Fiddling or editing?

Heh. You'll NEVER be done. At some point, you just have to shake your head and say, "That's it. No more." Then send it out and don't worry about it again until someone is PAYING you to edit it (like after an advance!) or if NOBODY wants it.

Hell, I get itchy fingers when I go back to a manuscript of a book that's already on the shelf at the bookstore!

As for things to look for, I stick with the basics (that people seldom think of):

Repetitious words. We tend to have "favorite" words that pop up over and over. In one book, mine was "slid". After a comment from a copy editor that she wanted to jump up and down on my head if she saw it one more time, I did a search for the word... There were NINE HUNDRED instances of the word in 337 pages! That's three on every single page. And yet, neither us nor the editor had noticed them. Look for verbs and adjectives for this and try to change at least every other one or two out of three.

Dialogue Tags. Already being discussed on the other thread, but try to limit "he said/she said" as much as possible.

Some of the others I'm not a fan of. I have no particular problem with adverbs. I sort of like them. Showing/not telling is another one. Sometimes it's a good idea, but it depends on the manuscript. It might be that showing is a bad idea for the particular book.

Clumsy Dialogue. This is one that an awful lot of writers don't catch, because everybody is on them to have perfect grammar. But people don't SPEAK with perfect grammar. So, if you have a teenager say, "But Mrs. Smith, I do not understand why you would say that!", then please -- EDIT IT! Make the dialogue true to the characters.

Wrong Emphasis. I see this one a lot, even in completed books. One line that I still remember was about a locket that the hero had given the heroine, that's actually a container of pepper spray. She says something like, "Oh! It's pretty. It's me." He laughs and replies, "No, it's to keep you being you." It sounded odd in my head. It would have been better as "No, it's to keep you being you." Little things like this can really drag a reader out of the book.

That's all I can think of for right now. But don't worry at all about "fiddling." Just pick a time to stop. Either pick a NUMBER of drafts that you're not willing to go beyond, or pick a DATE to stop. Then stick to it for as long as you can...

Cathy C said:

Heh. You'll NEVER be done. At some point, you just have to shake your head and say, "That's it. No more." Then send it out and don't worry about it again until someone is PAYING you to edit it (like after an

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AMEN! Truer words were never spoken.

This is the reason I can never sell reprints anywhere. When I go back and look at the story (a story that was apparently of publishable quality) I hate it and want to rewrite the thing. Eventually, I say the hell with it and go write something new. That said, I'm currently working on three rewrites. I don't think you're ever "done". You just get to a point where you say "okay, enough!" and let it out into the world. Most of the time with your hand over your eyes and a lot of gasps to catch your breath.

As usual, Cathy offers sage advice. I always put my work aside for a period of time. But at some point I find that inner "ahhh" that signifies that I'm as done as I'm going to be.

Like Cathy, I, too, find that I want to re-edit stuff of mine that's already out. For that reason, I never read it again.

He laughs and replies, "No, it's to keep you being you." It sounded odd in my head. It would have been better as "No, it's to keep you being you." Little things like this can really drag a reader out of the book.

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Cathy,

I had to read those two a couple (three) times to recognize that you put the emphasis on either you or being. Doink! I guess looking at it now, I liked your corrected version but this is so minute that it would probably be missed by most editors and the reading public. True?

I'm going back again and again to pick out little issues with sentence structure and anomalies in description, dialogue tags, plurals (it's instead of its), and so forth. I liked your list of "to-do's".

Thanks,



Jon

Here's my checklist, though none of them are basic.

Continuity. If something from chapter 2 is referenced in chapter 10, I check to make sure they match up. Once I caught myself referring to a Federal as a Confederate. Yikes!

Unfired Cats. This is a term from an article in The Writer. It refers to elements that appear in the story and appear to be important, but then nothing happens with them. For example, you have a cocked gun sitting on a table, and no one ever uses it. Or a cat in the story that appears to have importance but never goes past that.

Story Setup. On our last round of revisions, we just got through weeding out all the problems caused by poor story setup in the first 100 pages. Straight up, by working through all the problems, we dropped 70 pages that had been needed to shore up the story. All of it was making sure that everything in the first 100 pages really worked together, made sense, had high enough stakes, and wasn't simply used because it was convenient for later in the story.

Linda Adams said:

Here's my checklist, though none of them are basic.

Continuity. If something from chapter 2 is referenced in chapter 10, I check to make sure they match up. Once I caught myself referring to a Federal as a Confederate. Yikes!

Unfired Cats. This is a term from an article in The Writer. It refers to elements that appear in the story and appear to be important, but then nothing happens with them. For example, you have a cocked gun sitting on a table, and no one ever uses it. Or a cat in the story that appears to have importance but never goes past that.

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Right now, I am in the process of chopping down my first draft to make room for all of the things that are missing. Looking for Fired Cats and continuity, finding proper placement for the missing things, looking for secondary characters that don't serve a purpose. The word-rep issue is a real peeve of mine. I flag every word that I suspect and then search for use throughout the book. Nothing so crazy as 900 uses of the word "slid" so far, LOL.

I just checked my 300 word WIP for any version of "slide" and found 7. I changed three. Now it's on to check for "errant" because I know my husband and i got carried away with that one...

I love these threads, because they are such great reminders of ways to tweak and improve one's writing. Thank you everyone!

clara bow said:

I just checked my 300 word WIP !

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Small book or typo. Best of luck because if it's only 300 words because you'll be editing for months, months I say!

Jon

SpookyWriter said:

Small book or typo. Best of luck because if it's only 300 words because you'll be editing for months, months I say!

Jon

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lol! Small book. We're aiming for about 75 thou. I also had to cut down the use of the word "determined".

I mentioned this thread to my husband, and i thought he made a good point. He was of the opinion that some words are meant to be invisible (by this I think he meant to unobtrusively blend in), and it's okay to have repeated uses of them (the obvious one being the dialogue tag "said"). he said (!) that otherwise the reader might think something is missing.

scarletpeaches said:

But how do you know when you're done?

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It’s done when you reread it, wishing you could still write like that.

"And" is my nemesis. I can always go through a first draft and remove at least 100 instances of "and" but usually more.

I'm getting better.

Adverbs too. Those little suckers have a tendency of sneaking into everything I write, even though I know better.

[QUOTE from Scarlet peaches:
So my question is this: Personally I have found it's a good idea to put something to one side while you work on something else, then come back later to edit it with fresh eyes and a bright red pen. But how do you know when you're done? [/QUOTE]

I can only speak from what I've been going through in my latest venture. Three years ago my MS, BOOBS OVER HOLLYWOOD, started out as a series of letters between a husband and a wife. I put it aside and came back to read it 3 months later. It was dreadful! I started all over again, this time in first person. It was a total rewrite. About a year later I finished. Went through the same process. Took it out 3 months later. It still wasn't right. I pondered, stewed and fretted. Okay, try third person. Another year out of my life. I put it away for 3 more months. I'm going through it again now and am over one-half through the MS -- and surprise of surprises, I really like it. Sure, a minor tweak here and there, but by the end of next week, it's ready to go out into the world. It was a very long journey on this one.

Get Sol Stein's book on self-editing. Invaluable information and advice.

Now I'm vetting my WIP for the word "look" or "looked" or "looked up/down." Sneaky little sucker. Most I'm keeping because it fits, but I hadn't realized how much it blended in. Some usage was just lazy writing, but other phrases (e.g., "Look here, blah blah") wouldn't seem right any other way.

If I'm lucky enough to get this thing published, you can bet your sweet bippy AW will be listed in the acknowledgements!

This reminds me of a term we have in the film industry: 'frame f***ing'. That means when you take a project and you keep cutting a couple frames here. A couple from the front of a shot here. You make this other shot like 2 frames longer. These are changes that literally no one will notice and really are not making any difference at all but people do it all the time. 2 frames is 1/12th of a second. Changing a shot by two frames is helping no one.

Similarly, when you find you've done all the big picture changes that people here have mentioned, then you are probably done. Once you start wondering if this sentence would be better in front of this sentence and then you move it back to where it was and whatnot, you're fiddling.

Speaking of 'that word' which is the bane of your existence mine is 'but'. Surprisingly I've gotten through this entire post without using it, but (hehe) in my writing I seem to use it literally every other sentence.

My "that word" is (so far) "beneath" -- and I only found it because I changed a character's name from "Ben" to something else. I suspect that "look" will be another.

clara bow said:

He was of the opinion that some words are meant to be invisible (by this I think he meant to unobtrusively blend in), and it's okay to have repeated uses of them

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Heh, I tried that argument and my editor nearly strangled me. I kept blabbering, "But you really don't see them." I got a rubber band shot in my face for my efforts.

She also informs me that I have a strong affinity for the word "smile."

I'm enjoying seeing everyone's pet words that we seem to feel we can't live without.

"and" and "but" are dangerous and I often overuse them. I have a fetish for "implication" that I'm gonna rub out one of these days.

"It felt like there was a...." Blah, blah, blah.

"There came the sound of..." WTF is that?

"was" has always been a nasty littel pecker that I can't drop.

Tri

triceretops said:

"was" has always been a nasty littel pecker that I can't drop.

Tri

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That's a good one. Tip: get your search function to highlight all the "was's" in your ms. Then go through the thing and see how many "was's" you can replace using an active verb.

crosseyed reader said:

She also informs me that I have a strong affinity for the word "smile."

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Hee hee! I know my characters smile at each other too much. I gotta find another way of filling in bits between dialogue.