How much editing?

1) 5 rounds of my own edits, followed by:
2) 1 paid critique by a professional agency (The Visions Group), followed by:
2a) My corrections based on the critique, followed by:
3) 2 beta readers going through once, followed by:
3a) My corrections based on their input, followed by:
3b) More beta corrections, followed by:
3c) More corrections by me, followed by:
4) My agent going through it, followed by:
4a) Corrections by me, followed by:
4b) More corrections by her, followed by:
4c) More corrections by me, followed by:
5) My editor, followed by:
5a) Corrections by me, followed by:
5b) Review of corrections by my agent, followed by:
5c) More corrections by me, followed by:
6) My copy editor making corrections, followed by:
6a) My input based on copy editor's corrections.

Wow.

3c would be something like "setting it on fire and dancing around it" for me.

Can't argue with your success though. Everybody has to do what works for them.

I edit as I work, send it out to a reader, and maybe make a few corrections. Anymore and I believe I'd end up with a mess on my hands. I can only stand anything I work on for so long.

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Hey, sorry for the delay in reply.

I will have to come back to this to give a more detailed response. Firewall at the office is about to come up.

In short--don't be afraid. It's not as bad as it looks. My corrections could be anything from a minor turn of phrase to "Oh, crud, where'd those pants come from?! He didn't have those three paragraphs ago!" (True story. Don't ask.)

I think it depends on the writer. I struggle hard to turn out a first draft that I am not ashamed for someone to see. I feel that is what helps me improve as a writer but it also means I don't go through a lot of edits.

Some people do very rough first drafts. That requires a lot more editing, I would think.

I was rather pleased when my agent commented that he had rarely seen a ms with fewer errors (he asked for exactly three changes before we went into submission). Of course, I am an author who does light editing as I go also. Each day I re-read the previous days production correcting minor errors and smoothing. But after that I don't go back to edit until I've finished.

I edit and polish until I can't find anything more to do. Then I let the market gnaw on the piece. If the market gnaws but doesn't swallow the hook, I look to see if I can edit some more. By then I've usually gotten enough distance to strengthen the work. Then out to the market again.

I never retire anything. My "completed" stuff will have to work until it's published, or until I'm too senile to find the SEND button anymore.

mccardey said:

But editing and revising are not only about grammar and composition are they?

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No, it's not only about grammar & comp. But the most important part is. Again, most anything can be fixed by an agent or publisher if you have an interesting cast of characters and a plot that holds together. The most important thing I've learned over the course of fifteen pubbed novels and a host of short stories is that it's all about the composition. Plot holes big enough to drive a truck through can be fixed. A lackluster character can be fixed. Complete illogic can be corrected with a few key strokes. I've had all happen and the fixes aren't all that hard when you have a skilled editor.

A skilled editor is much like a professional contractor. You might look at a wall that a wrecking ball has gone through and think, "There's no fixing that. We'll need to rebuild the whole thing. I won't have anywhere to live for a year." But the pro will look at it, nod and say, "We'll pull this joist, slap in helper studs, piece in two new pieces of drywall, tape, paint and you're done. A week...tops. Two if the plumbing needs work first." It's no big. Just another job. And the pro honestly won't understand why you're panicking. (Neither will you after a few years... )

We (and I include myself in "we") look at plots and characters as much more important than they really are to publishers. I've changed names of characters, altered their backgrounds, slapped in new "best friends", moved the setting to a new city, rewrote sections I LOVED and sliced out whole chapters.

All for the betterment of the book, and all in the name of "edits and revisions." But only after it got bought!

Does that mean you shouldn't edit beforehand? Lord, no! But don't stress out over it and don't do it for years. Get that puppy out into the world once you've made the actual writing crisp and tight, made the dialogue realistic and compelling for the characters, made the plot (mostly) make sense and provided an interesting hook they might not have seen before. A hook can be anything from an interesting sidekick to a twist on something already done, to a fascinating background for the protagonist. But the writing MUST shine. No substitute for the technical. Every i and t in the proper place, and every comma and preposition just so.

All other things can be fixed. Really. I'm staring right now at six single spaced pages of edits to a 100K book. Some of them will take five minutes. Some will take five days. But they're all do-able, no matter how hideous they might first seem. And they've got to be done in two weeks. That's frequently all you have to work with in the real world. That's the only real thing that experience will teach you in this biz. Get 'er done, and do it fast.

Very interesting question! I'm learning from other people's processes.
I'm not published yet, so take my input accordingly:

I write the first draft, re-reading and revising all along. Sometimes I read from the beginning before I let myself pick up from where I left off, and continue writing. I don't know how many "drafts" this makes.

When it's all done, for a second, I think it's perfect.

Then I print it out (you can see so many more errors in print) and go through it by hand.

Then I take it back to the word document, and sync the corrections.

Then I send it to betas/family members/friends. As those responses trickle in, I make changes to the hard copy.

Then I go back to the word document and sync again.

THEN I submit. Even if my betas tell me they love it. Even if I think it's perfect. It's really important to make a good first impression, especially since I'm not agented yet. I feel like conscientious editing is even more important for newbies like me.

Jamesaritchie said:

As little as possible. It doesn't take long before all you're doing is stirring mud.

I write the first draft. I go through it once and change whatever needs changed. Then it gets subbed.

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That's usually my approach too, but I send it to my agent first and request her suggestions. Occasionally I will send something out to friends/betas to read at the same time as I submit it to my agent/publisher. I then think about their feedback and incorporate it into the edits I get back from the publisher.
I don't usually leave very long between completing a novel and sending it out and inevitably I see many more things wrong with it when I read it again post submission.
I think it you are a first time novelist it helps to get feedback from people whose opinion, taste and honesty you trust. Good critique can radically improve a novel. I have worked with my editor for a long time and she knows I do a lot of changes post submission - that wouldn't work for a new writer who would have to get it right first time.

That's the only real thing that experience will teach you in this biz. Get 'er done, and do it fast.

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Ok - I'm going to remember that for the next book

Jess Haines said:

My corrections could be anything from a minor turn of phrase to "Oh, crud, where'd those pants come from?! He didn't have those three paragraphs ago!" (True story. Don't ask.)

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LOL. I don't have to ask; I've had similar experiences. Why is it so hard to remember what people are wearing (or not wearing) sometimes?

Honestly, the grammar/spelling/typos are the least of my concerns. I tend to be a fairly clean writer from the start, and since I go through multiple drafts and multiple beta readers, I know those little problems will be fixed.

For me, I really want to focus on the bigger issues before I submit. Is the writing tight enough? If I take out these four scenes in the first 50 pages, will that make it a more compelling read? Is there enough tension? Did I make the right choice with this character at the right time?

I go through a minimum of five full drafts before I'd even think of submitting, but frankly it might be more than that. What seems finished in July might look totally different to me by April of next year. I write literary fiction, so the market is super tough, and I don't want to get my work in front of agents until I know I have the best possible shot. It's frustrating, though, to wait so long for the revision process, especially when I can write and revise really quickly.

Once everything is done and I feel ready to submit, I will comb through my first 50 pages very carefully one more time to catch any little mistakes, and then off it goes.

As little as physically possible,.

I write a clean first draft, beta reads as i write and i listen, i edit once based on her advice and send on. If further changes are requestd down the line then I do those and not a single word more.

I can't be doing with this fifteen edits and as hundred betas lark.

I keep hoping the number of edits would go down as I wrote more novels, but that has yet to be the case - nor do I have further expectations that it will be the case in the near future. I like to keep the composition tight in the final drafts, and I can't do that without a couple edits.

Blargh, still not enough time to post everything I want to say! I'll be back on Saturday to give my response on it. Though Cathy did a pretty good job of beating me to the punch on a lot of what I was going to say. Listen to that lady, she knows what she's talkin' about!

I generally edit as I go. Although I finished my first draft around November last year, I'm still editing. Well, maybe I'm really rewriting. I am one who can struggle with gramma but I think that is partly because I tend to write long complicated or complex thoughts in sentences. I do believe there comes a time that you must stop editing, and personally have found I'm best to leave my long sentences alone - some of them - or else I tend to make my writing choppy by attempting to shorten them.

I think all our writings are unique to us, and also the way we edit will be unique to us, and no two people will generally approach it the same way. I think at the end of the day, you get a gut feeling all is done, and once you start to move commas from here to there, then back again, it's probably time to hand the thing over.

I've always found it facinating that some writers can write a first draft, then only edit through the WIP a few times. If I personally had of done that, I wouldn't have the story I currently have, which brings me back to my original thought that maybe some of us aren't really editing after our first drafts, but still writing the WIP.

MarkQuinn said:

Jess, seeing your editing process terrifies me.

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It really shouldn't. HUNTED BY THE OTHERS is the first book I ever tried to get published. I wanted to get it right the first time. Much of what I did was likely overkill--though, as you may have gathered, it did work for me.

MarkQuinn said:

You used the word "corrections" in most of those points...Which leaves me wondering what you mean when you say corrections.

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Since a lot of people asked this, I am going to lay it out here. Corrections for me could be any combination of the following (and possibly some other items I'm not recalling off the top of my head):

• Spelling errors.
• Grammar errors.
• Replacing/rephrasing redundant words/phrases/sentences.
• Removing unnecessary words (overuse of "just," "almost," "a little," "really," etc).
• Continuity errors. ("Where'd those pants come from?!")
• Failure to properly express what was going through my head at the time I wrote the sentence(s). Ever do that? You've got a fabulous image in your head of how a scene is playing out, and you furiously type it all out--only to reread it later and realize you left out 3/4ths of what should have made it on paper?
• Occasional rewrites of entire scenes. About a week and a half ago, I deleted 5K words from novel #3 in the H&W Series because I didn't like how a scene was coming out. Rewrote it in its entirety.
• Sometimes I fail to get an idea across, and someone will point it out--for example, in my first book, one of the things my editor wanted me to fix was a "glossing over" of the relationship between the MC and her ex-boyfriend. By adding a few paragraphs here and there to beef up the back story, it helped explain some of her actions and thoughts enormously.

That's about all I can think off right off the cuff. There may be some other things that will come to me later.

MarkQuinn said:

Is there any way I could coax you into posting a sentence or a short passage that still nags at you, an example of one of the things you wish had been changed even after it went into print? I think this would give some of us a better idea about the kinds of items that still need to be corrected late in the editing process. Speaking for myself (and having just read some of your book on Amazon and liking your writing very much), I'm hoping you'll paste something you wish you could change so I can say to myself "The passage was fine---she's just a crazy nitpicker" and not be so terrified of that gargantuan process you just outlined.

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Instead of using HUNTED for this example, I'll use something I just started working on.

Back story: This began its life as a short story submitted and accepted to the third quarter of a Writers of the Future contest. I wrote it, using a character of a friend--with her permission, of course--and slapped both our names on it.

Then I got a book deal and disqualified myself from the running. I set it aside. Friend who let me use her character hasn't done anything with it either. Recently, I pulled it out and started dusting it off, as the co-author and I are making some Devious Plans (Mwahahaha!! ...err, sorry. *g*) to do something with it.

FIRST DRAFT (i.e., version that was submitted to WotF):

Grimacing at the sensation of blood trickling down his shoulder, and also from one or two metal display rods digging in to his stomach, the vampire voiced a soft growl of his own. Royce slowly levered himself up to stand, stumbling a little on the round gumballs spilled on the linoleum. A low hiss escaped him as he tore out the metal rods, flinging them aside as he closed his eyes and concentrated a moment to utilize the remains of his last meal in speeding up an already rapid healing process. The damage to his stomach was gone within a few seconds, his skin knitting together without leaving so much as a scar. Unfortunately, the rents in his skin and burning pain from the Were-bite would take a bit longer to disappear. Damage caused by the fangs or claws of another Other always did.

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RECENT REVISION:

Grimacing at the metal display rods digging in to his stomach and from the wasted blood trickling down his shoulder, the vampire voiced a soft growl of his own. Royce slowly levered himself to stand, stumbling a little on the round gumballs spilled on the linoleum. A low hiss escaped him as he tore out the metal rods, flinging them aside as he closed his eyes and concentrated on utilizing the remains of his last meal in speeding up an already rapid healing process. The damage to his stomach was gone within a few seconds, his skin knitting together without leaving so much as a scar. The rents in his skin and burning pain from the Were-bite would take a bit longer to disappear. Damage caused by the fangs or claws of another Other always did.

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See the difference? Much of it is minor, but telling. It may not be perfect yet, but I'm workin' on it...

IDGS said:

Likewise. My book is also going out to shelves, but I only made one run-through with a red pen on a printout, followed by actually making those corrections on computer before submission.

I know I'll have to do copy-edits and such at the editor's request, but I can't help but feel that's unnessecary.

Then again, if it worked for you, I'm not arguing!

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Hey, whatever works for you. That was just my process. Things have gotten a little easier since then.

the addster said:

Wow.

3c would be something like "setting it on fire and dancing around it" for me.

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Aw, it's not that bad. A lot of work, maybe, but it was worthwhile in the end.

the addster said:

Can't argue with your success though. Everybody has to do what works for them.

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Agreed.