How to Edit
There are different ways to do a proper full edit of your story. This is how I go about it, based on a lot of learning and collecting the information.
When I first came to this, I found there were just too many areas to keep track of at once. So this is what I did.
Step 1: pat yourself on the back for a job well done, open a bottle of champaign, treat yourself to a special meal (like romancing the stone). Then put it aside for 6 weeks. At least. Get onto your next project, or anything that gets your mind completely off your story. This way you will come to it with a fresh head and the eyes of a stranger. The original draft is for you, the writer. It is the self-indulgent version, includes a lot of personal snippets, loads of background as you are still getting it clear in your head. This is your baby, just for you.
When you go back to it, the aim is to step out of your writer shoes and into the reader shoes, to start making it ready for everyone else.
Do not go straight onto the edit. You’ll be wasting your time.
Step 2: Divide up the different areas of writing into separate sections so you can focus on just one thing at a time. My first one was a children’s story of only 40,000 words. I went through it about 15 times. The second was an adult one of 90,000. I found by the end of that I could manage to focus on more than one thing per edit, and combined some of the end steps.
The first edits will focus on the broader changes – no point in looking for typos in a section that you completely rewrite, or even ditch altogether. There is a lot of How-To stuff online. My go-to is James N. Frey who wrote “How to Write a Damn Good Novel”, and “How to Write a Damn Good Mystery”. The examples may be a little old now, but the how-to hasn’t changed, and he writes with a good dose of humour. My list below is predominantly taken from his how-to.
For each edit I copy my story into a new document and give it a new letter or number so I’ve still got the previous one in case I want to refer back to it, and don’t get confused between the different versions.
Yes - it involved a lot of coffee.
You might work it something like this:
The Global Changes
The Plot and Story Arc – Start with the story as a whole. Does it make sense and flow smoothly. This is where you “kill your darlings” as Stephen King put it. Does every bit of the story contribute to the ending. Should any bits be rearranged. Do any bits need to be added. Is the plot compelling and interesting.
Timeline – This is also the spot to make sure of the timeline. Is it physically possible for all the characters to be where you have them in the story. It can be easy to overlook that Joe is in Amsterdam at 9am, then countryside UK at 11am – a physical impossibility. Don’t forget time zones too, if relevant.
These first things are the global changes as above, the framework you’re fitting everything into. If these things aren’t right, the first changes need to take them into account. Once you’ve got the overall structure and flow working, then start into the details – but still the big details.
A lot of this is around the characters. The first time I did this, I focused on just one main character per pass. I found I was then able to manage the more minor ones together, especially when most of them weren’t in the same parts of the story.
Characters and POV – Are your characters complete and well rounded. Have you mentioned relevant details early in the story so there’s no sense of ex machina (overly convenient). Do they balance each other. Does each have their inner conflict, and conflict from justaposition with each other. Does their respective personality come through. Does each main character go through an evolution so they’re at a different personal space by the end of the story. Is the evolution smooth and logical. Do they act in character for the whole of the story.
POV – One thing I found difficult in the earlier stages of writing was being mindful of all characters at all times. If they are sitting around a campfire, with anything happening, is there an awareness for the reader of where they all are. A conversation between 2 must still involve all the others, even if they’re not saying anything – where they are and what they’re doing. Detail may not be needed, but they shouldn’t feel absent.
Tension – From inner conflict. Is there tension and suspense all through the story. This doesn’t always mean conflict. Generally speaking there should be inner tensions within each character, which you should have worked in when creating them:- the sea captain who gets seasick (Hornblower), an emergency worker who has trouble with blood, the model who is embarrassed about being on show – these will add an edge to their character. Also, any behaviours or tells… Are they reflected in the character all the way through the story, or did you forget them half way as you got more wrapped up in the storytelling itself.
Character Balance and Tension – From external conflict. The classics might be a cop due with your older, has-been alcoholic vs the enthusiastic newby stickler for rules, or a frustrated boss who has pressures from above. This way every interaction has a tension to it. If your characters balance each other well, there will be a level of tension between them that makes them more interesting to the reader.
Crucibles – And then there’s the full-on tension. Have you kept putting your main character(s) into trouble, that gets increasingly worse. Have you created enough impossible situations for them to get out of. Dan Brown is excellent at this.
Suspense – Not all tension comes from physical actions, especially in psychological thrillers, horror and dramas. This is another way of creating tension. The point is, one way or another, do you have plenty of tension running through your story. Sometimes this can be upped by tweaking the phrasing. Other times you might need to add an extra drama, or extend a scene to involve more suspense.
These above are the meat of your story. Focus on one or a few each rewrite/edit to make sure these things are there, and flow and make sense enough for your story. Then you are up to the finer details.
Dialogue – Run back through your character dialogues. If you have set up their characters well, this may well have already taken care of itself. Make sure most of the dialogue is indirect and interesting to read, sharp and adds to the story.
Info Dumps – In your original draft you are likely to have included a lot of information that was helping you to gain familiarity with your characters or part of the background and history. 90% of this should not appear in the final story itself. It is there so your characters seem real and respond in genuine ways, but the reader is unlikely to need to know anything about what school your characters went to or their hobbies and what rank in karate they had (unless it’s directly relevant to the story). Sift and discard.
Make every word work – This is where you go through with a keen eye and ditch 10% of your words. Is every description necessary. Can you give the impression more concisely or with more impact. Make every single word work hard. See if you can phrase anything with fewer words, or change them to ones that are more powerful.
Typos – The final run through is for an eye for typos. You may not even need it. Generally speaking I try not to change things that are outside the edit focus – just make a note of things you notice, or highlight them rather than distracting yourself from the point at hand. But things like typos you are likely to have picked up on and corrected already.
You may want to rearrange the order of the edits. As you get through them and become more comfortable with the process you may feel you can combine some. The more I work with a story the more I become familiar with the details and the more globally I can see it.
But if you are aiming for a quality piece of work, you need to do a lot more than go through for typos and some rephrasing. You need to look at your story as a whole piece. It’s a whole change in perspective, because now you are shaping your story to something that the general public will want to read, and that means a complete change of perspective.
Step 3: Beta Readers. (Unless you count the 10 or 20 edits) Once you have got it to the best you can, I still do another edit. This is where you get in beta readers. With my final edit up to this stage, I use the speaker on word to read it out to me. It’s a boring voice, but it does seem to work to alert me to repeated phrasings and words.
Because it is so important to now be viewing your story as a reader and not a writer, one good trick is to have reading sessions, and read it aloud to interested people. The main point here is that as soon as you do this you become way more critical and objective.
I broke it up into hour long pieces (about 5,000 words), advertised to interested people for a café which worked, and provided pens and notepads for feedback.
I always said they didn’t need to know about the mechanics of writing. It was enough if they pointed out spots where they were:
1. Confused – I need to make it clearer
2. Bored – Sometimes easy to pick by body language, but if one person doesn’t like a section, I think about whether I agree with them or not.
3. Bored – If 2 or 3 people say they are confused or don’t like a spot, then that tells me I have something to fix. It may not be what they think. Their information may be helpful. But as the author I relook at the section they didn’t like and think how I can make that spot better.
I found it doesn’t even doesn’t even matter if it is different people each time, since the biggest reason to read aloud is for yourself. Most of the suggestions were things I was already thinking, or that became suddenly obvious. My last one, since I kept moving around, I just gave a 2 line summary of anything needed for context. I especially had one friend who was there for the whole story, and was exceptional with their suggestions.
Be polite. Don’t take offence. Be grateful and appreciate their input, whatever you think of it. When I asked the published author about how long to read aloud, he said “about two wine bottles”. I always offered something to say thank you – drinks at the café, maybe small nibbles or a cake to share. But I found that people were keen to be part of the process.
Of course, after each reading, there was another edit of the section to fix up the bits that I was alerted to.
Following the reading sessions, you could then enlist beta readers – from a book club, a writing group, or online, but generally not friends or family. I asked for them to just point out confusing spots, spots that bored them or they didn’t like, or did like. After that was all bonus and up to them to offer or not. When their feedback comes back, you need to edit again for any changes that you agree with.
There is no point giving your story to anybody until you have first got it to the best you already could. Don’t waste their time pointing out things you can see for yourself. Harness the most from them by giving it to them when you can no longer see improvements. You will also get a better response from them for better quality because they will enjoy reading it more. It is a big ask of most people.
Step 4: If you can manage it, ideally you should then send it to a manuscript assessor for a professional assessment from somebody who knows the market. This is very expensive for most people. There is no point in cost cutting by not hiring a good one. If you do, make sure it is a proper assessor and not just for typos. I had an assessor who didn’t even know the grammar rules. And make sure you’ve got it the very best you can first, or you are wasting your money.
At last, when you’ve got it the best you can, been through all the edits, the beta readers, and the manuscript assessor. You are ready for the next phase:- approaching agents.
And meanwhile get onto your next book.