Editing - An Art In Itself.

As writers we love to be immersed in our own creations -weaving plots, planning and following story arcs, creating character profiles as well as their trials and tribulations. Our minds are full of questions: What happens next? How would my characters react? Is that plausible or believable? Can I improve on that scene? Have I shown not told? Is there too much exposition? Would the reader have enough description to envisage the scene?

All these questions need to be answered but not when we are writing the first draft. This initial phase is the most enjoyable part of creating a story. Remember to give your inner editor time off enabling you to create freely and get the basic story line written. Once you have finished, the ‘real’ work starts. Continuity, grammar, spelling, character development, revisions to scenes etc. the list is long and sometimes overwhelming.

Editing is the necessary step towards having a polished manuscript. However, it can be energy draining and frustrating. One writer stated, she printed out her manuscript on different colored paper. Each color was for a separate editing stage – blue for grammar & spelling, pink for continuity, yellow for dialogue and so forth.

It is best to put your manuscript, once it is completed to one side and go onto new projects. Leave it for a month or more (I’ve left two projects for nearly 6 months). When you go back to re-read you have fresh eyes giving you new insights. Your revision process may be to correct everything above as you read each page or you could concentrate on one item at a time, re-reading each time giving you a particular focus. This second method does lean itself to sharpening the process, as you are not trying to ‘spot’ numerous revision types at the same time. With your editing done let your favored readers have it. Take note of their suggestions and correct any errors they may find. No matter how many times you or your beta readers go through the manuscript there will always be a word missed, misspelt or a continuity slip up. How do you make your manuscript as perfect as it can be?

A professional editor – if you can afford one – is a good investment. However, one trick that may work for you in finding those elusive errors is to read the book from back to front page by page. Another is to read it out aloud to yourself or an understanding friend (a glass or two of wine helps with this one!) A missed word is very obvious with this technique.

When editing there may be sentences or even whole paragraphs that you know need to be revised or even omitted from the manuscript to help with the flow of the story line or scene. Deleting these is hard – it is your creation and your words were written through hard work. There are different opinions on what to do with these revisions but I think they should be saved in a separate document until you are absolutely sure you do want to delete them and even then you may keep them as a record of how the scene developed. They are a writer’s jetsam so to speak.

These ejected words from our manuscript may float on our hard drives or become washed up in a document folder but wherever they end up they are part of our creative soul and never truly lost. We may pick them up from the shore in the future to use in another piece of writing or they may stay hidden in the depths of our files. No matter which scenario occurs, they are born of you and precious all the same.

As writers we endeavor to produce the very best manuscript or article we can and that is why we endure the editing process. Without this method of correcting and improving, our creations will not be polished and worthy of reading and that is the one thing we all want – our work to be read and enjoyed.

One common editing result is how our minds fill in ‘missing’ words or ‘skip’ extra words when you are editing? What is this phenomenon called? Alas, even though I searched quite extensively, I could not find anything that specifically named this ‘brain trick’. It is certainly not dyslexia or aphasia. Maybe it is our brains expectation of what the sentence is saying due to years of reading? An automatic and subconscious ‘correction’ so to speak.

This is a phenomenon I have come to notice since beginning my writing journey. I have become much more conscious of editing errors in my work, when reading novels and editing other peoples work. There is no guarantee we will find every single error even when we strive to. With the help of multiple beta readers and fellow writers reading through our manuscripts, there is the hope these errors will be minimal.

No matter how many times or how many people read through our work - errors will happen! Since I have been writing and assisting with editing for fellow writers, I notice every ‘mistake’ in the books I read. I’m not even scrutinizing or looking for them, they just jump off the page at me.

What is your editing process?