Welcome To Editordome

Ninja Reflexes

Remember where you are. This is Thunderdome, and death is listening, and will take the first man that screams. –Aunty Entity, Mad Max Beyond Thunderdome

I can smell the burning on the wind. Embers and cinders whirling this way and that.

I can smell the blood in the water. Like a shark, its bloom draws me ever closer.

I can smell the fear on your skin. It smells like pee. Piquant and not unlike a musky polecat.

That novel of yours? Right now, it’s just a dead beast. With your mighty sword you slayed it, indeed — but that was only the beginning. Now the beast must be drained of blood. Its hide must be ripped off. You must carve steaks from its cooling flesh. You must hollow it out so all the village children may play inside the wonderland that is its fly-specked carcass.

It’s time to edit that novel. Nay, it’s time to edit the unmerciful shit out of that novel. You’re going to cut it. You’re going to gut it. You’re going to make tools from its bones and a lovely hat from its skull. You might even get to craft a darling tea cozy out of its gnarled, furry hide.

You want tips on editing that novel of yours?

Worry not, intrepid hunters. I got you covered.

Your Novel Is Like A Fine Cut Of Meat: It Is Best When Rested

You grill a steak, the first thing you don’t do is whip it off the grates and start hacking into it. You do that, all the juices will flow out and, Wham Bam Thankya Spanky the meat has gone dry.

That meat? It needs to rest. And your novel is no different.

If you write THE END on that manuscript and, ten minutes later start tearing into it, you’re likely to experience one of two reactions: a) “I love this so much, I cannot injure it. It is like a baby deer and my red pen is like a hammer poised above its head. It’s so cute!” or b) “I hate everything about this, I just want to punch it and kick it and pee on it and rub it with garbage and cook it over a barrel fire until it’s just a charred angry nugget deserving only ridicule and scorn from the community.”

In the first situation, you’re too afraid to harm it. In the second, all you want to do is punish it.

Neither is particularly effective in terms of getting the best draft possible out of this iterative process. And that is the point, remember: to refine, to improve, to cut away the fat and find the best end result.

Walk away from your project. Wipe your hands, pull up your pants, and saunter off. Work on another project for a little while. Do something, anything, else. Take as much time away as you can stomach. For a short story, I like to have at least a week. For a novel, I aim for the bare minimum of a month. You need emotional distance and you need perspective. You need to walk back to the novel as if it isn’t your novel at all, but the novel of a stranger who asked you to edit his work.

Don’t Be Surprised That It Sucks

Of course parts of it suck. That’s the point. If it didn’t suck and we all just magically pooped out completely brilliant novels on the first go-round we wouldn’t even be discussing the editing process, would we? Being somehow shocked that the novel needs work is like walking into work and being all like, OH MY GOD THERE’S WORK TO BE DONE. THE HUMANITY! and then eating a shotgun for lunch. Editing is part of the gig, and the reason you edit is because, a-duh, it ain’t perfect from the get-go. Calm yourself. Expect this. Prepare for the worst.

Don’t Try To Do It All At Once: The Layer Cake

Look at your dinner plate. See all that food? You can’t eat it all at once. Go on, try it. I’ll wait. And then I’ll send somebody over to kung fu kick you in the solar plexus so you cough up the giant wad of ill-chewed food you just tried to cram down your esophagus. (Jesus, is that somebody’s watch? And a wad of hair? You know what? I don’t want to know.)

You can’t edit everything in the book at one time.

Again: iterative process.

I’ll talk about this at length next week in another post, but for now, just remember the Layer Cake theory of editing. Ready? Here it is.

First layer: the icing. Attack the surface elements. Edit for spelling, grammar, punctuation.

Second layer: the cake. Time to start attacking the content. The plot, the pacing, the characters, the dialogue. The cake itself has lots of sub-icing layers, so address each in turn.

Third layer: the context. Hey, food is about place and time just as much as it is about recipe. Eating a slice of wedding cake on someone’s lovely wedding day is going to feel a lot different than wedding cake eaten on Death Row in a Maximum Security Prison. And that’s what we’re talking about — feel. It’s time to do a pass to see how it feels. How do the themes stack up? The motifs? The mood?

Identify Your Darlings, Then Arrange Their Murders

A darling is any crutch on which you and your story relies. An overused word? A too-twee character? A piece of dialogue? A plot convention? It’s there because you love it, but that’s not enough reason for it to survive. (You want help identifying your darlings? “Strangling Your Darlings In A Clawfoot Bathtub.”) You need to start reading with an eye toward these skin tags, these hangnails, these swollen taste buds.

Once you identify, it’s time to terminate. With extreme prejudice.

Not A Solitary Affair

Writing is a solitary affair. Even when you’re part of a community, you still have to eventually go all creepy loner survivalist in the woods and write the novel your own damn self. But editing? Editing should not be solitary. At some point, you need to cede control and hand the book over to people you trust. These so-called “beta readers” (I hate that term, is that okay?) are your second line-of-defense against crap patches of an otherwise quality novel. The trick is in choosing the proper readers.

First? Avoid Yes-Men. Nobody who will, when handed a pile of your actual human waste, take a long and unctuous sniff and say, “Oh, this is the best thing you’ve ever made. It smells like lavender. And Jesus.”

Second? No Nagging Naysayer Nellies. Nobody who always wears a look on their face like someone rubbed a line of elk ejaculate on their upper lip. Did you write a science-fiction novel? Don’t hand it to someone who dislikes science-fiction. You want to give the book to people who represent your actual audience.

Keep in mind too that eventually (ideally) others will come to the table, too.

Agents? Editors? Yes. Both will want edits. And that’s a good thing.

Sometimes You Need A Scalpel, And Other Times You Need To Cut Off Your Hands And Replace Them With Diamond-Tooth Chainsaws

The word “editing” sounds so nice, so trim, so elegant. “Oh! I edited this sentence. I just rearranged the words a little bit and — voila! They sound so crisp! So delightful! Giggle tee-hee!”

That’s very nice.

Sometimes, though, you need to get your hands dirty.

I talked about this before but, we had someone living on a trailer on our property when I was growing up, and this woman — despite many warnings — flushed her tampons down the toilet. Which clogged and busted the pipes. We did not merely “edit” the pipes. We had to dig up the earth and rip those motherfuckers out and replace them with pipes that were not pre-clogged with used tampons.

That is sometimes your task. You must be prepared to rip your work apart — not just rearrange parts, but rewrite entire tracts of text. Cut out the cancer. Replace with healthy tissue.

It’s a mindset thing. Know going in that this is likely a necessity.

It makes getting sprayed with your novel’s viscera a little bit easier when you know it’s coming.

Indecision Is Your Enemy: Shit Or Get Off The Pot

If you were to ask me, the biggest thing preventing a writer from properly completing an edit is indecision. I know this intimately. You reach a spot you know doesn’t feel right, and you soon realize that you have two, three, or maybe three-hundred-seventy-seven options on the table. And this happens constantly. “Do I do this? Or do I do this? This? Or this? Fnuh? Or buh? I CANNOT FEEL MY LEGS WHY DOES MY MIND ITCH? Are there bugs in there? Ants? Termites? What?!”

No, there aren’t bugs. It’s just good old-fashioned indecision.

The solution?

Decide something. No, no, I know, that sounds obvious. It’s like that quote from Yogi Berra — “When you come to a fork in the road, take it.” Now, unless he was talking about an actual piece of silverware laying there in the dirt, I assume he means you need to pick one path or the other. That’s it. Make a choice. Just fucking choose something, anything, even if it’s the wrong choice it’s progress just the same.

You can always say, “This didn’t work,” and then go back and fix it. Editing will take you down paths both weird and wonderful, both fulfilling and frustrating.

Hell, I’ve had drafts that were a step backward in some places.

You know what? That’s totally awesome. Because it’s progress.

For God’s Sake, Read Everything Aloud

Last point:

Read your novel aloud.

I know. It’s irritating and weird. People will look at you and they’ll probably kick you out of the McDonald’s or off the preschool playground or wherever it is you’re standing. Fine. Go back to your office and do it alone where you don’t disturb the general populace.

But sweet sassy mo-lassy, read it aloud. You do that, you will hear all the fits and starts, all the awkward language, all the broken pauses, all the disturbed rhythms. Typing is not like speaking — we have the extra step of having our fingers do their little fingery dance. As such, you need to bridge that gap.

Read it aloud.

No, seriously, read it aloud.

Don’t make me slap you.

Are You A Combatant In Editordome?

So — comments? Questions? Complaints? Got more to add? Throw it in the comments below.

Otherwise, happy editing.

33 comments

  • Rhiannon

    December 1, 2010 at 2:10 AM // Reply

    I actually love editing. It means I get to bring out the editing pencil.

    I shan’t be weilding it on my NaNo story, though; that one’s in the “Ignore” bin until at least January. But I do have other stories that are in want of editing, so I am looking forward to your future posts.

  • Harry Markov

    December 1, 2010 at 3:29 AM // Reply

    I will participate. Before NaNo I actually started editing a novel, so I need to return to that one and do it. The biggest issue would be the second most important character after the narrator, who spends like 90% the novel with her. AND I can’t nail him down. [no romance between the two]. It doesn’t really help when both characters suffer from personality splits and disorders [magically induced, but still].

  • Sarah W

    December 1, 2010 at 6:32 AM // Reply

    “Oh, this is the best thing you’ve ever made. It smells like lavender. And Jesus.”

    Um . . . where would these Yes-people be? Just so I can avoid them, of course.

  • DeAnna

    December 1, 2010 at 9:22 AM // Reply

    Out loud! Out loud!

    I haven’t written short stories for a few weeks, so I will still keep writing those even as I hack at my poor little Death Watch.

  • Patrick Regan

    December 1, 2010 at 9:28 AM // Reply

    A piece of advice for editing scripts and plays as well as novels (Although pretty much everything you say up there applies):

    If you can find people to do it. Have people read your script. Out loud. If possible, get actual actors to read them out loud. Your dialog will always sound right when you read it in your mind. When read by actual human beings, though, you will find all the stupid lines, the inside-baseball talk, and just plain crappy dialog.

    Plus, it is WICKED cool to hear your dialog read by actors.

    • terribleminds

      December 1, 2010 at 9:31 AM // Reply

      @Patrick:

      Absolutely.

      Had a table read on our last script and it was both awesome and awesomely helpful.

      Have one coming up for our current script, and very excited to get to that, too, to find those pieces of dialogue that sound off to the ear.

      – c.

  • Kate Haggard

    December 1, 2010 at 9:39 AM // Reply

    I got a question – where do you people find beta readers willing to put up with reading your novel length turd that isn’t your yes-man spouse? No, seriously. I need readers soon-ish and have no clue where on earth to find the right person. (I could go troll the alma mater but most of the profs and students are focused on post post modern lit fic. They so don’t want to read my scifi bio-thriller YA.)

    Also, I’m curious why you would edit for grammar/spelling/etc before doing the major content changes. It strikes me more as the last step of nice polish – like a fresh coat of paint when you’ve already shored up the foundation, insulated, and put up the drywall.

    • terribleminds

      December 1, 2010 at 9:51 AM // Reply

      @Kate:

      My bad — I didn’t meant to infer that those things needed to be done in order, only that they constitute separate editing passes. (I plan on devoting an entire blog post to this, and yes, in most cases that “icing” layer would come last, in much the same way you would apply the icing last. Though I would also argue that you could do that pass twice — one to begin just to “clean up” and once at the end as a polish. For me, having a lot of niggling spelling errors and grammatical problems actually get in the way of deeper edits. I’m too distracted by those surface concerns.)

      As for where to find readers —

      Well, this site probably isn’t the worst place. I’m sure you could easily find someone here to trade in editing duties.

      – c.

  • Josh

    December 1, 2010 at 9:54 AM // Reply

    No joke – I ‘m just about to jump back into the dome, start some hefty rewrites and edit whatever’s left to within an inch of its literary life.

    Thanks for handing me the sword and giving me a shove into the ring. I needed it.

  • kfwritesbooks

    December 1, 2010 at 10:11 AM // Reply

    I’m putting my NaNo story aside until the beginning of January. Then I’ll be all over it with a chainsaw. This month I’m editing my short story…again. That sucker has been worked over so much it’s starting to look like Pete Burns. Maybe one more round of surgery will do the trick.

    When do you recommend sending a draft to a beta reader? And how do you reconcile conflicting advice?

    • terribleminds

      December 1, 2010 at 10:13 AM // Reply

      Kerry –

      I say you send it off when you’re relatively happy with it — or, at least, you’ve reached a point where you can go no further on your own.

      Conflicting advice is hard to negotiate — again, it’s a problem of indecision. Pick the advice that appeals to you and you instinctively think will make a better story. If no such instinct reveals itself? Hey, eeny-meeny-miney-mo that sonofabitch. Just move forward, make a change, see how it plays.

      – c.

      • terribleminds

        December 1, 2010 at 10:14 AM // Reply

        I’m actually noodling a contest where I offer up some editing services to a piece of short fiction (or a chapter of a novel, say). Something under 5,000 words, say. Not sure if anybody would even have any interest.

        – c.

  • Dan O'Shea

    December 1, 2010 at 10:37 AM // Reply

    Two editing tricks I’ve found useful:

    1. I open the draft up and, one at a time, search out the main characters’ names and highlight them in red, which makes that character’s dialog easy to find. Then I skim through all their dialog and see what makes that character’s voice unique. Maybe he or she is a smart ass. Maybe they cuss more than the others, or not at all. Maybe they user bigger words. Maybe they’re terse. But the main characters at least should have pretty distinctive voices, and reading all their dialog at once helps both to highlight what that voice is and finds spots where it can be better stressed.

    2. One friend I like to have read my drafts isn’t a writer at all, but she plows through maybe thirty or so books in my genre every year, and I trust her taste. I ask her to do only three things: Make a plus sign in the margin when she really likes something, make a minus sign in the margin when she dislikes something and make a check mark in the margin every time she stops reading. The pluses give the ego a nice boost, the minuses highlight the occasional clunker sentence or maladroit plot machination, but the checks are what I look at the most. I don’t really expect anyone to read an entire book in one sitting, but the checks point out those places where she CHOOSES to stop – which often turn out to be places where I am forced to admit the tension sags a bit. Those are always instructive.

    • terribleminds

      December 1, 2010 at 10:53 AM // Reply

      @Dan –

      I love that first tip. Love love love love it. (It strikes me, then — are you more mechanical and methodical on the editing end? I know you don’t do much for plotting, but that technique leans toward a more technical approach.)

      On the first tip — I dig that, too. Tell me, though, about the check marks — when I put down a book, it’s usually for an arbitrary reason (time for bed, I have to wash dishes, I forgot to hide the bodies). And I try to stop at breaks int he narrative — chapter end, a page break, something notable. So, my “stopping points” would be kind of useless from a storytelling perspective.

      But! I wonder if it would be valuable to identify those sections where people gloss over — like, “Oh, I want to get to the next piece of dialogue, so I’m going to skip this expositional graf.”

      – c.

  • Kate Haggard

    December 1, 2010 at 10:37 AM // Reply

    @Patrick, @Josh

    At the moment it’s hovering around 55k (which is, frankly, too damn short). But it needs another round or two of serious revision or rewrites before I ship it off to anyone. So I wouldn’t need a reader until say February. I don’t see it being much longer than 75K in the end.

    And Josh, you’ve got a deal. I’ll let you know when it’s ready to swap.

    @Chuck

    I’m always game for contests. I don’t win often, but when I do I win big. :-D

  • Dan O'Shea

    December 1, 2010 at 11:08 AM // Reply

    @Chuck-

    I suppose if I stopped and thought about it, my editing process would be more mechancical than my drafting process — has to be, I think, because I’m no longer in a completely organic creative process. In editing, I’m renovating an existing structure. Can’t just do whatever I want – might rip out a load-bearing wall or something. The thing is, I don’t really think much about my approach in either case – I just sort of do what feels right. The dialog review bit happened because, during my first reread of my first novel, I caught a verbal tic with a character that I was finding annoying, and the name-highlighting deal was the easiest way to find all the guy’s dialog so I could edit out the tics. And then I found that, by reading the guy’s dialog all at once and independently from the context of the story, it was easier to get a handle on his voice and to make tweaks purely from that perspective, so I went back and did it with all the main characters. Just a happy accident i guess.

    As for the check marks, yeah, sometimes they are just arbitrary. But overall, I find her stopping at places where I could jack things up a touch.

  • Eric Satchwill

    December 1, 2010 at 11:35 AM // Reply

    Admittedly, I probably didn’t wait as long as I ought for the first-pass rewrite. I made it… about a day or so, and most of that was because I needed to buy new ink and paper for the printer. But there are things I’ve been wanting to go back to while I was writing and wouldn’t let myself, so this is my chance. Part rewrite, part fleshing out.

    I love page six. It’s a mess of red pen where I rewrote pretty much every piece of dialogue because you know what? The motivations weren’t what I though they were when I started. And then there’s the chunk out of page seventeen, and most of page eighteen that turned into page seventeen-point-five. And of course, there’s still all the bits that work, at least for now.

    So far, editing is exciting. But after this pass, I do plan to let it sit for a while, maybe send it out to a few trusted’s for opinions. Work on something else for a while.

  • nige bird

    December 1, 2010 at 12:35 PM // Reply

    what a great piece. it’s just what i need right now. in fact, it’s what i’ve always needed.
    it’s great to get things written in plain-speak using images that make sense – a spade is a spade and i like it that way.
    i’m not sure my work is able to be salvaged, but i’m sure as hell going to try my best and i’ll have your printed work as a guide.
    and that thing about a comp with an edit as a prize – absolutely; people would be entering in droves for treasure like that (think 1849).

  • Sylvia

    December 1, 2010 at 1:19 PM // Reply

    This series is perfect timing for me because I’m just ripping into a large project that scares the hell out of me. I’m glad you explained in the comments about the icing though! I always eat the icing first and you seem like you might be too so I thought maybe you do a grammatical pass first to get some distance or something.

    And I would certainly be interested in a contest with services rendered as the reward!

  • Kristen Lamb

    December 1, 2010 at 6:41 PM // Reply

    LOVE this blog. Laughed out loud repeatedly. I put you in my Mash-Up of Awesomeness and just went ahead and officially added you to my blogroll. Not that I am stalking you. Please don’t take those Photoshopped pictures of us with the Best Friends Forever the wrong way.

    *cough* Um, editing. Right? Where was I? A thanks, then some awkward hero worship..Oh, yes!

    I just finished a scientific thriller, so I am spending the next month reading every best-selling book in a similar genre that I can possibly cram in my brain. Giving the subconscious plenty of material to steal…um plagarize. No that isn’t it…plenty to inspire me. Yeah. So any recommendations would be righteous.

    I am also doing as many blogs ahead of time as I can and working on a NF proposal that is due to my agent. Switching sides of the brain. Hoping that makes the smoke thin out some. I can’t see my screen.

    Anyway, rock on! Love your blog.

  • Dave Turner

    December 1, 2010 at 7:39 PM // Reply

    Auntie Entity: For God’s sake, what now?

    The Wendig: Who run Writer-town?

    Auntie Entity: Dammit, I told you, no more embargos.

    The Wendig: More, Blaster.
    [the Blaster puts all power out of the Internet]

    The Wendig: Who run Writer-town? Who… run… Writer-town?

    Auntie Entity: …You know who.

    The Wendig: Say.

    Auntie Entity: Wendig Blaster.

    The Wendig: Say loud!
    [the Wendig turns on the RSS feeds]

    Auntie Entity: Wendig Blaster.

    The Wendig: Wendig Blaster… what?

    Auntie Entity: Wendig Blaster runs Writer-town.

    The Wendig: Louder!

    Auntie Entity: Wendig Blaster runs Writer-town!

    The Wendig: Lift embargo.
    [the Blaster turns power back on to the Internet]

  • Amanda Hoving

    December 1, 2010 at 9:18 PM // Reply

    My favorite part of this was imagining you saying “Giggle tee hee” after just describing human waste in various states, consistencies and…smells.

    I agree with all of your tips — especially the reading out loud. I do that with everything I write…from manuscripts to notes to my kids’ teachers.

    You say what I need to hear in a way I need to hear it…thanks~

  • Kristin

    December 2, 2010 at 3:37 PM // Reply

    As always, I loved the blog. I set aside a novel to work on something fresh for NaNo. Now I’m back to edits. This is probably my fifth pass at. The beginning needed a major overhaul. I despise edits! But, I’m determined to make this thing shine. If anyone is interested in beta reading a novel with vampires, psychics, murder, and sex let me know. It’s on the long side at 112,000 words, just so know what you’re getting into! I’m willing to trade of course, and love just about anything with some paranormal stuff going on.