Things I learned when redrafting my second novel – five more editing tips and tricks.
I’ve just been through an intense edit on my second novel BEAUTIFUL MESSY LOVE. The changes I made to the manuscript were based on feedback from my publisher, the brilliant Mary Rennie, and some articles I came across that showed me areas where I desperately needed to improve.
This is my second article on editing tips. If you missed the first, which I wrote after being inspired by my amazing structural editor, Dianne Blacklock, for my first novel LOVE AT FIRST FLIGHT, you can find it here:
http://www.tesswoods.com.au/seven-rules-for-effective-editing.html
So after this round of editing I have more tips that I hope you find useful.
1. Your characters don’t ever need to tell each other (or the reader) how much they love each other. Same goes for characters who don’t like each other.
I thought I was totally down with the show don’t tell rule until my publisher, Mary, read BEAUTIFUL MESSY LOVE and pointed out how many times my characters said “I love him” or “I love you” or “she’s my soul mate” or (and this was the one that got right under her skin!) “he’s the love of my life.”
I’m happy for you to all laugh and cringe at my expense if it means you cut back on such declarations in your own manuscripts and get spared the humiliation of your publisher writing to you saying, ‘Do you know people profess their love 54 times in your novel? Hmmmm….’
So the point is, SHOW your characters doing things that demonstrate their love for each other/or dislike for each other – however you want to play it, without them having to spell it out.
Or show the characters responding to each other through physical actions and reactions rather than have them saying it.
Here’s an example.
‘As soon as I spotted him, I smiled and forgot all my troubles. Nothing else mattered now that he was here.’
Compared to:
‘I loved him so much that when I spotted him, he made me forget my worries.'
2. Cut back on filter words when writing in the first person.
Natasha Lester shared an article on cutting out filter words in her newsletter which came out while I was working on my edit. I combed through my manuscript, after reading the article and found that I was guilty on many occasions of using these unnecessary filter words which bogged the story down.
So what are filter words? They’re words that your character uses to give the reader the experience from their point of view, in other words to give the reader their ‘filter’. But when a story is written in the first person, the reader already knows that the situation is coming from the character’s point of view so it renders these filter words useless.
Here’s an example:
I see Nick’s car pull up in the drive.
Compared to:
Nick’s car pulls up in the drive.
Here’s the full article on filter words that helped me. I hope it helps you cut those little suckers out too if you write in the first person.
http://www.publishingcrawl.com/2012/05/21/filter-words/
3. If you’re writing in the present tense, remember it’s ‘right now’ – you can’t lead up to the present tense in the present tense!
So what do I mean by this? Present tense means things are unfolding as the reader reads about them. When you write in present tense, you need to use past tense to lead up to the ‘right now’. I’ll show you an example of where I went wrong to demonstrate.
I started a chapter with the title Tuesday and in this chapter my character Toby is speaking in the first person and he begins where he left off in the chapter before which is actually Monday night. So he tells the reader what went down Monday night to lead into Tuesday. But Monday is in the past, so Toby can’t begin this chapter in the present tense. It has to be in the past tense until it reaches the point where the action is unfolding right now – so if that’s Tuesday night where you want the reader to be witnessing what is happening ‘live’ then all day Tuesday until the evening also needs to be in the past tense. Does that make sense?
4. Avoid the passive voice wherever possible.
It’s best to use the active voice wherever you can because it makes your sentences shorter and sharper and adds to pace. I fell victim to wordy passive voice sentences and noticed a good improvement in scenes where I swapped passive voice to active voice.
The main difference between writing in an active voice compared to writing in a passive voice is that the verb is performed by the person in the sentence rather than having the verb done to them.
Here’s an example:
Anna drinks a Turkish coffee.
Compared to:
The Turkish coffee is drunk by Anna.
Here’s a great article that explains active and passive voice further:
https://webapps.towson.edu/ows/activepass.htm
5. Keep track of details!
I’m a lazy writer – I don’t plot, I don’t write character profiles, I barely research and I don’t keep timelines. I’m slowly realising all of this is NOT the way forward and I’m getting caught out for being lazy.
All I want to do when I write is sit with a blank screen and not be interrupted from the flow of the story until the first draft is done. I don’t want to stop to make lists of the peripheral characters I’ve added in each scene or to make a note that I described Anna’s eyes as caramel not honey. But I need to do this from now on, and so do you!
My promise to myself is that I will be less lazy in book three. (Although I haven’t quite come at plotting yet).
But I WILL build profiles of each character – meaning there’ll be a document where I’ll have their physical features, their statistics – age, job title, address etc. This way my editor won’t say, ‘Ah, doesn’t Nick hate seafood? Why is he eating prawns now?’
I WILL keep lists of characters’ names so I don’t give a dog and a student doctor the same name in the same book.
I WILL keep timelines so that when Lily has worked, had dinner and gone out, it actually becomes evening rather than talking about the shining sun of a never-ending day!
There are loads of software programmes and apps around that can help you become more organised with your manuscript. However, as my laziness knows no bounds, I’m just going to start with a basic Word document! If you’re after something snazzier than a Word document, here’s a list of programmes available to help you stay on top of all the bits and pieces in your manuscript:
http://kitfrazier.com/wordpress/creating-a-novelcharacter-timeline-keep-track-of-your-characters/
And here’s an excellent article about what you should keep track of in your manuscript and why by the brilliant literary agent Rachelle Gardner.
http://www.rachellegardner.com/keeping-track-of-details/
Good luck everyone – may your edits be excellent!
This is my second article on editing tips. If you missed the first, which I wrote after being inspired by my amazing structural editor, Dianne Blacklock, for my first novel LOVE AT FIRST FLIGHT, you can find it here:
http://www.tesswoods.com.au/seven-rules-for-effective-editing.html
So after this round of editing I have more tips that I hope you find useful.
1. Your characters don’t ever need to tell each other (or the reader) how much they love each other. Same goes for characters who don’t like each other.
I thought I was totally down with the show don’t tell rule until my publisher, Mary, read BEAUTIFUL MESSY LOVE and pointed out how many times my characters said “I love him” or “I love you” or “she’s my soul mate” or (and this was the one that got right under her skin!) “he’s the love of my life.”
I’m happy for you to all laugh and cringe at my expense if it means you cut back on such declarations in your own manuscripts and get spared the humiliation of your publisher writing to you saying, ‘Do you know people profess their love 54 times in your novel? Hmmmm….’
So the point is, SHOW your characters doing things that demonstrate their love for each other/or dislike for each other – however you want to play it, without them having to spell it out.
Or show the characters responding to each other through physical actions and reactions rather than have them saying it.
Here’s an example.
‘As soon as I spotted him, I smiled and forgot all my troubles. Nothing else mattered now that he was here.’
Compared to:
‘I loved him so much that when I spotted him, he made me forget my worries.'
2. Cut back on filter words when writing in the first person.
Natasha Lester shared an article on cutting out filter words in her newsletter which came out while I was working on my edit. I combed through my manuscript, after reading the article and found that I was guilty on many occasions of using these unnecessary filter words which bogged the story down.
So what are filter words? They’re words that your character uses to give the reader the experience from their point of view, in other words to give the reader their ‘filter’. But when a story is written in the first person, the reader already knows that the situation is coming from the character’s point of view so it renders these filter words useless.
Here’s an example:
I see Nick’s car pull up in the drive.
Compared to:
Nick’s car pulls up in the drive.
Here’s the full article on filter words that helped me. I hope it helps you cut those little suckers out too if you write in the first person.
http://www.publishingcrawl.com/2012/05/21/filter-words/
3. If you’re writing in the present tense, remember it’s ‘right now’ – you can’t lead up to the present tense in the present tense!
So what do I mean by this? Present tense means things are unfolding as the reader reads about them. When you write in present tense, you need to use past tense to lead up to the ‘right now’. I’ll show you an example of where I went wrong to demonstrate.
I started a chapter with the title Tuesday and in this chapter my character Toby is speaking in the first person and he begins where he left off in the chapter before which is actually Monday night. So he tells the reader what went down Monday night to lead into Tuesday. But Monday is in the past, so Toby can’t begin this chapter in the present tense. It has to be in the past tense until it reaches the point where the action is unfolding right now – so if that’s Tuesday night where you want the reader to be witnessing what is happening ‘live’ then all day Tuesday until the evening also needs to be in the past tense. Does that make sense?
4. Avoid the passive voice wherever possible.
It’s best to use the active voice wherever you can because it makes your sentences shorter and sharper and adds to pace. I fell victim to wordy passive voice sentences and noticed a good improvement in scenes where I swapped passive voice to active voice.
The main difference between writing in an active voice compared to writing in a passive voice is that the verb is performed by the person in the sentence rather than having the verb done to them.
Here’s an example:
Anna drinks a Turkish coffee.
Compared to:
The Turkish coffee is drunk by Anna.
Here’s a great article that explains active and passive voice further:
https://webapps.towson.edu/ows/activepass.htm
5. Keep track of details!
I’m a lazy writer – I don’t plot, I don’t write character profiles, I barely research and I don’t keep timelines. I’m slowly realising all of this is NOT the way forward and I’m getting caught out for being lazy.
All I want to do when I write is sit with a blank screen and not be interrupted from the flow of the story until the first draft is done. I don’t want to stop to make lists of the peripheral characters I’ve added in each scene or to make a note that I described Anna’s eyes as caramel not honey. But I need to do this from now on, and so do you!
My promise to myself is that I will be less lazy in book three. (Although I haven’t quite come at plotting yet).
But I WILL build profiles of each character – meaning there’ll be a document where I’ll have their physical features, their statistics – age, job title, address etc. This way my editor won’t say, ‘Ah, doesn’t Nick hate seafood? Why is he eating prawns now?’
I WILL keep lists of characters’ names so I don’t give a dog and a student doctor the same name in the same book.
I WILL keep timelines so that when Lily has worked, had dinner and gone out, it actually becomes evening rather than talking about the shining sun of a never-ending day!
There are loads of software programmes and apps around that can help you become more organised with your manuscript. However, as my laziness knows no bounds, I’m just going to start with a basic Word document! If you’re after something snazzier than a Word document, here’s a list of programmes available to help you stay on top of all the bits and pieces in your manuscript:
http://kitfrazier.com/wordpress/creating-a-novelcharacter-timeline-keep-track-of-your-characters/
And here’s an excellent article about what you should keep track of in your manuscript and why by the brilliant literary agent Rachelle Gardner.
http://www.rachellegardner.com/keeping-track-of-details/
Good luck everyone – may your edits be excellent!