A to Z: Editing Fiction - You Need Other Eyes

2017 THEME: Editing Fiction (Because that's what I'm in the middle of doing.)

What is the Blogging from A to Z challenge and where can I find more participants? Right here.


You can't do this editing thing all by yourself. Ok, you can, but please don't.

As I've said before this month, you know your story. It came from your head. Of course you know it. You know what everyone looks like, where they are, and why the doing whatever you made them do. But have you conveyed all that in a way your readers will understand?

The only way you'll know, is letting someone else read it. And I don't mean by publishing it. That's easy to do these days, but that doesn't mean you should.

Find a two or three or handful of other people you trust to tell you truth. They don't need to be brutal about it, but you do need them to be honest. This could be some friends that do a lot of reading, a friend or co-worker's parent that was an English teacher, a college student with some sort of English major, or better yet, a local writer's group or online critique group. There's no one more willing to pick apart your words than other writers.

What do you do when you do get that feedback you were looking for (through the hands over your eyes)? You read through it. Don't rush off to change anything major. Sure, fix the typos and obvious grammatical errors. Fix the things you totally agree with. Because the words "Holy crap, how did I miss that?" will very likely come from your lips at least once, if not several times.

Now, the other stuff, the things that may require you to make major changes:

• Do they feel right for your story/voice/plot/genre?
• Did more than one person point out the same area as a problem?
• Do you respect that person's opinion/knowledge enough to trust that they are possibly right?

Whatever you decide, remember that the opinions of readers vary widely. The thing someone hates, might be the exact same thing another reader loves (true story, many more times than once). Give suggestions due thought (nothing beats sleeping on them a night or two for clarity) and change what feels right to you. You are the author. These are suggestions.

On the other hand, there may stuff that makes you never talk to them again/quit writing forever/want to throw things/run off and write an angry response over. Don't do any of that. Just think about it, and for the love of all that's holy, don't say anything but a polite, "Thank you for your help".

Give that stuff a few days to settle into your mind and then go through what they said again with some criteria in mind.

• Where they just being cruel for the hell of it or, more likely, helpful but maybe phrased more boldly than you're used to?
• Does this person read/write your genre and is what they suggest inline with that?
• Is this person more experienced than you was perhaps frustrated that you don't know what POV is or that your dialogue punctuation was all wrong, or that you didn't bother to fix any typos?

Most people, even other writers who like to beat up your words, are doing so to be helpful. Take a step back, use what advice speaks to you and say thank you for the rest. All of this is good practice for working with a paid editor, either one you contract or from your publisher.

Do you prefer beta readers, critique groups, or friends to read for you?

A to Z: Editing Fiction - The Story of Xander

2017 THEME: Editing Fiction (Because that's what I'm in the middle of doing.)

What is the Blogging from A to Z challenge and where can I find more participants? Right here.


The tale of Xander: Not everything that gets cut is a lost cause. Yes, you caught me, I'm using Xander for another year, but he's appropriate to the conversation, so bear with me.

Just because you have to cut a scene, a thing, a character, chapter, beginning, prologue, etc, doesn't mean it's gone forever. We've already covered keeping that sacred 'fall back' first draft, but really, everything you write is a learning experience. You're getting better, stretching your mind and creativity, perhaps trying something new. That new thing just might not have a place in this particular story.

So what to do with all that stuff that ends up on the cutting room floor?

Well, those ugly scenes, toss those. In re-writing them, you've already learned why they didn't work and how to fix/prevent them in future stories.

Characters? Keep them in a file. You never know when you might need to revive one and toss them back into play. That's where Xander comes in. He was cut when two characters were combined to create the same character development experience for the MC. When it came time to write Chain of Grey, the sequel to Trust, I found a spot for him, altered a bit, but he was happily back in action.

Stuff, like bits of technology, magic spells, races, entire scenes, songs, history of your world, etc, maybe they'd fit somewhere else, like a short story based in the same world, a sequel, or blog posts when you're ready to market your soon-to-be published book. Maybe they'll spark another story entirely and launch you into your next project.

Or maybe those bits are just a learning experience. No words are wasted words. Unless you're really drunk. Then literally, yes.

Do you recycle some discarded words or toss them all away?

A to Z: Editing Fiction - What my process looks like

2017 THEME: Editing Fiction (Because that's what I'm in the middle of doing.)

What is the Blogging from A to Z challenge and where can I find more participants? Right here.


After nearly a month of posts on editing, I figured I should share What my process looks like.

(If I haven't visited you lately, I'm not ignoring you, I'm just running behind. I will get there.)

Your process should be whatever works best for you. Here's how I roll.

1. Finish the first draft.
2. Read the messy draft on the screen and highlight the especially crappy parts in red. Fix the obvious typos and formatting errors because they greatly distract me when doing full reads.
3. Let the draft sit for a couple days while I work on something else or take a little time off of writing - which I'm not really, my mind is mulling over what to do about those red bits.
4. Sit down and conquer the stuff in red - those are the ugly scenes, the parts where the voice needs adjusting to match the one at the end that I likely wrote months or a year(s) later, filler scenes, missing transitions, major timeline issues, anything blatantly sucks.
5. Then I take a deep breath, get my notebook and pen and read through the second draft. Jot down everything else that jumps out at me that needs fixing, while also noting character/setting details and the timeline.
6. Fix those things I noted and make sure the details match up throughout.
7. Take a break and work on something else - usually a critique of someone else's novel or read a book or three.
8. With sort of fresh eyes, read through the whole thing again, filling out that after-the-fact outline we talked about as I go. This outline is also what I use later to make my synopsis for submissions and back cover blurbs. Yay dual purpose!
9. Take a close look at that outline and fix any pacing and plot problems that became clear. Add to the setting and character descriptions as necessary - keeping in mind any word count constraints.
10. Send it off to one or more other people to read (or my critique group) and work something else writing related to keep my mind off whatever red-ink-covered feedback they are surely compiling.
11. Take a bracing drink and start fixing all the obvious things the reader(s) pointed out and ponder the suggestions I might not readily agree with.
12. If there were a lot of major changes overall, or important scenes /character actions that were altered, I may send off the whole thing or sections to a few more sets of eyeballs for another round of please-beat-up-my-story to verify I've properly adjusted those parts.
13. Run the whole darn thing through Grammarly to catch wrong or missing punctuation, missing words, wrong words and a host of other little word issues. Don't believe everything it tells you, but it's a good tool, regardless.
14. Print out the story and have my computer read it to me, making notes of typos (OMG, they still exist), phrasing and flow problem areas, missing/wrong words, and anything else that bland pseudo-human voice reveals.
15. Fix all that, then close the damned file and swear not to look at it until it goes to print because I'm so sick of it. *
16. Have a celebratory drink and go to bed...where you dream up your next story and the process starts all over.

*laugh insanely because you know, deep inside, you'll be getting feedback from an editor who will insist you go through much of this process all over again. Oh, and they'll still find typos.

How long does this process take? That totally depends on the novel and the speed at which your critique partners/beta readers get back to you. For The Last God, having gone through this process several times now:
November - January - write the complete crappy draft.
Spend most of February and March on steps 2-4
At the end of March, I sent it off to a beta reader.
Mid April I fixed the issues they pointed out and sent it off to three trusted critique partners I know will rip into the story with gusto.
Meanwhile, I'm keeping my mind off their impending feedback by blogging A to Z. Conveniently timed, wouldn't you say? Like I planned this...

Do you use any spiffy editing programs that you'd recommend?

A to Z: Editing Fiction - Voice

2017 THEME: Editing Fiction (Because that's what I'm in the middle of doing.)

What is the Blogging from A to Z challenge and where can I find more participants? Right here.


The Voice of your story can make up for a host of downfalls. Take the time to get to know what your voice is, what makes the way your tell your story different. It might be the word choice, phrasing, sentence structures, certain themes, how your characters talk or any number of other things. Make sure whatever your doing fits the mood of the story itself while still being you.

For instance, you might favor short punchy sentences or longer, eloquent ones.  Do you use a lot of big words, slang, or easy middle-of-the-road words? You may have more detailed descriptions. Maybe you're fond of lots of subplots. There might be scant character description or you have a minimalist approach to writing overall.

If you write a series, you'll want to make sure the character's voice remains consistent in each book, even though you might write them six months or a year apart.

Take a close look at the voice of your main character(s) at the beginning of the story, the middle, and the end. Do they sound like the same person. Yes, they've probably grown and changed a little, but they are still the same general person.

This is also true for those stories you start and then they sit on your hard drive for six years before you pick them back up and finish them. Odds are you'll need to do some character voice adjustments to make the beginning and end voices match up.

Same goes for your own voice in the case of that old story newly finished. We grow as writers over time. Hopefully we're learning things along they way, tweaking our style, picking up little things from books we're reading. Thy way you told a story, your author voice, six years ago, probably isn't the same one you have now.

I've read many a story that I had issues with, but I enjoyed the voice enough to keep reading to the end. Make sure you take the time to polish yours.

Have you read a story based solely on a great voice?

A ot Z: Editing Fiction - Ugly Bits

2017 THEME: Editing Fiction (Because that's what I'm in the middle of doing.)

What is the Blogging from A to Z challenge and where can I find more participants? Right here.


Maybe you're awesome, but the rest of us have first drafts with Ugly bits. You know that scene, the one that bridges two other scenes you really enjoyed writing? The one you sort of rushed through, telling yourself that you'd fix it later? Guess what...that time is now.

I often find these ugly scenes a pain in the ass to deal with. I didn't want to write them the first time and I'm really not in the mindset to rewrite them after the first draft is done. The smoothing and shaping part of editing, I don't mind at all. Sinking back into the story enough to pick up where one scene left off and making the pile of crap I filled the next scene with workable? Ugh.

Well you can't leave that wordy trash pile there, you've got to clean it up. That might mean buckling down and doing the thing I mentioned that I hate doing (such as when I/you may have half-assed your way through the entire middle of a novel or other similarly large swath of words). Or, my much preferred and suggested method, sitting back and figuring out why you hated writing that scene so much the first time around. Because, just maybe (and most likely), you were going about it the wrong way and that's why it didn't click.

• Now that you know the whole story, is there a better way to go from scene A to scene C?
• Can something more interesting happen?
• What about changing things up to better showcase character development , growth or an aspect of your character you really enjoy writing about?
• Can you switch the POV and come at it from a different perspective?
• Do we really need scene B or would adding a paragraph at the end of A and the beginning of C to show the transition work just as well?

The trick is to not leave any of those ugly bits in, because even if your beta readers let you get away with them, readers who don't know you will likely be less tolerant. When the writer doesn't like a scene, its often easy to tell when reading.

Do you have a filler scene horror story to share?