It wasn’t long ago that I was going through the editing process for my new novel, The Beached Ones.
This is my third traditionally published novel (and my sixth published novel), so it’s not like I haven’t worked with editors before. But this experience was my best yet.
I’m happy to share three main lessons I learned (or re-learned!) this time around.
Editing Process Lesson 1. Have Your Hero Be Active Whenever Possible
Yeah, we all know this one.
I knew it.
But my editor still found one scene where my main character could more actively discover the information he needs.
Instead of passively happening to overhear a conversation, he would more actively eavesdrop to hear it. Changing it made all the difference in the action and the flow of the story at that particular point.
This was simply the result of me not checking for this more carefully. My characters are typically active—I learned to avoid passive characters early on in my writing career. But sometimes a scene can get by us where we don’t realize we’ve let our main characters be too passive.
What I learned is to more carefully review all my scenes during my own editing (before submitting the story) to make sure the characters—particularly the main characters—are being as active as possible in most (if not all) of them.
Action is the engine driving your story forward. When you review your story, make sure your characters are active in almost every scene they’re in.
2. Move Your Scenes Faster!
When my editor asked me to do this, she was talking about one of the most active, fast-moving scenes in the book.
She wanted it to go faster. “Tighten it up,” she said.
At first, I was flabbergasted. Faster? I had already edited the scene down several times. I didn’t know how I was going to edit it anymore!
But I learned you can always make a scene move faster!
How? Edit down your characters’ physical actions and responses. Make the descriptions shorter. Cut out dialogue tags where you can. Cut out any dialogue that isn’t absolutely necessary.
Imagine you’re the reader and your eyes are sweeping down the page. What would you skip?
“Use fragments (sparingly),” writes author Holly Lisle. “Kill adjectives and adverbs — be ruthless. You don’t need many, and may not need any. Find good verbs and nouns, and let the scene run with them.”
The key is to look at your scene with fresh eyes. Yes, you’ve already edited 100 times. Yes, you’ve already cut it in half. Forget all that. Look at it like you’re seeing it for the first time. Where can you cut? You’ll find places.
Editing Process Lesson 3: Find the Excitement Point and Drive to That
This was a brand new idea I hadn’t considered before.
My editor pointed out a certain chapter in the book where the story started to pick up and accelerate. Then she advised me to drive toward that point—shorten everything that came before it.
When I went back through and re-read my story with this in mind, that chapter jumped out so clearly to me I wondered how I had missed it before. Reading like a reader (rather than a writer), I could see that my eyes were flowing more quickly down the page in that chapter than they had in the chapters preceding it.
With that new mindset, I went back to the chapters before and shortened them all significantly. Initially, I had worried about getting the word count to where my editor wanted it. But after noticing this interesting point in the story, I found it much easier to cut out what didn’t help drive toward that chapter.
In fact, I wanted to get to that chapter sooner rather than later. I could see that the excitement ratcheted up at that point and wanted to get the reader there as quickly as I could.
Set your story aside for a while, then when you go back and read it again, ask yourself where the excitement really revs up. Where does your heart start racing? Where do you begin to read faster?
I’m not talking about the inciting incident here. (Read this article for more on that.) This is after that. You’ve established your characters, your inciting incident, and your main character’s goal. The story is underway. Typically, this occurs about one-third of the way through.
Where do things get exciting? Or maybe tense, worrisome, or hot and heavy? Find that place where your reader is likely to forget the world around them, then drive your story toward that point.
What have you learned from the editing process?