As I mentioned in my post last week, I’m addressing different kinds of editing in this post and how to handle big picture and detail editing. Under big picture editing, I put developmental and substantive editing. Detail editing covers line and copy editing. For more explanation of those terms, visit this post on the Write Conversation.
Start with Big Picture Editing
This kind of editing looks at the whole book or at least big chunks of it. If your main character follows an arc–and in genre fiction, that’s not always the case–has your MC changed in the way you wanted? Have you blazed a trail that makes his change believable? You should ask those questions of all your major characters who change over the course of the story. If a scene is boring, I need to figure out why. If a character isn’t behaving the way I want, I need to diagnose the problem. Any aspect of storytelling, whether it’s character, plot, or setting, that is integral to the overall structure of the story needs to be tackled here.
Since I write mysteries, this is when I check to see if I’ve laid my clues out fairly, if they make sense for my amateur detective to solve the mystery from them. In my first draft, I often don’t describe the setting much, so this is when I can beef up my descriptions.
To get a handle on this editing, I adopted author Stephanie Morrill’s approach, which she explains in Go Teen Writers: Edit Your Novel . She writes that when she has big picture issues, she keeps a yellow pad handy to write down what needs fixed. This way, you don’t read, fix, read a bit more, fix, etc. You read through, get the whole picture, and then make your corrections later.
Detail Editing
This is my favorite part of editing, digging into the words and making sure each one is doing the job you need it to do. This is where I condense dialogue–because I always write too much in my first draft–and make sure each characters is speaking in a way that makes him or her a unique individual. I check to see if I’ve picked the strongest verbs and make sure to use synonyms if I’m using certain words too often. For example, not all my characters should walk. Some can trudge, amble, or march.
I also look for unnecessary words, what the authors of Go Teen Writers: Edit Your Novel call “weasel” words. Those are the words I throw in without thinking and they very rarely add anything to a story. Most writers have their own pet weasel words. Mine are “even”, “just”, “always”, “only”, and “almost”.
You should take your time when engaging in detail editing. I find it takes an enormous amount of concentration. Learn if you can focus attentively for 10 pages or 20 and then take a break. I know I need to step away when I find problems and either can’t think of a way to correct them or try to skate past them. Author Shelly Arnold advises changing your position so you can keep editing, like walking as you edit. Or you can print some pages and edit those. Some authors swear by having the computer read the text so you can hear problems. Or you can read the text out loud, which slows you down, making it more likely you’ll catch things you want to correct.
For more post on editing, click here. How do you handle big picture and detail editing?
I’m split on editing out my favorite “weasel” words. I keep them in dialogue because they sound natural. Omitting them makes the sentences seem chopped, as if an AI were speaking instead of a human. Sometimes, I will keep a few in my descriptions, too. My biggest one is “then” when I transition from one action to another. I’ve tried omitting the word, then put it back because of its natural feel to me. It’s part of my author’s voice, I guess.
A lot of editing rules go out the window when it comes to dialogue. It should sound different from the rest of the narrative.
Yes. I read too many books written in first person that have all the prose sounding like it’s all dialogue. A lot of 1940 hard-nosed detective fiction had that style, which continues today in many YA books. Often, the jargon is too much for me, and I quickly lose interest in the story.