How Do You Keep From Over-editing?

[Xaysai]

I've been in sales all my life, and am currently a Regional Sales Manager for a large banking institution.

I've devoted the former part of my life to learning how to sell: determining exactly what words are effective and how best to use them? Do I talk fast? Or do I talk slow? How do I stand? Where do I stand? How do I hold the product? Do I hand them the product? How do I present it? How do I inflect my voice? When do I close the sale? And do I close it hard or soft? Early or late? When do I smile and nod? When shouldn't I? When is it appropriate to insert a joke? When is it not?

And I am devoting the latter part of life to training other people in how to do it, but it has it's own learning curve. How do people learn? Visual? Tactile? How does everyone receive feedback and what language do they respond best to?

While writing, I'm finding that I edit, then edit again, then re-edit again trying to make sure that every word is perfectly placed into the perfect sentence as if a single wrong word is the difference between a million dollar deal or a not-million dollar deal.

Oh, then I re-edit again...just to be sure.

I feel like the perfection I rely on in my personal life bleeds over into a realm which I have far, far less mastery over and I think that a lack of confidence in my writing might be at fault.

Are there any other over-editors out there? And how do you STOP!

 

[saellys]

ME. Can we start Over-Editor's Anonymous?

I love going back and re-reading my stuff, and every single time I do I find something I can change. Human beings are always changing, and writing skills are always being sharpened, so it stands to reason that if you're a slightly different writer than you were when you first wrote a piece, you'll feel led to alter a word here or a description there.

And even when I think I have a passage as good as I can possibly make it, I hand it off to someone else and they find some nuance I completely missed in all my revisions, which just goes to show that an extra pair of eyes is really important. My husband looked at one of the scenes I posted over in Showcase and pointed out a line that seemed vaguely out of character for the protagonist, which is remarkable in itself since that was all he'd read of the protagonist's voice thus far, and it was something I almost certainly never would have caught.

Writing is never finished, just abandoned--or, to put it more romantically, set free. There comes a point when you tell yourself you've done everything you can for a piece and you let it go out into the world (or at least to a beta reader). When you read it again in ten years, or six months, or thirty minutes, you'll probably find a bunch of stuff you could change, but the important thing is that you're proud of the work as a whole.

Now, I'm off to go edit a chapter for the umpteenth time!

 

[CupofJoe]

"Dans ses écrits, un sàge Italien Dit que le mieux est l'ennemi du bien." *
On a mechanical level. each time I make revisions I make a separate set of documents and work on them. That is so when I kill a story by over editing [which I always do] I can go back and start again quickly. It also means that I can try several approaches to revisions [make it faster / darker / warmer...] and see what looks best.

The problem is that even a 5000 word short can end up 500Mb and 50 directories on my hard-disk...
* "In his writings, a wise Italian says that the best is the enemy of the good"

 

[Anders Ämting]

...I always assumed you should just get the story to where you feel that it feels finished. Then, if the publisher/agent you send it to likes it but thinks it needs more editing, you edit it accordingly, or you don't get published.

What makes you think you are the one who gets to decide when the story is good enough?

 

[Xaysai]

...I always assumed you should just get the story to where you feel that it feels finished. Then, if the publisher/agent you send it to likes it but thinks it needs more editing, you edit it accordingly, or you don't get published.

What makes you think you are the one who gets to decide when the story is good enough?

For me it's not about the story, it's about the experience. It's about delivering the best possible story for the people who take the time to read my work.

So tonight I am working to edit some writing and I come across this:

Several guards yelled and pushed survivors into a line against a wall for questioning, while another delivered a vicious baton blow to the head of a grieving mother who refused to stop lovingly cradling the body of her dead son only to have her limp body cast into a heap on the meat wagon on top of that of her son.

First I think, "ok, can this be two sentences?"

Several guards yelled and shoved survivors into a line against a wall for questioning. Another delivered a vicious baton blow to the head of a grieving mother who refused to stop lovingly cradling the body of her dead son, only to have her limp body cast into a heap on the meat wagon on top of that of her son.

"Ok, do I need the word 'lovingly'? Of course she loves him or she wouldn't be cradling his dead body!"

Several guards yelled and shoved survivors into a line against a wall for questioning. Another delivered a vicious baton blow to the head of a grieving mother who refused to stop cradling the body of her dead son, only to have her limp body cast into a heap on the meat wagon on top of that of her son.

"On no! I used the word 'body' and 'son' twice in the same sentence - not gonna work!"

Several guards yelled and shoved survivors into a line against a wall for questioning. Another delivered a vicious baton blow to the head of a grieving mother who refused to stop cradling the body of her dead son, only to have her corpse cast into a heap on the meat wagon on top his.

"Meh, the ending of the last sentence is still wonky!"

Several guards yelled and shoved survivors into a line against a wall for questioning. Another delivered a vicious baton blow to the head of a grieving mother who refused to stop cradling the body of her dead son, only to have her corpse cast onto the meatwagon heap, directly on top of his.

"Yay! Sorta of happy with the paragraph! Onto the next one! Calculations show that at my current rate, my book will be finished in 235 years!"

 

[Kevin O. McLaughlin]

Now see, I would have broken that sentence down differently, but where and how much you break it depends upon the effect you are trying to build. Long sentences with lots of description slow the reader down, implying a slower pace to the scene. Shorter, even staccato sentence structures speed the scene up and work better for fast action.

But this is the sort of thing you learn to put into your first drafts, given enough time, and there was nothing inherently WRONG with the original sentence. Just a bit long and would slow the scene down (which might be good or might not).

As a rule, I don't edit the way you describe. At all. I let beta readers at a story, and have them tell me where it fell flat or didn't ring true for them, after which I look at their thoughts and maybe tweak some scenes to make them work as intended. Then I get the story proofread. Then I publish it or submit it to a publisher. Period.

The way you avoid over editing is...don't edit. Editing is something you do after getting outside feedback on the story. Any other sort of editing risks doing more harm than good, especially for newer writers.

 

[Xaysai]

Now see, I would have broken that sentence down differently, but where and how much you break it depends upon the effect you are trying to build. Long sentences with lots of description slow the reader down, implying a slower pace to the scene. Shorter, even staccato sentence structures speed the scene up and work better for fast action.

But this is the sort of thing you learn to put into your first drafts, given enough time, and there was nothing inherently WRONG with the original sentence. Just a bit long and would slow the scene down (which might be good or might not).

As a rule, I don't edit the way you describe. At all. I let beta readers at a story, and have them tell me where it fell flat or didn't ring true for them, after which I look at their thoughts and maybe tweak some scenes to make them work as intended. Then I get the story proofread. Then I publish it or submit it to a publisher. Period.

The way you avoid over editing is...don't edit. Editing is something you do after getting outside feedback on the story. Any other sort of editing risks doing more harm than good, especially for newer writers.

Kevin, thank you for the feedback.

Maybe when I write chapter 2, I will just write it and get feedback on it before touching it.

I think I need to work on how I write because I generally write 2-3 good ideas as paragraphs or good "lines" and put in items i want to add between them to advance the story in brackets...

[character crosses the river and gets attacked by crocodiles]

...because I am not ready to write the scene, but I know that's what I want to have in that spot in the story.

I can't seem to just sit down and write a story in anything close to the form that the reader will end up reading it in.

 

[saellys]

The way you avoid over editing is...don't edit. Editing is something you do after getting outside feedback on the story. Any other sort of editing risks doing more harm than good, especially for newer writers.

Don't get me wrong--I believe the first draft is supposed to be pure as the driven snow and written from the heart and all that, but I also believe that editing is something you do so the task you give your beta readers is not completely overwhelming. In Xaysai's example, his edits made a long, description-heavy and unwieldy sentence into one that was concise and elegant, which means his beta readers don't have to suggest ways for him to pare it down before they can address any issues they might have with content or continuity or some other facet of the story.

If you see those problems and recognize them as problems, why wouldn't you fix them in advance? Okay, you might run the risk of deleting something raw and true, but if you have any doubts, keep it and let someone else decide. I mentioned the line that my husband told me to remove because it was out of character; it's still up in the passage I posted over in Showcase. It was a comparison between a bountiful countryside and a Valhalla-esque paradise. I liked that line. It had been there since the very first draft, before I made any of my edits. I planned to keep it, but it was wrong, and fortunately my beta reader caught it. That's what they're for.

Also, some beta readers give general ideas for improvements, some focus on characterization, some get down to the nitty gritty details of every single sentence, and a handful do all of that and are worth their weight in Hugos. Unless you have a good balance of all of those, you'll be deficient in one area or another when it comes to outside opinions.

As writers, we're our own alpha readers, and we should be able to take a step back and look objectively (not always with success, obviously) at our work. Change word choices, break up sentences, consolidate metaphors and similes so they're as powerful as we can make them in as short a space as possible. Oftentimes that requires an extra pass, or more, before giving it to someone else. And if you only do one edit between beta readers and proofreading/submission, you need to make sure the version you send your beta readers is as good as you can make it on your own. Whether you're a new writer or not should make no difference. As long as you can assess what you're trying to convey in a passage or a sentence or a certain word, you can double-check to make sure that's what really comes across, and if it doesn't, you should fix it.

 

[Penpilot]

Making sure every word is what you want and doing the work you desire can be good. The desire for perfection is a double edge sword so be careful.

But let me ask you, have you finished the first draft to this story? If the answer is No, then one of my suggestions is don't edit before you get the whole story done. Initially, getting the first draft done is more important than editing.

As you're writing a story, you learn more and more about it. SO if you're editing an unfinshed draft then it's something akin to trying to pick the wallpaper and furniture for a house that's still on the drawing board. Chances are things will change and that twenty foot couch may no longer fit in the living room because the plans changed during construction so the living room is smaller now. So all that effort picking the couch was wasted.

If you do have the first draft done, then it's becomes about what you're trying to convey with a sentence. You want to convey the most with as few words as you can. A good example of this in your sample is when you had that issue with whether you should take out 'lovingly'. Whether you keep it or not depends on what you want to emphasise. The more words there are the more the more the power of the words get diluted. It's like when you tell someone to F-Off. It's straight and to the point vs. saying take a flying leap off a cliff and F-Off while bleeding death. The straight power of telling someone to F-Off get's lost in all the words.

Several guards yelled and shoved survivors into a line against a wall for questioning. Another delivered a vicious baton blow to the head of a grieving mother who refused to stop cradling the body of her dead son, only to have her corpse cast onto the meatwagon heap, directly on top of his.

If you'll excuse me for stepping to your kitchen for a moment. Without knowing the whole context to this bit of story, IMHO there's a little too much detail that's drawing away from what I think are the really powerful images. For example, the mother's refusal to let go. I think that 'refusal' could be removed. Also the reader doesn't need to be told a baton blow to the head of a mother cradling their dead son is vicious. By the description, it's vicious already.

If it were my paragraph, which it isn't, I think I would trim it into this form. It's 37 words vs 53 words. This not the only way or even the right way, but rather my example of a way you could trim it and focus in on, what I thought, were the impactful images: the yelling guards, the mom cradling her son getting cracked in the head, and her body getting tossed on top of his. To me, it's more straight to the point. But again, it's what I interpreted to be the point, which may not necessarily be the same as what you think it is.

Yelling guards shoved survivors against a wall for questioning. One delivered a baton blow to the head of a grieving mother cradling her dead son, her corpse then cast onto the meatwagon heap, on top of his.

But back to the over-editing question. For myself, I know when I'm over thinking things when I take a word out one day and then replace it the next. The instant that happens I know I'm too close to the chapter/scene to be objective about it, so it's time to move on and either get a critique on it or let it rest and comeback later fresh.

 

[Kevin O. McLaughlin]

Don't get me wrong--I believe the first draft is supposed to be pure as the driven snow and written from the heart and all that,

I'm never really concerned about first drafts being pure as driven snow.

I'm much more concerned with first drafts being a decent, readable story.

In fact, if my first draft ISN'T an enjoyable, readable story, then I've screwed up pretty badly somewhere along the line. Hasn't happened for quite a few years now, thank goodness.

If you see those problems and recognize them as problems, why wouldn't you fix them in advance?

No reason not to. If you are reading through and see something clearly messy, clean it up, sure. But the idea of going line by line, analyzing each sentence to see if you can tweak it into something else? And then doing that over and over? Yikes! That's either a disaster waiting to happen (because you're screwing up what's good in your writing), or it's a huge waste of time (because if you spend, say, five hundred hours going over the work like that, that is 500,000 new words you could have written - which is how you learn to write good stories in the first place).

Many experienced writers give their work a solid once-over. Stephen King says that he does. But that's a ONCE over, reading the manuscript and making notes on changes you intend to make. Then you type them in. Then you publish or submit.

Other experienced writers simply write the thing and submit it. John Scalzi uses that route. Yes - the president of SFWA talks on his blog about how he does not revise.

The bottom line is that storytelling always happens best in creative mode, not in critical mode. ALWAYS. Unless you can edit in creative mode (which is often accomplished by redrafting, i.e. type the whole story over again; it's harder but not impossible to revise in creative mode), your self edits are as likely to be destructive as constructive, unless you are very, very lucky or very, very good.

 

[BWFoster78]

The bottom line is that storytelling always happens best in creative mode, not in critical mode. ALWAYS.

Sorry. I just don't buy this at all. You seem to be saying that you can only create art if you don't think about it too much. I have no words to express how silly that sounds to me.

My writing is made much better by going back and asking questions of my "creative" first draft:

1. What is this scene supposed to accomplish?
2. Am I accomplishing it?
3. How can I utilize my knowledge of writing techniques to make it better?

For me, storytelling is greatly enhanced by taking a step back and analyzing the work.

 

[Xaysai]

Making sure every word is what you want and doing the work you desire can be good. The desire for perfection is a double edge sword so be careful.

But let me ask you, have you finished the first draft to this story? If the answer is No, then one of my suggestions is don't edit before you get the whole story done. Initially, getting the first draft done is more important than editing.

As you're writing a story, you learn more and more about it. SO if you're editing an unfinshed draft then it's something akin to trying to pick the wallpaper and furniture for a house that's still on the drawing board. Chances are things will change and that twenty foot couch may no longer fit in the living room because the plans changed during construction so the living room is smaller now. So all that effort picking the couch was wasted.

If you do have the first draft done, then it's becomes about what you're trying to convey with a sentence. You want to convey the most with as few words as you can. A good example of this in your sample is when you had that issue with whether you should take out 'lovingly'. Whether you keep it or not depends on what you want to emphasise. The more words there are the more the more the power of the words get diluted. It's like when you tell someone to F-Off. It's straight and to the point vs. saying take a flying leap off a cliff and F-Off while bleeding death. The straight power of telling someone to F-Off get's lost in all the words.





If you'll excuse me for stepping to your kitchen for a moment. Without knowing the whole context to this bit of story, IMHO there's a little too much detail that's drawing away from what I think are the really powerful images. For example, the mother's refusal to let go. I think that 'refusal' could be removed. Also the reader doesn't need to be told a baton blow to the head of a mother cradling their dead son is vicious. By the description, it's vicious already.

If it were my paragraph, which it isn't, I think I would trim it into this form. It's 37 words vs 53 words. This not the only way or even the right way, but rather my example of a way you could trim it and focus in on, what I thought, were the impactful images: the yelling guards, the mom cradling her son getting cracked in the head, and her body getting tossed on top of his. To me, it's more straight to the point. But again, it's what I interpreted to be the point, which may not necessarily be the same as what you think it is.



But back to the over-editing question. For myself, I know when I'm over thinking things when I take a word out one day and then replace it the next. The instant that happens I know I'm too close to the chapter/scene to be objective about it, so it's time to move on and either get a critique on it or let it rest and comeback later fresh.

Nope, the paragraph you created is perfect!

See, I needed to edit/revise it MORE!

 

[saellys]

I'm much more concerned with first drafts being a decent, readable story.

In fact, if my first draft ISN'T an enjoyable, readable story, then I've screwed up pretty badly somewhere along the line. Hasn't happened for quite a few years now, thank goodness.

...

Other experienced writers simply write the thing and submit it. John Scalzi uses that route. Yes - the president of SFWA talks on his blog about how he does not revise.

The bottom line is that storytelling always happens best in creative mode, not in critical mode. ALWAYS. Unless you can edit in creative mode (which is often accomplished by redrafting, i.e. type the whole story over again; it's harder but not impossible to revise in creative mode), your self edits are as likely to be destructive as constructive, unless you are very, very lucky or very, very good.

As someone who was taught from the beginning that revision is part of the writing process, I can't get my head around this mentality. A first draft isn't supposed to be the finished story, and maybe not even an enjoyable, readable story--that's why it's a first draft. I would not dream of sending the first draft of Camlann to beta readers. There's too much that needs to change.

As for constructive vs. destructive, I frequently notice places during my revisions where something didn't make it out of my mind and into the story, so I add it. It's not always about paring down and making things concise, though that is a pleasant result.

 

[Kevin O. McLaughlin]

As someone who was taught from the beginning that revision is part of the writing process, I can't get my head around this mentality. A first draft isn't supposed to be the finished story, and maybe not even an enjoyable, readable story--that's why it's a first draft. I would not dream of sending the first draft of Camlann to beta readers. There's too much that needs to change.

Maybe this is a difference between people who began writing on typewriters and people who began writing on computers? When I started writing (on an old manual typewriter, back in the 70s), the idea of revising a work over and over was sort of anathema. It wasn't until computers started making revision easy that people were told to revise their work over and over (again, mostly by college professors who found grading fewer English papers easier - this is the source of the "revise multiple times" theory of writing).

I'm also all for reDRAFTING a story. First draft and second draft are fine, because each *draft* is rewritten from scratch - you are literally typing each draft anew, which engages the creative mind. Most people don't redraft though. They only write one draft, then revise that one draft.

If you're just tweaking a single draft, then you're revising, not redrafting. And therefore your "first draft" is really your only draft.

That's OK too. Nothing wrong with being a one draft writer. Where the fallacy exists is in assuming that revising a draft always makes it better. Now here's a statement that will make some waves, I am sure:

There is NO evidence that revision improves stories.

Understand, there's no evidence that it doesn't improve stories. This is one of the most highly debated topics in writing. But there seem to be about as many highly successful "don't revise" storytellers as there are "revision-style" writers.

So does revision work? Does it help?

My guess is...probably. For some writers. And for others, it probably damages the work rather than improving it. Every writer is different, and for some peoples' process, revision probably has merit. For others, redrafting is the way to go. For others, no revision or redrafting is necessary.

 

[Leif Notae]

There is NO evidence that revision improves stories.

There is evidence, and that is why the editing process happens. This is why self-editing can be a trap while professional editors can shake you out of tunnel vision. I know plenty of people who had horrible first drafts, and editors helped them insert and improve scenes that weren't even there.

On topic: There is something to be said about the 80% rule. The stretch to get form 0-80% is easy, the stretch from getting from 80-100% is the hardest. And you will never get to 100%. (An axiom I borrowed from internet marketers, still applies to any craft).

You will always come across a different technique and your voice might change two books later, but you are where you are at now and there is no reason to hold it back to acquire something you might or might not find.

So, edit what you can, but don't strive for "perfection". Whenever you do that, you shun the perfect.

 

[Kevin O. McLaughlin]

There is evidence, and that is why the editing process happens. This is why self-editing can be a trap while professional editors can shake you out of tunnel vision. I know plenty of people who had horrible first drafts, and editors helped them insert and improve scenes that weren't even there.

On topic: There is something to be said about the 80% rule. The stretch to get form 0-80% is easy, the stretch from getting from 80-100% is the hardest. And you will never get to 100%. (An axiom I borrowed from internet marketers, still applies to any craft).

You will always come across a different technique and your voice might change two books later, but you are where you are at now and there is no reason to hold it back to acquire something you might or might not find.

So, edit what you can, but don't strive for "perfection". Whenever you do that, you shun the perfect.

Leif, good point. In that quote, what I was thinking of was "revision without outside guidance". In other words, the tendency of some writers to revise a work over and over rather than actually send it out (either to an editor they hire prior to indie publishing it, or to an editor at a publishing company that can buy rights to the work, whichever).

As to the rest... Hopefully, we all improve over time as we write more words! And if we do, that means if we go back over something we wrote last year, there will always be things we can improve about it. That will be as true a decade from now as it is today, so you can literally spend FOREVER "making a work better", assuming you're also writing enough new work for your skills to improve over time.

My take is, write the work. Do some cleanup if you must before sending it out. Then get another set of eyes on the book! Get feedback. Examine the feedback. Apply the bits you feel are valid. Then publish (or send it back to the editor, if you're working with a publisher).

Your mileage may vary.