I finished a complete draft of my novel, The Hero of Gucci Gulch, the day before yesterday, did a spell check and a light editing for grammar. Of course, there are still a few small holes to fill in the text. And now the editing process begins. I expect to read through the entire manuscript at least 10 times during this process of tearing down, rebuilding and moving things around!
I’ve read about editing in an excellent book on writing and publishing novels entitled Give ‘Em What They Want, by Camenson and Cook. That book is mainly about finding an agent for a work of fiction and I highly recommend it to anyone who wants to market their novel. The authors recommend that each edit be focused around a specific issue, rather than just a series of general readings. They suggest a number of things to look for. From their list and other sources, I’ve put together the following list of items to focus on.
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Does the beginning of each chapter contain a “hook”?
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Does the ending of each chapter contain a “cliffhanger”?
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Is there deadwood–material that doesn’t move the story forward?
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Can the story be improved by reorganizing the text and moving sections around?
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Does each chapter contain a good balance of dialogue, action, introspection and description?
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Are the characters’ traits well-developed?
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Is the tone of the text consistent from one chapter to the next and from the start to the finish?
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Is there too much “blow by blow” description of minute actions by the characters?
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Can the language and phraseology be improved?
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Are there typos and grammatical errors?
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Is there repetition in word usage and are there similar words used too close to each other?
I’ve listed these in the order I plan to tackle them, leaving grammatical issues to the last so that that review incorporates all the other changes I’ve made up to that point.
I expect the editing process to take at least two months, perhaps longer. But I’m eager to dive into it, knowing that I can’t start my search for an agent until I have a completed manuscript.
If you have written a novel or are in the editing process, I’d love to hear from you about what you look for in your edits, especially if there is something you do that I have not covered in my list.
Tags: editing, editorial process, novel, writing
