Editing – the hard part begins

EWelcome to week two of the A to Z Blogging Challenge. Today I’ve got A R Kennedy talking about one of the most important aspects of writing. Editing. Here’s A R Kennedy!

Editing…I hear the collective sigh.  To emphasize the importance of editing, lets see what our favorite authors say…

“The only kind of writing is re-writing” – Ernest Hemingway

Editing is the real work of the writer.  You’ve never read the first draft of your favorite author.  You wouldn’t want to.  It’s riddled with typos, and scenes, maybe even characters, that will be deleted before you read the book.  The editing is where authors fix the plot holes, fine tune it, and make it better.

But it’s the work—every writer will say this.

The research is fun.  (I know more about street gangs than any suburban girl should.)

The killing is fun.  (I really hope this is never taken out of context)

Seeing where your characters go is fun.  (Because they do surprise you.)

The editing is the work.

Substitute ‘damn’ every time you’re inclined to write ‘very’; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.” —Mark Twain

“Kill your darlings, kill your darlings, even when it breaks your egocentric little scribbler’s heart, kill your darlings.” ― Stephen King, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft

We’ve all heard this one before, first said by William Faulkner.  It hurts to think about killing off one of your creations but you need to.

An editor once told me I liked my characters too much. (Please note in that same book, two beta readers didn’t like my main character, Nathan, at all.  One still wants me to kill off Nathan.  I’ve pointed out that would mean the end of the series.  I’m trying to not read too much into that.)

The reader must feel the tension— at any point any character may die.  You the author knows who will survive.  You’ll mourn a character’s death more than anyone else.  But do it. You want your readers, no need them, to be on the seat of their pants to turn the page, to read one more sentence, one more page, one more chapter.

So, kill ‘em I will

So how do you edit?  There are thousands of books written to help and hundreds of course to attend.

My favorite is Donald Maass.  If you can, go to one of his workshops.  If not, buy his books and workbooks.  After the second draft of my novels, I re-read my notes from his class and go through his workbook.  He’’ll tell you to kill off characters, combine characters, put characters in places you never expected.

In book three of the Nathan Miccoli mystery series, Gone But Not Healed, how did Alfonso make it to Long Beach?  Though Donald Maass’ workshop.

His course made me uncomfortable.  He’ll warn you that it will.  But go along for the ride.  You and your readers will be glad you did.

“Put down everything that comes into your head and then you’re a writer. But an author is one who can judge his own stuff’s worth, without pity, and destroy most of it.” — Colette

Missed_final_eBook_brightA R Kennedy, author of The Nathan Miccoli series.  Books 1-3 (Gone But Not Missed, Gone But Not Goodbye, Gone But Not Healed) are now on special price, 99cents, this week only. Checkout her Amazon page for links to all three books. A R Kennedy on Amazon.

Book 4 in the series, Gone But Not Together, is due out in May 2015

Website – arkennedyauthor.com

Facebook – AR Kennedy

Twitter – ARK_author

 

 

Cindy here again!

Thanks for stopping by the blog today. Great post about editing.

Keep writing.

 

Just One More Time

We’ve got an important post here on the GWN blog. Author Terry Shames talks about a great way to edit your novels.

Here’s Terry!

The last time I went through my most recent manuscript, I reported to my editor that I had found 25 last, tiny errors. There was a moment of silence on the other end of the phone, and then, “You mean before you sent it to the copyeditor?” No, after.

“But…” He wanted to know how the copyeditor had missed 25 errors that included missing quotation marks, misspellings, missing words and one quotation mark at the end of a sentence that wasn’t a quote. I hadn’t meant to get the copyeditor in trouble. What I meant was to tell him about a technique I discovered for ferreting out those last, pesky errors.

An experienced writer with many novels under his belt once told me that when my first novel came out, I’d open it and the first page I looked at would contain an error. I couldn’t argue with him because too often these days within a few pages of beginning a novel I run across errors, usually small ones; but sometimes glaring, impossibly bumbling errors that make me want to have a stern talk with whomever was given the task of ridding the manuscript of those glitches.

That’s the problem, though. Even the biggest publishers, and the most meticulous small ones have systematically ditched their editing staffs out of economic necessity. Content editors barely have time to help an author shape the manuscript, and it’s up to a harried copy editor and/ or proofreader to file off the rough edges and make the final product look professional.

Pulling hair out

That’s why an author is well advised to turn in the most pristine copy she can manage. Easier said than done. By the time you’ve read your 300-page manuscript what seems like 100 times for action or dialogue that doesn’t make sense, timeline errors, name switches; and then gone through it to correct what seems like endless typos, dropped or added punctuation, to have one more go at that paragraph that has never rung true, one more attempt to tweak that imperfect description, you’re sick to death of it. You’ve even read it aloud, and hated the sound of your voice by the time you reach the last chapter.

The mere thought of having to read through it one more time makes you have fantasies of calling the whole publication thing off and running off to join the circus. At that point you are ready to clean out your bank account to pay any amount of money for a professional to hunt down those last errors rather than having to do it yourself.

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That’s when you need to read it backwards. Yep. Backwards. I thought I had heard of every trick and then somewhere (I wish I knew where, so I could thank this unsung hero), I read that reading the manuscript backward is like a miracle. You read the last page, and then the page before that, etc., through the whole shebang. Oh, yeah, and you do it out loud.

The first time I did it, I felt like an idiot. I was sure I had caught Every Single Error the last time I went through the manuscript. There couldn’t be anymore. But the article about reading backwards said that I’d be surprised how many errors I caught. So I decided I had nothing to lose. At least I wouldn’t have to read it forwards again. And who knew? I might even catch a couple of things. 100 errors later I was a convert. Not only did I catch a lot of errors, but I caught a couple of places where I used a word too many times in one paragraph, and could take care of that before the public had to see it, too!

Happy editing, everyone!

Book Description:

Killing at Cotton Hill-3In A KILLING AT COTTON HILL the chief of police of Jarrett Creek, Texas, doubles as the town drunk. So when Dora Lee Parjeter is murdered, her old friend and former police chief Samuel Craddock steps in to investigate. He discovers that a lot of people may have wanted Dora Lee dead—the conniving rascals on a neighboring farm, her estranged daughter and her surly live-in grandson. And then there’s the stranger Dora Lee claimed was spying on her. During the course of the investigation the human foibles of the small-town residents—their pettiness and generosity, their secret vices and true virtues—are revealed.

 

 

Bio:

Larger readingTerry Shames grew up in Texas. She has abiding affection for the small town where here grandparents lived, the model for the fictional town of Jarrett Creek. A resident of Berkeley, California, Terry lives with her husband, two rowdy terriers and a semi-tolerant cat. She is a member of Sisters in Crime and Mystery Writers of America. Her second Samuel Craddock novel, THE LAST DEATH OF JACK HARBIN will be out in January 2014. Find out more about Terry and her books at www.Terryshames.com.

Cindy here again!

Great post, Terry! It’s a great idea to read it backwards! I’ll try that next time I’m revising my story.

Happy writing!

 

Cindy

E is for…Editing

Every writer knows (or should know) that once you finish writing the book, it`s not done. You need to edit. A lot of writers I know hate to edit. But I love it. For me, that’s where I find most of the gems I my stories. The really great turn of phrase. The excellent description. The better solution to a plot problem.

 

What should you look for when you edit? Depends on how you edit. I like to leave the book for at least a few weeks before I even look at it again. I do a general pass, reading through the story to find plot problems. Then the meat of the edits begin. I dig out my Margie Lawson class notes and start applying her classes to my work. I highlight all the main components (plot, character, dialogue, action, introspection) with different colours to see if I’ve over used one. Under used one. Once I fix those I go back and really edit for the rhetorical devices, the dialogue cues, the cliched phrases. I’ll read the whole thing out loud, not just the dialogue bits. You can always tell when something sounds clunky if you read it out loud. And I should say, that’s the process I’m GOING to do when I finally finish this NaNoWriMo 2010 book. By the end of it the novel should sparkle.

 

Wish I could say I’m going to write now. But it’s late so it’s bed for me.

 

Happy writing!

 

Cindy

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