Insecure Writers and Self-editing

"I use Grammarly's plagiarism checker because what I thought was an original idea for a novel about racism and poverty in the South, during the Depression, and told through the eyes of a 10yr old girl whose father is the local lawyer... might already exist."

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One of the main things I was insecure about when I first ventured into creative writing was editing. Turns out, I had good reason to worry.

I stupidly thought good novels were created from inspiration, sweat and fairy-dust; that certain authors just had the magic and breathed engaging narratives onto the pages. Of course I was delighted to learn the existence of 'drafts' and that my first one was allowed to 'suck' because I could edit it later. Easy, right?

Ha!

My first manuscript to earn a finished draft was a girl's mystery novel filled with passive language, poor grammar and only one suspect character (not much of a mystery in this who-done-it). I was keen to polish the story, but had no idea how.

I sent it off to an editor. That was a mistake.

What? Wait a minute Charmaine (I hear you ask ... in a kind of a creepy little girl voice), you always recommend getting a professional editor. What gives?

You should get your work edited professionally before publishing, but not before you edit your own work.

My manuscript was in such a mess that after a few chapters of painful interactions back and forth, my editor gave up on it. Truth was, it wasn't ready for the editor yet.

1. You should polish your story as much as you possibly can before you send it out to editors or beta readers. So how can you best edit your own work?

Put your manuscript away for a while, come back to it with fresh eyes.

2. Utilise an editing program for the really obvious problems. Word Spellcheck is very flawed, but will at least get rid of some issues. A better version of this is Grammarly, which I use for my online writing (there's also a check box for you to paste your work on their website).
3. Read books on revising before you take another look at your manuscript. I found these ones very helpful: 
Take up a course to find the best strategies for tackling your manuscript. There are plenty offered through writing centres or online.

4. Study. You can find lots of courses on editing through your writers centre or online. I've said this many times before, Holly Lisle's How To Revise Your Novel is one of the best revisions courses I've ever undertaken (and there's been a few). Check it out, it will teach you so much about strengthening that first draft and tightening your story.
5. Find a mentor. Someone who has more experience and can guide you through your manuscript's plot flaws and show you how to improve it.

Still want more on editing? Check out Denise Covey's guest post on writing, revising and editing at revisionseditions.

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E is for Editing Tools

You've finished your first draft - woo-hoo! You're excited, you want this book on shelves and read on Kindles NOW. Maybe you think it was a pretty good first draft and you could send it out to agents and publishers, after all, they have editors that will fix it up... right? Um, no. You want to give your story the best chance to be loved.

If you're anything like me, the first time you'll feel uncertain of where to begin with the editing process. There are lots of methods of editing to make sure you tighten your manuscript, here are the resources that I found most valuable:

1. Editing Courses

After I took on the How To Think Sideways course to help me write my first novel, I decided to try Holly Lisle's How To Revise Your Novel online course. This was fantastic. I can not rave enough. Holly's course provided instructions and charts in step by step modules to take you through the most thorough and productive editing process. You will chart up characters, backstory, plot lines, themes and more. You'll understand the importance of each element as it is explained clearly to you. If you think you'd like to learn more about producing a finished manuscript, you can check the course out by clicking below:

2. Books

The books I found the most helpful during the editing phase were:

Manuscript Makeover by Elizabeth Lyon. 

This book is also featured in my list: 13 Best Resources for Writers. It will help you take a rough draft and turn it into a well-written manuscript. I think it's a must have. I read through it for editing, but it also has a lot of helpful chapters about the creative writing phase. One key thing I picked up from this book was about Power Positions, I'd never thought before about the importance of the first paragraph, sentence and even word for each chapter. 

Revision and Self-Editing by James Scott Bell.

There is so much information about identifying your priorities in your manuscript and editing the elements of your story, that I suggest reading through it with a notepad and pen and writing down the dot point. Bell even helped me work out how to liven up slow passages (bringing in a man with a gun). You can read more about this book in a previous post: Read, Write, Drive.

3. Time

There's no way around it. You need to put your manuscript down and give it some time before trying to edit it. Everything in there will still seem like a good idea right now, because you just wrote it. What can you do while it ferments? Plot out your next novel, try some creative writing exercises and READ. Read a lot of novels in the genre of your manuscript, with similar characters, or, aimed at the same age-market. You will pick up a lot of tips on structure, pace and characterisation just from reading these books. Keep a note pad and record the pages that show examples of well-written text that you could use to help your story. During my waiting phase for Dog Show Detective (as well as writing my next WIP), I read books from the Trixie Beldon series, books with dog characters and general cosy mysteries like Agatha Christie's. This is research (and it's fun).

Do you have a favourite editing resource you want to share with everyone?

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Read, Write, Drive

Road Trip!

Hitting the road (cars packed and everyone's waiting on me!) for our holiday in Brisbane. So, for your viewing pleasure, today we have a re-run of a January post. I'm taking this book along with me for the trip (and I'm still editing that WIP):

I've been stuck on a chapter for Dog Show Detective, so, I had a crazy old guy pull out a gun and shoot a character, that got things moving! I then had my MC faint and wake up inside a caged and padlocked pen. How was I supposed to get her out of there?

The idea of the gun wielding lunatic is an old trick of adding  surprise to a narrative. In Revision & Self-Editing (James Scott Bell), surprising behaviour is a key way to liven a story that drags. Bell quotes Raymond Chandler as saying when things get boring, "Bring in a guy with a gun" (I sure did).

My puzzle now is how to get the Lead character out of the cage where she's trapped with her friend and a badly wounded boy. Bell has also helped me out with this predicament, he suggeststhe Lead character needs to show inner courage, experience conflict and act with honour. This great instructional book tells the self-editor to write a list of at least ten things that the Lead character could do, what would be unexpected?

So I wrote, keeping in mind all of the above suggestions, this is what I came up with:

When the old man returns with his gun, so does the wounded boy's dog. Just as the man raises his gun, the dog leaps and knocks him down, the bad guy hits his head and is unconscious. Kitty eventually gets the keys and opens their prison, they want to run, but Kitty won't be able to leave the boy bleeding with a bullet wound. Here is Kitty's conflict, she's only eleven, she wants to get to safety, but instead sends her friend for help and picks up the crazy man's gun, in case he wakes. Kitty chooses bravery and honour.

Bell also suggests if you come up with some outrageous solutions, it may be a good idea to use the 'Pull-Back Technique', basically you invent an over-the-top solution and then tone it down by about 25%. For example, I thought I would have the bad guy wake up and Kitty would have to shoot him. That's too extreme for a kids' book, so instead, I'll have Kitty think about what she has to do, get scared and decide that she can't kill a person. Kitty will lower the gun, and shoot his foot. That should be enough to keep them safe until help comes -extreme, minus 25%.

Revision & Self-Editing is proving to be a valuable tool for my first experience at editing a novel, I definitely recommend you check it out.

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Edit Time - Who has it?

I keep saying I'm editing my manuscript Dog Show Detective, but in reality I've overloaded myself with so many books, podcasts and courses on editing, that I barely had time to even tackle the manuscript. So this week, I learned to stop reading techniques and start applying them. I now actually have scribbles and marking right through chapter 1! (small victory but I still celebrate)


My main source of information for this first edit was based on Holly Lisle's 'How To Revise Your Novel' course. I'm only halfway through week one, but it has already proved helpful. If you'd like to check that course out, you'll find it here:



What has it taught me so far?
That my first step should be to step back and review my initial intentions with the novel, how that has changed and what I want from it now. I can find questions like this a bit ambiguous, I need clear instructions, so fortunately for me there are worksheets in the course (I love worksheets!).


This was an eye opener for me, I hadn't even thought about what I want my novel to be! Now it's a bit clearer for me I can tackle the edits with that in mind. I'll have a FOCUS.


Next step was to read through my manuscript and look for problems with character, setting, story, boring bits and identify the successful moments. The last bit is the most important to me, I thrive on praise, even if it's from myself! That's something I try to remember to give freely and deservingly to my students in the classroom.


Holly provides codes and worksheets, so you can write the code into the manuscript and then record the issue, problem or reflection into a table. I'm guessing when it's all done I go through my sheets and then systematically fix all the character problems with the narrative, then maybe all the parts where the story is too slow etc.


Last week I told you I would dedicate a certain time of day to editing - I'm trialling 10am-12noon. How has this gone? Well, it took almost the week to get into the swing of stopping housework, ignoring people and getting down to work. I think I'm trying to recapture the NaNoWriMo motion where the manuscript takes priority (just for a couple of hours). 


Mostly I spent this time reading editing books like Revision & Self-Editing (Bell) and Manuscript Makeover (Lyon). I've been a bit scattered and sifting through lots of sources. I needed more FOCUS. So, I decided to stick with the How to Revise Your Novel course yesterday, and I found I was a lot more productive.


Dog Show Detective - the edit:
Ch1
Wait, I was so careful writing this, surely it's perfect? Um, no.
As this story is primarily about a girl and her dog, I realised that they should be the first characters introduced. Kitty is first (my 11yr old protagonist), but Spade (the dog) is the second dog introduced - will fix that! He is the star of the story after all.
Kitty's family consists of her mother, father and little brother - there was also an old dog. I'm scrapping the old dog, he just didn't propel the story at all. Spade will be the only dog in the family. 
I need to do some character work on the father and brother. At the moment they just seem to be 'there' without having enough of their own role in the narrative, they need more dimension. I'll spend some time trying to figure who they should be, maybe do a character profile on them.
My flashback was too long, too much description about their old house and blah blah (even explaining it bores me). That will become more succinct. 
Most importantly, I found some little gems that I love, little comments that are insights to Kitty's personality and her weaknesses. These bits are my rewards and motivation to push on to chapter two.


On a final note, the most important ingredient for editing is... a manuscript. You have to finish the story before you can fix it, promote it, etc. If you're still writing you might find some of my older posts helpful for when I was writing my NaNoWriMo novel, there's lots of links to helpful sites.


If you feel like you are drowning in the process, just remember Dory's wise words from Finding Nemo, "Just keep swimming, just keep swimming, swimming, swimming..."

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Editing - What comes after the 1st Draft?

During November I wrote a 60k first draft of a YA fantasy novel, The Costume Maker, a tale about a group of teens thrust into a magical world of fairies, gypsies, dragons and danger. My plans were to spend December editing, so first I needed to spend some time researching approaches for revising a novel. That's what I've been doing this week.

Here's what I've found so far and some nifty resources:

Universally across my research I came across a common theme for step one. Put your finished first draft aside and don't read it for a period of time. 

James Scott Bell calls this 'letting it cool' in Plot and Structure (I liked this book so much, I ordered Revision and Self-Editing in the same series and am keenly awaiting its arrival). The idea is to gain an objective approach when you read through your novel for editing.

If you're a visual person like me, you see your story unfold in your mind as you write it. This has its benefits and can create its own obstacles. Seeing your story may mean that you don't get stuck for plot ideas, but it could also mean you miss describing things that you see, leaving gaps in your plot.

By putting your manuscript aside for a few weeks or longer, you can read your words with fresh eyes, allowing you to be more critical of the narrative, structure, language, characters, etc.

Even though I'm not ready to revise The Costume Maker just yet, I printed out my manuscript anyway. There is a certain elation that comes with seeing your writing in print, the thickness of all those pages, your creation. This is your reward for finishing.

In Word by Word, Anne Lamott (I downloaded the audio-book from iTunes) says you should never think of printing your drafts as wasting paper. Value your words, they deserve it, you deserve it.

Before November, I was working on my novel Dog Show Detective, so in a 'here's one I prepared earlier' moment, I'll be working on revising my first draft of that novel this month.

The best advice I found was from Christopher Vogler in Using Myth to Power Your Story (also available from iTunes). Vogler suggests thinking about the story you've written and coming up with one word that it's about. This is harder than it first seems, surely we wrote our stories with a theme in mind? I'm pretty sure I started with a premise for Dog Show Detective, but lost it somewhere in the writing process. I can't decide if it should be 'Loyalty', 'Mystery' or 'Identity', I suspect it may be as lame as 'Dogs' at this stage.

You probably have more than one word that your novel is about, but you could prioritise those theme words. Next you have to decide the premise surrounding that word. If your word is 'Love', is your premise 'Love conquers all', or 'Love is blind'? Then using that premise as a guide you go through your story scene by scene and make sure each one relates to that theme.

Using this technique, I have already realised a major change that I want for Dog Show Detective, if I use the word Mystery as a theme word and 'Things are never what they first seem' as a premise, I've decided my sidekick's name must change. Shakespeare is Kitty's Miniature Schnauzer that she enters in dog shows and together they solve mysteries. Now Shakespeare's name will change. My favourites so far are Spade, Poe or Doyle.

Another way of approaching your edit is to look at your plot structure, do you have an introduction of the characters, climb of action, climax and resolution? Or break your plot lines down to the individual character's plot chart, visit How to Plan, Write, and Develop a Book to hear more about this.

The Complete Idiot's Guide to Writing for Young Adults has a complete section on revising and suggests using a critique group or writer's group. This book suggests sample questions to ask when getting people to review your work as well as providing overall areas to review in your narrative.

If you can't join a local writer's group, you can find critique groups online. I sometimes use Critique Circle, you upload your chapters for review and critique other people's work in return.

When revising your manuscript, keep in mind who you are writing for. Dog Show Detective is aimed at young novel readers, about 8-10, so I write the story specifically for what my 8yr old daughter would enjoy. If you write for kids, then let kids critique your manuscript, then you'll know what works and what doesn't.

And as I said last week, read what you write. I'm reading young girl's detective novels, like Phillip Pullman's Ruby in The Smoke and  Julie Campbell's Trixie Beldon series.

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