Writer’s Workshop Chicago 2018 – Notes on Editing

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
  • The Joy of Editing
• Three Stages of Editing, in Questions – Lori Rader-Day, author of The Black Hour and Little Pretty Things
  • Three Stages of Editing

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

1. Plotter – let go of the plan.
2. Pantser – Reverse outline your novel
3. Plot and themes – write the back jacket before you even start the novel
4. 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%
5. The full manuscript – It’s hard to know what your novel is about until you’ve written the book
6. Time – leave your manuscript between revisions – imagine your novel was written by someone else – someone you don’t like or really don’t know
7. Other people – critiquing, novel swaps, join a writing group