I wrote recently about how to plan a novel in a week; that is definitely possible.
However, I won’t ever claim that it’s possible to edit a novel in a week. In fact, my first two novels took at least a year each to edit. (Bear in mind that this was alongside a full-time day job.) But now, as I’m working through the editing process on a third novel, I’m putting past experience into practise.
Having had a structural edit on each of my first two books, I now know more what I’m looking for when I’m editing. By that I mean, specifically looking for what’s wrong with the book. When you’re editing, you need to come to the book as cold as you can and keep a clear set of eyes. You’re now looking to pull the book apart and make sure it stands up to reader scrutiny.
Whether you planned your book or pantsed your way through it, the editing phase is where you start to make sense of it.
I’m trying to refine my editing process in the same way I’ve started to refine my planning process and these are the stages I now work with:
- Full read-through – the first thing I do is print out the whole book and start to read through it, with pen and notebook at hand and the index cards from my planning stage. At this point, I’m trying to get a general overview of the story. I’m looking for any major plot holes or scenes that seem to be out of place. Thanks to my index cards, on Book Three I’d pretty much stuck to plan although there were a few tangents taken while writing. If these tangents work, then they stay in. At the same time as I’m doing this, I’m making notes and compiling a style sheet. You can download a Style sheet template.
- Second read – at this stage I’m back to the computer screen and following the notes that I wrote down at stage one. Undoubtedly during the first read-through I’ll have re-written some scenes or suggested where the book can be cut – lots of red pen involved. I always do this in track changes and add extra notes in the margin on the document. Often this will be a fact I need to check and I come back to this later. Once I have a clean Word version, I update my Scrivener file. (This programme is a Godsend because it makes switching scenes around an absolute doddle.) At this stage, I’ll flick through the scenes to make sure that they all follow on from each other and check that chapter endings are strong.
- Reading aloud – this is a new element for me, which is to have Word read the book aloud to me chapter by chapter. It’s amazing how easily you can spot clunky dialogue, sections that don’t make sense and even some typos. The Word narrator has a lovely voice although she can only read a set amount of text at a time. I’m usually a bit stop-start in places where a scene doesn’t sound right at all. This is a very time consuming stage, but well worth the effort.
- Reading on my Kindle – I had this bit of advice from another writer and it really is genius. I email the document to my Kindle and read it on my tablet. It’s a good way to get a bit of distance and read it like any other book. However, I’m still looking for mistakes and inconsistencies and heavily using the notebook function. Then I go through the document again and type up the edits that I’ve made.
- Reading again – despite my planning and previous reading, I’ve made so many changes in stage four that I need to read it through again before it goes to my editor in a few weeks. By this point I’m starting to feel that I never want to see the book again, but I want to make sure the book is as good as it can be.
I have no doubt that my editor will pick up issues – that’s what I pay her for – but hopefully having learned from her advice in the past and instilling a process will have helped make the book better before she even sees it. The process isn’t perfect – nor will the book be – but everything takes practise.
Watch this space and I’ll update you on what kind of editor’s report I get.
Back when I was preparing A Deadly Rejection for publication, I wrote about the benefits of working with a professional editor. You can read that post here.