Editing. The dreaded task all writers, both great and small must face. And it is a dreaded task, because after having spent months, maybe even years bringing one's book to life. The last thing any author wants to do is tear it apart. But tear it apart one must, so let's begin, one courageous step at a time to take the hidden gem within those pages and polish it to a high gleam.
Before we begin, it's a good idea to decide whether you want to pitch your book to an agent or self-publish.
The answer to this will impact on your word count. If you want to pitch to an agent then you are going to need to check the word count limit for your genre. This will give you an excellent benchmark for how much you are going to need to cut. Let's say you want to pitch your book, and you have written a romance novel, but your word count is 120,000 words. The industry accepted range is between 70,000 and 100,000 for romance, so right away we know your book is going to have to be trimmed by at least 20,000 words.
However, if you are intending to self-publish, then word count isn't nearly as critical, although there are constraints to word counts and self-published books, too. If your book does have a high word count, you can kiss goodbye to nice, fat royalties, because once you cross the threshold of 145,000 words you will begin to price yourself out of the market. You can always slap a high price on your book, but as an indie author it's unlikely people will pay more to buy your books when they can buy a book from a recognized name for half the price. For example, The Lost Valor of Love is roughly 146,000 words, and is 442 pages in print. It is priced at $11.99. My royalty is $1.04. The rest is taken by Amazon between publishing costs and their cut. So the lesson to be taken from this is: the less your word count, the less your publishing costs, and the greater your royalty. So do bear that in mind when you are writing your opus!
The goal we are looking to achieve is to have a final product that is a smooth, seamless read, without any jarring words/sentences, unneccesary details, useless dialogue, or digressions. To edit well, you need to take some distance to your work, many authors suggest leaving your work to rest for several months so when you come back to it, you can see it with fresh eyes. I agree, although I tend to leave my work for just a few weeks, while it is with my editor, and then carry on once it is back. Different people work differently, that is just how I find I work best.
So once you have let your work rest, go back to it and just start reading it. The story should drive itself forward with a strong momentum. If there are parts that feel like they are vague or unneeded, or slow the narrative down, go back over it and look at it critically. I often find in my writing between first and final draft I stumble over bits that seem more like I am trying to build the scene or are far too focused on the character's placement/actions rather than driving the plot forward. This is normal, it's part of the initial writing process as you flesh out your story and work out the scene on paper. It's what I call the scaffolding. What is important is that you take the scaffolding down as you edit. You needed it there to help you get things straight in your head and give you a foundation to move on to the next sentence/scene, but now you have finished, and just like building a house, you can take the scaffolding away once the project is done. These scaffoldy bits in your book stick out like a sore thumb as you edit because they don't flow, or seem to fit, and usually require a lot of tweaking to make it work. In many cases the scaffolding will read like telling, not showing, another big giveaway. Sometimes you need to keep the scaffolding, because it is essential, so you will have to rewrite it to move away from telling to showing. Otherwise, you can just rework it, or structure the sentences differently by breaking them up and making them snappier, or, if you are really lucky, just delete it altogether and the bits before and after fit together like a puzzle. (I love it when that happens).
An illustration at this point might be beneficial, so here is an example from the first chapter of The Call of Eternity. This excerpt is from the first draft of the first paragraph:
Along the lines of chariots, torches flared to life, their flames wavering, pinpricks of firelight, holding back the ominous depths of Amka's wood. Urhi-Teshub shifted his weight, ignoring the ache of the late autumn's cold easing into his limbs. He waited, keeping the reins wrapped around his arms, holding his horses back. The quiet clack of their teeth worrying against the metal bits comforted him, reminding him of the sounds of Tarhuntassa's stables, taking him back to a time when things had been different, when he had belonged in Hatti and would inherit the throne—when Istara had been his and not a hostage of the pharaoh's. A sharp crack rent the air. His gaze moved across the muddy, ruined plain to the siege at Ay's gate, its massive cedarwood doors buckling against his army's battering ram. He let out a slow breath, the air turning white in its wake. Not much longer now.
And here is the final published version of the first paragraph (broken into two paragraphs):
Along the line of chariots, torches flared to life. Pinpricks of wavering light spread away into the distance, holding back the ominous, murky depths of Amka's wood. Alone, within his chariot, Urhi-Teshub waited, patient, ignoring the late autumn chill seeping into his limbs. He flexed his fingers on the reins, the quiet clack of his horses' teeth worrying at their bits triggering an old memory from a time when things had been different—when he had belonged in Hatti and would inherit the throne. When Istara had been his and not a hostage of Egypt's pharaoh.
A sharp crack rent the air. Across the muddy, ruined plain the massive cedarwood doors of Ay's gates buckled against his army's battering ram. He let out a slow breath, the air turning white in its wake. Not much longer now.
To get this paragraph to the final version took three revisions. Each time I tightened it, moved on, edited the rest of the book, then did it again, and again. Other parts of the book were reworked five times. (So that means I went through the book five times, more on how I did that, below). As you go through your book, you will find the quality of your work is going to vary, some parts of will be quite solid and require little attention, other parts will make you wonder if your brain went for a hike while you wrote because you have to work so hard to get it right. It really does fluctuate, but just remember, that's normal! Persevere, it will be worth it!
The first and second pass throughs of your book are going to be the hardest, because you have to separate yourself from your writing and read your work like a reader. It is a real challenge not to get in one's own way. The desire to want to hang on to things you like, but perhaps are not totally needed is real. But as Kath, my editor, once said to me, 'Make every word count'. No better advice have I ever been given. If you read your book with that proviso, that every word has to count, has to add to the pace, the plot, the development of the story, you will find that as you edit, the core of your story will emerge, and once you have unearthed it, that's the sacred time when you can finally begin to polish it and fill it with artful flourishes.
When doing read-throughs, my process is usually to go through the manuscript on the software it was written on first (so for me, that would be MS Word). Then, I upload it onto Wattpad as a draft (yes really) and some magic happens. As writers, we get used to seeing our work in the format in which we have written it, if we change that up and lay it out in a new format, a funny thing happens. The brain will automatically 'see' the typos, grammatical errors, and poorly structured sentences we have been blind to all along. So I then work on two screens, using one to read the text on Wattpad's draft file, making changes in both the draft version on Wattpad and in my master file on Word, making sure to save as I go along.
Once that is done, I then use another piece of software called Jutoh (which is what I use to create the mobi file for the Kindle e-books). If you are serious about self-publishing I cannot recommend Jutoh enough. It's only about $30 US and it is fairly easy to learn how to use, since it really is nothing more than a glorified word processor. It makes creating a beautiful e-book simple, and when you are done, it compiles it into a mobi file for you so you can just upload it straight onto your Kindle to check before publishing on kdp.
The beautiful thing about loading it up onto your Kindle prior to release is you get to see it again on another platform, and once again, as you read your book on your Kindle you will find more things wrong. At this point you should find that everything will read nice and smooth and you will become immersed in the story until something reads wrong and hauls you up out of your immersion. Loading your book up on Kindle before publishing means you have another chance to perfect it, and to see it exactly as your readers will see it. Although at this stage you now have to make corrections in three places - the Word file (for print release), the Jutoh file (for e-book release) and the Wattpad draft, (for release on Wattpad). Take plenty of breaks, this part is exhausting.
The Call of Eternity being worked up on Jutoh for Kindle
Once you have done that, you will want to re-upload your book and read through the bits you fixed again, and basically from this point on you will rinse and repeat until the book reads like a polished piece. For me, in total, my books go through three read-throughs (not counting the two to three read-throughs my editor does), and then usually it takes two more additional edits of the difficult bits to get them right.
I have left out the work I did with my editor, because I know not all of you will be working with an editor. I will make another post about what it is like to work with an editor and the challenges that a writer has to face in making major structural edits (which I haven't covered here).
But to sum up. Some golden tips I have learned along the way:
- Get rid of names in sentences, we see that in film when a character says: 'Hey Jim, pass me that wrench,' and the guy beside him hands him the wrench and says: 'Ok Bob.' But that's film, it works there, but in books, we need to reflect real life realistically. People only use the names of others when they are talking to them if they are trying to achieve dominance, and it is considered hostile to do so in normal conversation, so keep away from using names unless it is absolutely essential (ie. you have multiple characters in the scene and it would be unclear who is being addressed otherwise).
- Watch out for repetition. If you say 'The sun rose and turned the sky orange,' you can delete the sentence two sentences later on referring to the same orange sky. Keep your narrative tight and crisp and trust your readers to remember what you wrote just a few sentences before.
- Don't over describe. Only describe exactly as much as you need to describe to get your reader in position and immersed. Over description drags on, and if you feel your mind is wandering while you read through the narrative, you have written too much, and it's time to cut it back.
- Avoid long paragraphs, (a personal challenge I face). Make sure to break your paragraphs up so the reader can rest their eyes.
- Vary your sentence lengths. Also, for dramatic scenes filled with action (like the battle scenes in TLVoL, and the earthquake in TCoE), short, snappy sentences work a treat.
- Decide on whether you are using US or UK english and then make certain you have been consistent, Google words you are not sure about.
- Decide whether you will use the Oxford comma or not and make sure you are consistent.
- Cut any extraneous words, be ruthless, you will feel cruel, but honestly your book can only benefit. It does get easier as you go.
- Look out for repetitive usage of words. Words like 'glance' or repetitive phrases like 'raised an eyebrow'. Be careful not to overuse your favorite things. It's ok in early drafts just so you can keep moving but come editing time, you need to vary things.
Have faith. It's tough to edit, but as you work on it, and see the real story hidden under all the scaffolding emerge, your motivation will grow and eventually you will be unstoppable in your pursuit of perfection.
Your masterpiece awaits.