Tag: editing

How to edit your novel: 5 more practical tips that really work

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 Continued from last week’s Part One: The Forest

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photo by David Mellis

Now we move in for a close up, a focus more on the words and sentence structures than on the story itself. But let’s say you’ve got the grammar stuff down. How else do you clean up your prose?

Part Two: The Trees

Clarity and Flow

1. Compare sentence and paragraph lengths.* Take a sample chunk of your manuscript—say, one to two pages—and, highlight each sentence in alternating colors. The first sentence blue, the second red, the third blue again and so on. Then, take a step back and look at it. There should be a variety of long and short sentences: if all your sentences are about the same length, that’s a sign of bad flow, and you’ll need to do some tweaking.

Bonus tip: Different parts of the story may require different types of flow. Intensify action scenes, like fights or chases, by using more short sentences.

Then, take a sample chapter and do the same thing, but highlighting paragraphs this time. There should be a variety of paragraph lengths.

2. Compare sentence starts.* Using the same samples outlined in #1, highlight the first word of every sentence and then compare them. This helps you ensure a variety of sentence structures. Be on the lookout for pronouns and names. I’ve often had four or five sentences in a row beginning with “She did such-and-such.” Yuck. It makes the prose choppy and repetitive. Rearrange a few of these sentences to improve flow.

3. Search and replace words you use too much. Create a word cloud of your manuscript on wordle.net. ** The biggest words are the ones you use the most (Wordle automatically filters out naturally common words like the and and). Your main character’s names will unavoidably be huge, but look out for others. My most recent test revealed “like” to be pretty big—a sign I may have too many similes. There’s no magic number for how many is too many, but try taking the two or three biggest words in your word cloud, and then searching your manuscript for them (the “Find” feature in MS Word). If you see a pattern emerging, work on editing out at least half.

4. Read aloud. This is what critique partners and writing groups or for: an excuse to read chunks of your writing out loud. Bonus if you can get one of them (who is good at reading aloud) to read it for you while you stand by with a red pen. This way you can make sure an objective reader will:

  • Emphasize the right words. If not, try restructuring the sentence, altering punctuation, or italicizing the words that need to be emphasized.
  • Pause in the right places. If not, you need to add punctuation—commas, semicolons, periods, etc.
  • Doesn’t stumble too much. Passages that are tricky on the tongue can be tricky on the brain, too.
  • Doesn’t repeat the same words too close together. The same adjective, for instance, should not appear twice on the same page.
  • Doesn’t rhyme. Unintentional rhymes sound awful and interrupt flow.

5. Commit to cutting words. You may be horrified at the idea of slicing phrases out of your so carefully crafted masterpiece. Don’t be. Force yourself to cut, say, 100 words per chapter. This doesn’t necessarily mean cutting whole paragraphs, or even whole sentences. Get crafty. See if you can find a word here or there that you can cut without sacrificing meaning. Here’s what will happen as a result:

  • You’ll start to recognize patterns of superfluity and be able to avoid it in the future.
  • You’ll start to recognize when to cut bigger passages that are dragging the story.
  • Your writing will tighten up: it will be clearer, more powerful, and easier to read; which means readers will keep reading.

If all that doesn’t convince you, I’ll appeal to Strunk & White to back me up: rule #17: Omit needless words. Here are examples of words you can cut.

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What editing tips have you picked up? Tell me in the comments!

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* I owe these two tips to my first writing teacher, Miss Judy. Thanks, Miss Judy, wherever you are!

** I owe this tip to Jubilare—pay her a visit; she’s got a new blog!

How to edit your novel: 7 practical tips that really work

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You’re drowning in words. There are a million things wrong with this book. And you’re so busy trying to figure out why page thirty-five sounds so blooming doofy that it’s months before you notice the whole first half of the book drags and your characters are totally flat.

Further down the road, after countless rewrites, you will finally realize you’re the wrong person to edit your work. You’re too close to it. The picture of what you want your novel to be is so huge in your mind’s eye that it leaves no room for what the novel actually is. You can get your friends to read it, but they’re not editors either, and can’t tell you much. And you sure as heck can’t afford to pay a professional a few thousand dollars to take a look at it.

So…a hopeless case?

Not so.

You just need a plan.

For starters, forget about your novel for a couple of weeks, at least. You need a break. Use the time to catch up on your reading and write a short story or some flash fiction. When you’re ready, take a deep breath and proceed to the next paragraph:

Nathan Bransford has the excellent advice of starting with the biggest stuff and working your way down from there. You don’t want to waste time making a bunch of tiny changes in a section you’ll end up cutting or completely rewriting later on. Nathan also has a fantastic editing checklist.

But if you’re like me, you need help seeing the big stuff. Because right now, you can’t see the forest for the trees (er…the story for the words?).

Here are some practical steps that work for me.

Part One: The Forest

Plot, Tension, and Character Development

 

1. Summarize. Quickly skim each chapter and, in a separate document, list everything that happens, in order (incomplete sentences are fine). My Chapter 3 summary looks like this:

Meets R. Discovers language problem. Walks to castle. Intro J, planning to leave. They meet. J shocked. Debates his life or hers. Tells her truth. She doesn’t believe it. Hear ship outside.

2. Highlight tension and clues. Pick two colors and highlight the parts of your summary that indicate either an escalation of tension (dramatic stuff like explosions, death, getting fired, or discovering a cheating spouse) or the revealing of clues (interesting information that will be important later, like footprints, mysterious notes, or snippets of conversation). The colors may overlap sometimes.

3. Highlight character development. With a third color, highlight everything that indicates character development. That includes background, expressions of love or hate, and any important decisions the character makes. You might use different colors for each major character. Do each character’s actions fit with his or her personality? Do they change as the story progresses?

4. Review the plot. Looking over your summary (highlighted in at least three colors by now), pay attention to the progression of the plot. Which characters cause which events? Did those characters have logical reasons for acting that way (plausible motives)? Does each event lead logically into the next? If not, hold a brainstorming session to find a way to make it work (critique partners are invaluable for this kind of thing).

5. Rearrange. Once you’ve got your plot squared away, again look at the highlighted portions. Make sure you have an increase in tension at least once in every chapter, preferably at the end (keep readers reading). Make sure your “clues” are spread fairly evenly throughout and not clumped together (nothing worse than a huge pile of plot exposition at the climax). Move chapter breaks around if necessary.

6. Compare each character’s dialogue separately. Now back to the actual manuscript. Using the “Find” feature of your word processor, search for your main character’s name. Stop at each place you find dialogue by that character. Copy and paste it into another document if necessary. Make sure everything that character says consistently matches his upbringing and personality. Tweak as necessary. Then, do the same for the next major character down, and so on.

7. Contrast dialogue between characters. Make sure your characters don’t all talk the same way. Adults speak differently from children, blue collar workers from desk jockeys, Northerners from Southerners, and aliens from dragons. Play around with accents, slang, and verbal ticks.

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Got any editing tips? Leave them in the comments!

Now posted: how to look at the “trees” of your novel.

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NaNoWriMo and manuscript formatting: videos!

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It occured to me this week that my How to Format Your Manuscript post would have been much easier to understand in video form. So I made a video! The sound is a little tinny, but still understandable:

Got questions? Got ideas for other instructional videos? Leave them in the comments!

And for all you NaNoWriMo warriors, here’s a music video from italktosnakes dedicated to the November challenge:

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How to get rid of background exposition PART 2

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 So let’s finish up Example Number 2 from last week.

Once again, the background exposition (telling):

I had been the youngest ever accepted into the Academy, and the quickest ever to graduate. Since then, I had sought out every acclaimed blade-wielder in the five kingdoms, and defeated them all. I had come to this city for one reason only; to challenge the last.

The fix (showing):

I rapped my knuckles on the bar to get the innkeeper’s attention. He finished drying a tankard before leaning towards me.

“What’ll ye have?”

“I need a room.”

“Name?”

“Lister.”

He snorted. “Any relation to Gavin Lister?”

“That’s me.”

The innkeeper chuckled.

Then he saw my serious expression and sobered momentarily in disbelief.

Then he laughed even louder.

“Ye want me to believe you’re the fellow made the best swordsmen in five kingdoms look like fools wavin’ broom handles? Ye’re not even old enough to go to the Academy.”

I sighed. Starting tomorrow, I was growing a beard. “Why don’t you pick out the best swordsman in this room?”

“And?”

“And if he kills me, you get everything I’m carrying here, which is more than enough gold to pay someone to mop up the blood. If I kill him, I get a room.”

My confidence made him hesitate, but as he eyed me, I saw him decide that I was bluffing. He smiled and began scanning the room for a suitable challenger.

A quarter of an hour later, I was following the innkeeper up a narrow flight of stairs. He kept glancing back over his shoulder at me, and after opening the door to my room, he stood aside to let me pass, his chin hanging open as if he was trying to say something.

“You’re…here to fight the Sword Master, then?” he said at last. His tone was a pleading, pathetic version of what it had been.

“That’s right.”

“No man has ever crossed blades with him and lived.”

“Good,” I said. “I’d hate to be unevenly matched.”

I shut the door and locked it.

So, did we hit the same points we hit last week? Let’s see…

Show the past by telling the present consequences

His past: accomplishing a lot at a very young age. The consequence: difficulty convincing strangers he really is Lister due to his young appearance.

Give your reader clues, not facts

We know he’s new in town because he’s looking for a room. We know he’s famous, because a stranger knows his name and history. We know he’s young because of the innkeeper’s disbelieving comments.

Work those clues into the action and dialogue

I let the innkeeper talk about Lister’s reputation, rather than letting Lister think it to himself; otherwise it sounds like bragging. Also, Lister’s action in actually fighting someone shows us he’s the real deal, rather than just somebody who forged a fake reputation and talks big. Lastly, as an added bonus, we see that he readily kills his opponents, and that he’s undefeated.

Be careful with dialogue, though. It’s easy to shove all your background exposition into dialogue and think it’s okay. It’s not.

Remember this rule of thumb: never make a character say something he wouldn’t naturally say. If you’re forcing words into his mouth, that’s how it will sound—forced.

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Read more:

Show Don’t Tell on: description, telling to show, and character development.

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Show, Don’t Tell: how to get rid of background exposition

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Background exposition. When your characters have enough history to fill another whole book, but you’re not ready to write that book yet (or ever).

It usually looks like this (notice the proliferation of past perfect tense):

She had been living alone since her husband, Tom, left. He hadn’t stayed around long after their baby died. It had been a long, intensive labor, and the little girl, born a full month early, hadn’t survived.

Or this:

I had been the youngest ever accepted into the Academy, and the quickest ever to graduate. Since then, I had sought out every acclaimed blade-wielder in the five kingdoms, and defeated them all. I had come to this city for one reason only; to challenge the last.

 

Why is this a problem?

Because real people don’t go around summarizing their own histories in their heads. So when fictional people do it, it ruins the suspension of disbelief.

Now, let’s find a way to show.

We have to seamlessly work all the same details into an actual scene. Into action. Into dialogue. The trick is to plant clues for our readers. Let’s start with our first example:

It didn’t matter if no one else was around to appreciate it. It was Christmas Eve, for heaven’s sake; the house shouldn’t be completely devoid of twinkle lights and fake greenery. Maggie yanked down the attic stairs and ascended them with a flashlight.

She found the tree right away; it was still in the box it came in. Nothing else was labeled, of course. Waste of effort, Tom would say every year, I’ll remember which ones are which.

            “Fat lot of good that does me now, Tom,” she said aloud. She pulled up the flaps of the next closest box.

And stopped breathing.

A tiny pink dress stared up at her from atop a pile of tiny hats and tiny pairs of overalls and tiny white socks fringed with lace. She blinked. Tom must have put it up here. After he said he’d get rid of it all. She remembered, because she’d specifically asked him to.

            What else would I do with it? he’d snapped; I don’t know why we bought all this crap so early on, anyway.

            Early. Everything had been too early. The clothes. The morning. The baby.

            Maggie bowed her head and sobbed into the cardboard.

A little bit of past perfect tense sneaks in there, but it’s much more organic to the scene.

See how we use Maggie’s present to illustrate her past? See how we don’t actually come right out and say anything, but it’s all evident in what she’s doing and what she’s thinking? We never say Tom was her husband, but our readers see that they had a house together, celebrated holidays together, and at some point thought they were going to have a child. We never mention that the baby died, but from the baby’s absence, the boxed-up baby clothes, the couple’s angry conversation, the “early” tie-in, and Maggie’s tears, our readers get the message.

To sum up:

  • Show the past by telling the present consequences
  • Give your reader clues, not facts
  • Work those clues into the action and dialogue

Stay tuned: next week we’ll do a “showy” version of the second example.

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Read last week’s post on how to “Show, Don’t Tell” with description.