I've been travelling through the murky world of editing lately. Okay, to be completely honest, I've spent a lot of time avoiding. Editing a 13,000 word story is very different from editing an 80,000 word book, and the sheer enormity of tackling the second task had me overwhelmed.
Like with any other aspect of writing, however, we learn best by working through it. I've been reading various bits of advice on how to handle edits to a book and have learned that, just like anything else in life, different people have different ideas of what works best.
I'll admit I've been stuck on the idea that I should be following Holly Lisle's wonderful one-pass manuscript revision process, but that process also terrifies me! I can't help but feel that I am, at minimum, a two-pass editor. I feel as though I need one pass to go through the book and move chunks of it into its proper order (already, at page 10, I've come to a section that should be moved to a later point in the book.) To make notes on scenes that should be added/changed/deleted. This would be the "examining the narrative and character arcs" stage.
Only after the major structuring is examined and fixed (if necessary) will I feel comfortable polishing the text, one scene at a time, until it glows.
Maybe I can look forward to a one-pass revision process with my next book. Until then, I'm just happy to have worked through the block that kept me from working on these edits.
Does it ever get any easier?
8 comments:
I am curious to know what your feeling is on having an outsider take an editing first pass at your book? Sometimes a fresh set of eyes may see things that a writer wouldn't? I don't know if that is a valid option or not since I have never gone through this process but I am curious as to what you think.
I'd say it depends, Gayl, on how clean the first draft is and how one is sharing. It also depends on how comfortable one is sharing their first draft. When I wrote my first book (back before I got sidetracked by having twins) I belonged to a critique group. We'd exchange chapters and meet in person to go over the chapters. They were seeing first draft writing (though I did edit for smoothness, etc.) and I learned so much from them.
I wrote the first 5 chapters of this book before the girls were born, though. When I resumed it recently I changed a major aspect I'd introduced. I didn't edit that aspect out of the first few chapters, though. I made notes about what needed to change then sat down to finish the book. Right now I have to remove that plot thread from those first few chapters. There are also several places in the text where I made notes ([fix this], [awkward], [RESEARCH!]) but continued on with the writing because I didn't want to stop my flow. And we can't forget that minor character who was supposed to leave town midway through, but who I forgot about. He just disappeared off the face of the planet. Oops!
Because I know many of the things that need to be fixed, for this book I'd feel more comfortable working on those aspects first before showing the book to anyone else. Once I think the book is relatively clean, then yeah, I'd like to have someone read it to get a fresh perspective. There's nothing like an objective pair of eyes to point out that something you think is clear (because hey, you know what everyone is thinking) didn't actually translate all that clearly onto the page.
Now, if I felt the first draft was already relatively clean I could see myself having someone else look at it first. I do tend to insert editing notes throughout my first drafts, though, so I don't think that's likely to happen. I do know some writers who write relatively clean first drafts, though - lucky them!
That makes sense. Every writer has their own style of writing as well as editing. I have the bad habit of editing as I write which really does hold back the process sometimes.
I really do enjoy following your progress on this blog. Thanks for sharing your thoughts and processes!
Your question had me rethinking this. Thinking back to how I used to share my work earlier with my critique group, how I even posted essentially first draft stories on the internet ... well, it had me wondering why this book was so different. Then I read an article yesterday in the latest issue of RWA's writing magazine about sharing one's work early on that had me rethinking things.
That is a good question, but I don't know how to answer, considering I've only seriously revised one manuscript.
But you are right when you say that not everyone works the same way, the same goes for writing.
Not only that, not every project is going to be the same, either. I think editing this book is particularly hard because I'd started it so long ago, then veered off in a different direction when I decided to continue and finish it. Again, thanks for visiting my blog, Ana. :)
Revising and editing are definitely challenging. The first 90k manuscript I finished, I did about 3 revisions before I gave up and put it in the drawer. My second book was 115k, and believe it or not I went through 4 major revisions and like 6 smaller passes through it before I felt like it reflecting my vision. I love the end result, but hated that process.
Now I too am trying out Holly Lisle's one-pass revision technique on a shorter book (35k) to see how that works for me. Knowing how I write though, I suspect that even if I do manage to do just one revision (that involves big stuff like changing plot and subplot elements, characters, adding or removing scenes, etc) I will likely still need to come back to the manuscript one more time for editing (the small stuff, like any continuity, punctuation or grammar and spelling errors that I may have missed)and polishing (word usage).
We'll see how it goes. Perhaps I'll blog about the results.
Oh, and I'm not the kind of writer that could send out her first draft for critique or editing by an outsider. My drafts are full of notes and often out of order and may even contain multiple versions of the same scene (because I couldn't decide which way to go to I wrote both possibilities and moved on). Maybe one day my first drafts will be clean enough to get feedback but as they stand now, I fear I'd do nothing but confuse an outsider.
I agree with you. Even if I wrote a "clean" first draft and used Holly's method to revise, I have a feeling I'd feel compelled to go back at least a second time for another read-through and some tweaking.
And yes, do blog about how you found the process. I'd be interested in reading it.
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