Below are notes from the Writer’s Workshop 2018 talks on editing:
- The Joy of Self-Editing: How to Hit Delete Before Your Editor Does Editing – Cynthia Ruchti
- Three Stages of Editing, in Questions – Lori Rader-Day, author of The Black Hour and Little Pretty Things
Sam’s Notes:
Your novel is a work in progress
- Goal – connect to the reader at an emotional level
- Structural edit – I don’t understand the plot
- Line edit – I don’t understand this line
- Copy edit – how did you misspell your name
Revision – see your story as if it was someone else reading – someone you don’t like
- You need to look at it as if a stranger wrote it
Stages of editing
- Pre-publication – It’s all about you and with the first novel you have all the time you need
- Connect with other writers and get their help – help each other
- Pay a pro – story issues – developmental editor
- Agent searching
- Agents may send R&R (revise and resubmit) – they are interested but send suggestions for changes that are needed first
- Or, the agent may sign you, but suggest edits
- Edit letter – contract signed –
- Editor notes
- Copy edits
- Nitpicky things
- Proof reading
- Very nitpicky
- Page proofs
- Errors can sneak in – this is the last time Lori will ever read the novel again.
- Post-publication
- Fix the errors that slipped through
Important that you are the best editor of your stuff
High Level/Macro check list:
- Are there too many characters?
- Are all these scenes needed?
- Time is your on- your side?
- Write in scene – is something happen in the location
7 hacks (tools) for self-editing
- Plotter – let go of the plan.
- Pantser – Reverse outline your novel
- Plot and themes – write the back jacket before you even start the novel
- Pacing and reader interest – look for scenes that are only back story
- Be in a scene, in a place, doing things
- Don’t have one character alone, thinking
- Save backstory for the second chapter
- Act as if someone will publish your novel, but it has to be reduced by 10%
- The full manuscript – It’s hard to know what your novel is about until you’ve written the book
- Time – leave your manuscript between revisions – imagine your novel was written by someone else – someone you don’t like or really don’t know
- Other people – critiquing, novel swaps, join a writing group