Be Your Own Editor

To some, this advice may sound intimidating as the job of manuscript editing is a lot of work (and, let's be honest, painful; especially if you've invested a lot of emotional effort into your story). To others, it may be a bit of a relief: the voice of the editor can be your voice instead of that of a stranger. It is worth the effort, believe me, but how to get started?

To both of the groups above, I can say that there is a resource that can help: it's called "Self-Editing For Fiction Writers: How to Edit Yourself Into Print" by Renni Browne and Dave King. This has got to be one of the best books I ever invested in. Click this blog entry's title to check it out on Amazon.

If you ever saw that movie "Finding Forrester" with Sean Connery, and if you're an aspiring writer to boot, then you'll remember the line, "You write your first draft with your heart. You write your second draft with your head." Sound advice, albeit simplistically presented; and you can follow the first sentence's tip no problem. First drafts are indeed an emotional, creative endeavor. The second draft is more methodical and I'll be the first to admit that I was stuck when I had to do it for the first time.

However, the Self-Editing book is full of great stuff to help you write "with your head." For example, did you know that reusing the word "said" in dialog is better than using words like "demanded," "offered," and "inquired?" Like the following:

"Give me the glass right now," she demanded.

Try using the word "said" instead of "demanded." It works just fine and it doesn't insult the reader's intelligence by repeating what they already know. The reader knows that the sentence is a demand (especially if you've built up dialog appropriately), so it isn't necessary to spell out that it's a demand. This is one example of how you can go through your manuscript and change things to make it look more professional.

Or how about this: try to avoid repeating an "effect" too often in a chapter. For example, the book gives a sample paragraph where the author is trying to tell how much a character misses something from his childhood. The word "missed" is repeated about three times and the author tries also to elaborate on the different ways the thing is missed. It's not necessary to do this. Once is enough (hence the title of that particular chapter).

The book is crammed with great stuff like this. Best of all, there are exercises at the end of each chapter to give you practice. By the time you've finished you'll have a good working knowledge of what your own manuscript needs in order to polish it well.

Trust me, you need this book if you're at all serious about writing well, so do yourself a favor and check it out. Best of all, when you've edited your manuscript, you'll love how much better it reads!

Until next time,
Bob