the editing cycle

[Fyle]

So, at this point, I have 56 chapters (310-320k) words of a novel I have been working on for a little over a year. I have not thought of an ending, but I only need to chapters two more chapters to wrap it up, so as I am thinking of the best way to end it, I have been editing.

I saw a post about this here before, and I kind of chuckled at it thinking "ah, sucks for you being stuck editing endlessly," and now I am in that situation. I cannot afford a professional edit for 300k+ words, so, what is the best way to go about this yourself?

Of course, feedback I have gotten from this forum has helped give me a foundation to base corrections on and sharpen my eye to things that read funny. But, it seems no matter how much I edit I always find small errors or things I want to change. I have a few beta readers helping me catch mistakes, but most of them go at an extremely slow pace being that they are doing so at their free will.

For those for have published their work and not had the money for a full professional edit, at what point to you let it go as is ? At what point do you say "okay, this is the best I am going to get it with the time I have."

And of course, anyone who would be willing to take a look at some and offer an opinion is more than welcome! Send me a PM.

Thanks all. Peace.

 

[cupiscent]

My first piece of advice - from a very personal this-is-how-it-works-for-me angle! - is that you can't edit properly until you've finished the draft. Unless you know how it ends, how can you possibly ensure every scene in your novel is tipping the pace unerringly in the direction of that conclusion? How can you evoke themes, or set up triumphs, or seed irrevocable tragedies? And until you've ensured that all your big pieces are in place, any tinkering with little bits and pieces is, for my money, too soon. It's a little like tinkering around with a trowel when there is still heavy earthmoving work to be done - whatever you achieve might well be erased later. (Again, this is all heavily influenced by my working process - I'm sure there are people who work very effectively in totally different ways.)

For me, the big edits are about looking at what I have, deciding what it needs to be, and then making it happen - and mostly I hinge it off the ending. If I'm aiming for there, how do I get there in the most effective, amazing, enthralling and compelling way? If this is the story I want to tell, how do I tell it so hard it leaves emotional bruises?

Actually, Susan Dennard covers the my-novel-to-dream-novel edit process more eloquently than I could - and she has worksheets! Have a look at her "Revising Your Novel" section on this page and see if anything of her process can be useful for you.

 

[Fyle]

My first piece of advice - from a very personal this-is-how-it-works-for-me angle! - is that you can't edit properly until you've finished the draft. Unless you know how it ends, how can you possibly ensure every scene in your novel is tipping the pace unerringly in the direction of that conclusion? How can you evoke themes, or set up triumphs, or seed irrevocable tragedies? And until you've ensured that all your big pieces are in place, any tinkering with little bits and pieces is, for my money, too soon. It's a little like tinkering around with a trowel when there is still heavy earthmoving work to be done - whatever you achieve might well be erased later. (Again, this is all heavily influenced by my working process - I'm sure there are people who work very effectively in totally different ways.)

I mainly mean editing the more dry stuff, not making any plotline changes. Like comma splices, finding flat out misspells and typo errors, rewording phrases and speech tags.

I have stuff like "he began to pick up" which I need changed to "he picked up" or whatnot. Or editing out instances of the word was / were and inserting more interesting writing. Checking for common typos or misuses and fixing them like "wary" and weary" or "thought" and through." That kind of editing.

I do have a good enough idea how it will end. And out of my 3 major storylines, 2 are concluded. I'm an not in the dark plotwise, I just have to figure out some logistics.

 

[Caged Maiden]

The items you're mentioning above, "misspellings, word selection, revamping sentences" are just the recipe for being stuck in endless editing. When I looked at my seventh finished novel and was mid-way through writing my eighth, I began just what you are talking about. I tweaked little things, cleaned up a fair amount, and didn't touch the story at all in anything resembling a major way. It was how I learned what not to do, really. Here is an article I wrote for MS a while ago, but this is absolutely the best advice I could come up with after three years spent learning just how to self-edit.

Target Editing - A Time-Saving Strategy for Writers

The reason I recommend so wholly to follow a system like this, is a simple one. Why edit a sentence or paragraph that has no business being part of the finished work? I did that for a whole year, adjusting my descriptions to be more colorful, selecting words with the help of a thesaurus, trying to clarify my original ideas so the reader "got" me. It all turned out to be a waste of time because real editing is a much more complete process than what I was attempting.

Now, I'm not trying to discourage. I realize every writer starts from their own place and has to figure out what system is best for them. Imagine instead, we're all fishing, not writing. All I'm saying is, "Hey there fellow fisherman. I notice you're wading barefoot in this river and trying to catch the big fish who hide in the rapids over there. A few years ago, I was barefoot, balancing on those slippery rocks, and I fell in, broke both my legs, and basically spent a year recovering from the damage I did to myself. You're free to do whatever you like in this world, but it's my recommendation you build yourself a little bridge like I have, and sit above the rapids. In fact, come on over and share mine. I can't guarantee you're using the right kind of bait, or you'll have any better luck than I've had, but at least I can help you avoid a year of painful recovery."

I hope that makes sense. Editing is a process and the more you research, the more I think you'll see how essential is it. Basically, when I break it down in Target Editing, I show why spending time fixing little things is sort of like sanding out rust spots on a 1978 Gremlin that doesn't run. It might make it look a bit better, but at the end of the day, it's a broke-down old beater that no coat of paint is going to fix. You gotta replace the spark plugs, change the fuel filter that's clogged, rebuild the carbeurator, reattach the exhaust that's rusted through. Don't waste your money on paint when you could better spend it on getting the mechanical things working properly. (Okay, in my case, it was an '82 Eagle SX4, but still...darn AMC death traps!)

Okay, so that's my take on editing. However, right now in my writing journey, I've written a dozen full novels, deemed six of them not worth publishing in their current form EVER, and set another five aside for rewriting. That leaves one novel, which I think is my most promising, and it's about to be finished and be sent to a private editor. It'll cost me $800 to have the work done by a professional, but I simply cannot take this work any further on my own, even with an awesome support team of good writers who have beta read for me. Granted, part of that choice is simply that the story is twisty and subtle, my take on a historical fantasy with deep mystery elements, and I'm not sure I can ever be impartial enough to properly judge because i know what happens and all the story's secrets, but the other part of that decision is just that I am still green to a professional market. I think the book is easily as good as Wizard's First Rule or the handful of Forgotten Realms books I've read recently, or the books my idol, Ellen Kushner writes, but for some reason, I'm not getting fantastic reviews from betas. My point is, I'm just not sure whether it's ever going to be a home run unless I take it to a professional editor, even though I consider my own editing skills a hundred percent professional. I just can't be the final authority on my own novel.

Immerse or Die is a good site to google if you have concerns over what kinds of problems get books in trouble at their outsets, but he also talks about how editing is critical to the process and how presenting a novel in its best light either makes or breaks a writer's not only book/ series, but career.

I hope my article helps you to save time and not repeat my mistakes. I spent a whole year making little changes that overall didn't matter because the book needed a total rewrite. However, saying that, my whole advice spiel above is geared toward you transforming that particular novel into something publishable. if that's not your goal, then keep it in mind for the work you eventually deem publishable. For me, like I mentioned, it was my seventh novel. I've read multiple places that it takes a million words before a writer becomes good, and for me, it was about 1.5m. But everyone's different.

Best wishes.

 

[psychotick]

Hi,

Yeah editing is a pain and it's expensive. But it can't be avoided. I know there are some amazing writers who can edit their own work, but I'm not one of them and I don't know any who are. But the best way to do it for me is to do it in a cycle.

Start by finishing your book. You can't edit an unfinished work.

Then hit your computer prgramme editors. Set them to maximum sensitivity so that ninety percent of what they find is not an error at all, and simply go through every sentence they find a problem with. You'll find a lot of errors in your first pass that way, and you'll learn a lot about spotting them yourself.

Next hit your beta readers, one after another. Ask them to look not just for things that don't make sense but also any typos. And remember the most important comment a beta reader can make is "I don't understand." If they don't understand the chances are that it's not clear.

Do at least three or four passes through them, and hopefully each pass will get you closer to an edit ready ms.

Lastly, and this will kill you I assure you - get a text to voice programme and listen to your entire book. This picks up a huge variety of things nothing else does, mostly about pacing.

Then, it's finally time for the professional editor. These do cost, but if you've done everything above and you feel confident, you may be able to get away with a single pass through a professional. Because you're trying to save money - something I understand - this editor may only be a simple proof reader instead of a full bore story shredder. You just have to hope that your beta readers were good enough to spot plot holes and places where the story could have been sped up etc.

Hope that helps.

Cheers, Greg.

 

[Fyle]

I have not gotten a chance to properly reply, but i have been reading the responses！

They sound good, and detailed. Thanks！

 

[TWErvin2]

Edit in layers or multiple passes.

Edit for consistency of storyline (plot holes or plot lines that went nowhere), names/spellings/locations/seasons/time elapsed, etc. Also look at removing scenes, useless phrases, lines, paragraphs, descriptions etc.--streamline the narrative.

Edit for dialogue, making each character's voice unique, wording and phrasing of action, description, etc.

Edit for consistency of POV/Tense/Typos and Grammar Gaffs.

Each time you go through, correct what you see (like when doing dialogue, if you see a grammar goof, fix it then) and also take notes as you go of things to observe or fix in the next pass.

You can use text to speech programs to listen to the narrative. That will help you catch mistakes that reading will not.

You will need some time between passes, but not a lot, except for your final pass, but that will come as after you have completed your multiple passes, it's time for beta readers. You want to give them the absolute best quality you can produce, otherwise they'll end up focusing on concerns you could've fixed yourself instead of focusing on improving upon or identifying more subtle concerns.

Then, after looking at what the beta readers had to say, consider making those revisions based upon your vision of the story.

Then it'll need another pass.

Obviously with a 300,000 word epic, this all will take a lot of time. But writing a good novel does take time. Hopefully in the process you'll have trimmed it some. Most authors do.

I cannot speak to hiring an editor. My works have always had a publisher's editor (either with a magazine/ezine/anthology or novel length) but I can say an experienced editor can be beneficial to the final product.

That's my two cents. Good luck as you move forward.

 

[Fyle]

TWE, thank you.

That sounds like solid advice. If I had the funds I would hire an editor in a heartbeat of course. Just too pricy and partically editing seems off beat somehow.

I have been doing most of what you mention, but you wrapped up all the the advice in one neat little package.

The hardest thing for me in making sure timelines coincide.

 

[Chessie]

Hi Fyle, there's some good books on Amazon about self-editing. I've been slowly reading "Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, Second Edition: How to Edit Yourself Into Print" by Renni Browne and Dave King. There's also one by James Scott Bell which came highly recommended but I haven't read it yet. Just another couple things you can look into. Best of luck.

 

[PaulineMRoss]

I agree with those who say: first, finish the book; and second, work on the big, plot-level edits first. Don't worry about individual words and sentences until you're sure that some version of them is going to stay.

One comment: 320K is a BIG book. My first was 220K and it was, to be honest, too big. If I'd had infinite time available to me, I'd have rewritten it from scratch and cut it down by half. By I didn't, so I simply polished it up and put it out there. But you could consider whether it truly needs to be that big, or whether it could be cut down somewhat or split into two or three parts (a triliogy! how traditional). Such a big book makes editing much more complex.

My advice would be to get at least the first few chapters critiqued, which costs you nothing. An online critique group gives you access to a wide range of other authors who will go over every word of your work. Some will pick up plot and character-related issues, some will get into the nitty-gritty of word choice. All of it will give you good ideas to apply to the whole book. You have to do some critiques in return, but that's a learning experience, too. My favourite online critique group is Scribophile, but there are others out there, and it's worth trying a few to find the one that suits you best.

You're right that there comes a point where you do just have to let it go, but there are lots of ways to polish up a book before publication that cost little to nothing. I do think it's vital to have other eyes look it over first. Critique groups for chapter level issues, beta readers or structural editors for whole-book issues and a final pass with a proofreader for typos.

Good luck with it. I don't know whether you plan to self-publish, but if you do, pop over to the Kboards Writers' Cafe for the best advice from people who've done it before.

 

[ThinkerX]

Edit in layers or multiple passes.

Edit for consistency of storyline (plot holes or plot lines that went nowhere), names/spellings/locations/seasons/time elapsed, etc. Also look at removing scenes, useless phrases, lines, paragraphs, descriptions etc.--streamline the narrative.

Edit for dialogue, making each character's voice unique, wording and phrasing of action, description, etc.

Edit for consistency of POV/Tense/Typos and Grammar Gaffs.

THIS.

I used to think the first version of 'Labyrinth' was pretty good, apart from some grammar and minor plot issues. Then I took a hard look at it, and saw a lot of unnecessary fighting and pointless roaming around, and a lot of telling in places where I should have been showing.

So I did a rewrite, cutting vast swaths of the first version and adding piles of new material to plug the big plot holes.

Now, I'm nearing the end of a second rewrite, focusing on clearing up the little plot holes, adding characterization, and fixing the really major grammar bugs. (NaNoWriMo is a break from this.)

Next time I focus on the grammar. Not being a grammar whiz, I'll have to rely on some editing programs, and since those are far from perfect, well...

 

[Fyle]

I agree with those who say: first, finish the book; and second, work on the big, plot-level edits first. Don't worry about individual words and sentences until you're sure that some version of them is going to stay.

One comment: 320K is a BIG book. My first was 220K and it was, to be honest, too big. If I'd had infinite time available to me, I'd have rewritten it from scratch and cut it down by half. By I didn't, so I simply polished it up and put it out there. But you could consider whether it truly needs to be that big, or whether it could be cut down somewhat or split into two or three parts (a triliogy! how traditional). Such a big book makes editing much more complex.

My advice would be to get at least the first few chapters critiqued, which costs you nothing. An online critique group gives you access to a wide range of other authors who will go over every word of your work. Some will pick up plot and character-related issues, some will get into the nitty-gritty of word choice. All of it will give you good ideas to apply to the whole book. You have to do some critiques in return, but that's a learning experience, too. My favourite online critique group is Scribophile, but there are others out there, and it's worth trying a few to find the one that suits you best.

I am on the last chapter, so the story is finished in my head. I am editing things that will not change no matter what and story lines that are finished and cannot/will not change no matter what the outcome of the last chapter is... so I think the not editing until the book is finished depends on the story and how much the author knows where they want it to go.

Ya, 320k is pretty big, but seems as if everything is in order. I have had at least 10 people read "a few" chapters and I have one reader on 31 or 56 (just as a favor she is doing), another reader on chapter 18 (as a favor) and a critique partner on chapter 18. When I say a favor I do not mean friends, total internet strangers (nice strangers at that lol).

I have already made a few logical changes based on their advice and logical errors I have missed. Overall feedback has been good. Many people telling me "I don't like fantasy, but I did like this!" which is nice to hear. Also, people saying they wanna see what comes next. When it is completed an formatted into a pfd i will seek beta readers. I can hardly do an exchange cause I have a kid on the way in 2 weeks, so, no time even reader another's work unfortunately (except the one I am doing).

Thank you so much for the response! Thats what i was thinking at the moment.