Wednesday, June 04, 2014

Editing Techniques

I'm in the process of editing my novel, Rider, which has been sold to Entangled Publishing (Yay!) My lovely editor has gone through and pointed out areas where I needed to make corrections; grammar, plot, characterization. I can honestly say I enjoy the editing process. Yeah, I know, I'm weird. ;-)

But I thought I'd share how I do it.

First pass: Grammar 
I seem to be the queen of the coma splice so I had a bunch of those to correct. And there were issues about capitalizing certain words. These were all easy to correct since I accepted my lovely editors wisdom in almost every case and made the appropriate changes ;-)

The interesting part is that as I made this first pass, I took note of the comments left in the margins. Comments about plot or characterization or description. I didn't make any changes at the time because I wanted them to settle in my back brain and simmer for a spell.

Second pass - Plot, Characterization and Descriptions.
It's amazing to see what others think as they read Rider - what they like, what confuses them, what they think would make the story better. I'm generally from the school of 'The Editor Is Always Right' so I don't have a problem with fleshing out the story.

Even though I've listed it last, I start with any description problems since those are easiest to fix. Sometimes I forget that readers can't see the image I have in my mind and it's good to have someone point out that they're missing exciting details.

Once I'm done with Characterization, I move on to Characterization. I do this because my plots generally hinge on character so I need that firmly grounded.

Finally, I correct any plot problems. These aren't huge problems but sometimes need a little tweaking especially as I'm a Fly Into The Mist type of plotter.

Simple? For me, it is. I don't know how others would take to this. In fact, if you have a different way, please share your techniques. I'm sure we all could use the inspiration :-)

Have a Blessed Day!

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1 comment:

Lynda K. Scott said...

And always watch the infamous Find-Replace function. It finds far more than what you expect...or want ;-)