Yet, there is always the small hope that they will read it, love every word, and send it back with the caption “It’s perfect! Don’t change a thing!!”

Hey, we’ve all got our fantasies ;-D

While I’ve been writing (rewriting, revising, editing) steadily for the last three years or so, this is only the second novel I’ve ever finished. I’ve got several files containing partially written manuscripts. Most never made it past chapter 3. So, now that I have completed another entire novel, I’ve been thinking back to when I finished my first book.

I was so excited. What a rush! To sit and look at the words THE END and realize you have written AN ENTIRE BOOK. Seriously, very few things in my life can compare to the sense of accomplishment I felt when I looked over what I had done.

Little did I know that the journey was just beginning.

Now at the time, I had no writer friends, I didn’t belong to any critique groups, I had no beta readers, and I was only just beginning to find online writer forums. (The first one I belonged to was so harsh and horrible I almost hung up my pen for good.) I did do some research on query letters, wrote the best draft that I could, and I sent some out.

And the rejections started pouring in. Although, I did get a full request from Roberta Brown, one of the queens of romance writing. I could not even tell you how thrilled I was! Yet, when I think of the manuscript I sent her, I want to hide under my bed, change my name, and flee the country.

I finally found Querytracker.net and became friends with an incredible group of people. I became a part of QT when it was just starting out…had I followed my instincts when I first found them, I might have been the very first person to sign up. But halfway through the register process, my paranoia took over and I decided that it was just too good to be true. A few months later, I got smart and joined up. I also found a critique group, a few good betas, and started the long process of whipping my manuscript into shape.

The point of this long ramble is that when I first started, I was under the impression that everyone else knew better than I did what should and shouldn’t be in my book. I would accept every single suggestion, sometimes even though I didn’t agree with it. I didn’t stop doing this until one day, someone made a suggestion that I really REALLY didn’t want to incorporate.

I looked at the sentence after I had changed it, and it didn’t even sound like I had written it. It did, however, sound like the woman who had suggested the change. And I finally realized that while I was going to get some really good revision ideas, some things just needed to be left alone. I was letting everyone edit the voice out of my book…I was removing what made me the book MINE.

I still have a hard time, sometimes, leaving suggestions alone. I tend to think that if someone had a problem with what I wrote, there must be something wrong with it. But this isn’t always, or even often, the case. This business is one of the most subjective I’ve ever seen. Everyone is going to have an opinion on what they read, and those opinions will rarely mesh.

So my rule of thumb now is to wait on my revisions until all my critique buddies have weighed in (unless what was pointed out is something I whole-heartedly agree with or it’s a glaringly obvious mistake). If more than one person points it out, then I know I probably need to change it. And if it’s something that I still don’t want to change, I wait and see how many people think it should be worked on. If only 2 out of 7 readers think the change needs to be made, I’ll probably leave it alone. If the majority agree on it, then I know I have a problem that needs work.

But deciding what stays and what goes can be a tricky and fine line to walk. How do you handle it?