Editing Checklist

reenkam · Jul 23, 2007

When editing, what do you look for? Are there specific words that are overused? Do you know of specific grammatical errors that you have to search for? I'm trying to make up a list of things, so I'll start off:

Overuse of the word THAT
(someone here on AW pointed that one out...I forget who)

So what else?

p.s. You can be specific to yourself or general to what you think everyone needs to watch...

amber_grosjean · Jul 23, 2007

lol "the" is always used a lot but it's hard to avoid that word........I know from my manuscript, word combinations that get used a lot and should be shortened by abreviation are.....

He is or she is, he's/she's
I am, I'm
...and the rest of those do get used a lot. I've learned that publishers want you to abreviate those words. I don't all the time so it took me a while to edit last night and this morning. It's done though so now I'm waiting for round 2 on the edits (yeah!)

Amber

maestrowork · Jul 23, 2007

[ ] Complete rewrite

Namatu · Jul 23, 2007

* just
* too many -ly words - describe! don't over-rely on adverbs.
* looked, gazed, stared, etc. People look, yes, in many ways, but no need to tell us your characters are doing it all the time.
* overuse of he said/she said or any variation on said. Sometimes you can have untagged dialogue with no reader confusion.
* pacing - patches that are too slow for too long, or a story climax that happens to take up half the book (ahem, la la la).
* description - have you used it enough to firmly establish setting? Remember that we have five senses (more if you've written a paranormal).
* are your character voices distinct or are dialogue tags required for you to figure out who's saying what?
* tone - are the scenes from a character's POV consistent throughout the story? (assuming you use more than one POV, and even if you don't)
* active v. passive language.
* plot sense - is it comprehensible? any holes? any dodging of difficult areas that could actually enrich the story?
* spelling - do it right.
* punctuation - it's your friend, but don't sit on top of the comma. That's making it too close of a friend.

Anything drastic you think of while you're editing: wait. Make a note and keep going. Read it all the way through, keeping your drastic change in mind. See if it stays with you as you go through the manuscript. If it's still with you at the end, start to flesh it out, but make no permanent, big changes until you've given the current draft a full read and the new idea a chance to develop and settle in your brain.

Devil Ledbetter · Jul 23, 2007

reenkam said:
Overuse of the word THAT
(someone here on AW pointed that one out...I forget who)

That would have been Lyxdeslic. He hunts down and kills every stray that in my WIP for me.

maddythemad · Jul 23, 2007

Other than the totally technical things, I look for plot holes, character inconsistencies, fact inconsistencies (why can't the McGraws live across the street in one chapter and next door in another? Maybe they MOVED. Even think of that? :tongue

), clichés, unnecessary scenes/dialogue/description, and anywhere I can add more semi-colons-- hey, somebody's got to rebel.

Azraelsbane · Jul 23, 2007

just is a big one (which was mentioned), I think the word even is my worst enemy

Also, one thing I have to go back and check is dialog. My main characters have very different voices, and 99% of the time you would be able to pluck a line out of my dialog and know who said it. It's the 1% I have to watch out for, because sometimes if you're thinking of one character and writing another, the one you're thinking of likes to take over

Luckily beta readers are awesome about helping with that. I often get little notes in the margins that say "This sounds so much like <insert character that is not supposed to be talking>." Then I know it's time to rework that line

JEMcGee · Jul 23, 2007

Namatu, What an excellent list! This is a great thread.

Namatu · Jul 23, 2007

JEMcGee said:
Namatu, What an excellent list!

Thank you!

Susan B · Jul 23, 2007

Good list!

One of my problems: Too many qualifications. Gives the writing a hesitant, wimpy quality.

"To a degree, he resembled a similar character I half-recalled from a somewhat similar encounter in the recent past."

(Well, I'm not quite that bad, but you get the idea!)

Susan

reenkam · Jul 23, 2007

You guys mentioned some good stuff. I better write everything down...

Kristin Landon · Jul 23, 2007

Great lists!

One I always have to root out: "He could see. . . ." "She could hear. . . ." Which almost always simply need to be "He saw. . . ." "She heard. . . ."

reenkam · Jul 23, 2007

I was just editing and saw an abundance of "then".

Manderley · Jul 24, 2007

Kristin Landon said:
Great lists!

One I always have to root out: "He could see. . . ." "She could hear. . . ." Which almost always simply need to be "He saw. . . ." "She heard. . . ."

Depending on the context, you don't always need he saw/she heard either. Instead of writing: "He saw the man running down the street" or "She heard someone cry for help", one could just write: "The man ran down the street" and "A cry for help pierced through the air." Or similar.

seun · Jul 24, 2007

I do a total rewrite after going through the first draft word by word. I have to look out for overused words and phrases, plotholes and too much description.

ccarver30 · Jul 24, 2007

I hate when I have too many sentences in a row that start with a pronoun.
He did this. He saw that. She said this. She reacted this way.
ACk!!

Kristin Landon · Jul 24, 2007

Manderley said:
Depending on the context, you don't always need he saw/she heard either. Instead of writing: "He saw the man running down the street" or "She heard someone cry for help", one could just write: "The man ran down the street" and "A cry for help pierced through the air." Or similar.

Sometimes, yes. But often cues like this can help keep the reader in the right POV, such as at the beginning of a scene or the middle of action. Too much happening with no one specifically observing it can lead to a feeling of vagueness. Having to look back at the start of a scene to remind myself whose POV it's in is not good.

Devil Ledbetter · Jul 24, 2007

Kristin Landon said:
Sometimes, yes. But often cues like this can help keep the reader in the right POV, such as at the beginning of a scene or the middle of action. Too much happening with no one specifically observing it can lead to a feeling of vagueness. Having to look back at the start of a scene to remind myself whose POV it's in is not good.

It really depends on viewpoint. I write in close third limited, so a lot of the time saying "he saw" or "he heard" is redundant. When we're sitting on the character's shoulder, it's obvious who's doing the observing.

Kristin Landon · Jul 24, 2007

That's what I prefer, too, but in the book I just finished, I have two main viewpoint characters and <counting on fingers> wow, five minor ones. So if there are several of them in a scene, or if a lot is going on, I have to be wary of confusing people.

Edit: I don't mean I switch POV within a scene—just that a scene might involve several characters who have been viewpoint characters in other scenes.

Roger J Carlson · Jul 24, 2007

I have a problem seeing overused words, extra adverbs, passive sentences, too many prepositional phrases, and the like. So I wrote a number of macros for MS Word, which highlights these things in various ways. You can find and download them from here: http://www.rogerjcarlson.com/WritingHelp/TechTips.html. They're free.

They run as stand-alone programs. Read the entire document to get it to run on your system. It runs on Windows and MS Word only.

Note: Always back up your documents before running these programs against them. However, there is a checkbox that will allow you to do the markup in a backup copy.

raydad · Jul 24, 2007

Usage of the words "there", "their" and "they're". Excessive use of the "to be" verb, weak verbs. Extra words like "that", "which" and "of which the". Excessive adverbs in dialog tags.

Legionsynch · Jul 24, 2007

I condition everything. "It seems like," "It could be" etc. Stripping them out makes the writing stronger anyway.

amber_grosjean · Jul 29, 2007

I tend to write like I talk so sometimes I use too much of one word. If it doesn't sound right, I go back and change it when I edit the piece. The one thing I've noticed is that I do use a lot of words that can be put together like he is= he's. My editor put them all together for me so now I have to rethink things and start putting those together now as I write. I don't like it that way but it's something that has to be done so I'll do it to make the publishers happy. If they're happy, I'm happy lol.

Hillgate · Jul 29, 2007

If in doubt, read out a few paragraphs to someone critical: you'll know from their face what they think of it and reading it out loud will make YOU love it or loathe it. Editing often means a complete rewrite, as Maestrowork has said. Be prepared to bin whole paragraphs - even a chapter - if it's not right for the work as a whole. Tweaking can often make things worse: editing doesn't mean tweaking for words - that's a line editor role - but looking at the whole thing.

It's very difficult to edit your own work but for God's sake do it BEFORE you go anywhere near a real Editor!!!!

wayndom · Jul 29, 2007

Anything that can be cut, must be cut.

I tend to overwrite in first draft (as I'm sure most writers do), because I'm not sure if I'm making myself clear. My MS's usually experience dramatic weight loss in the first re-write, which I devote entirely to cutting flab (in Sol Stein's words).

I also have an extremely important rule which I've found to be invaluable:

At times, when reading your work, you'll feel unsure if the sentence or paragraph your reading "works." Then you read on, and think, "Oh, yeah, this works."

Whenever you hear yourself say, "this works," it doesn't. If it worked, you wouldn't have thought anything. You would have read through, like you read through everything that led up to that point.

So when you catch yourself saying or thinking, "this works," no matter how long it takes, figure out what isn't working and fix it.

At least nine times out of ten, the problem is best solved by cutting the offending passage. Always look at cutting first, you'll save enormous amounts of wasted time that way. And when you cut, you can actually see the writing get stronger before your eyes, like an old-fashioned, "before and after" commercial.

Cut anything that can be cut. If you ever go too far (highly unlikely), you can always use the "back" button on your WP.

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