STEP THREE: EDITING THE NOVEL

DISCLAIMER

I offer these comments for what they're worth. At the time of this posting, I have never edited a full-length novel. I only recently completed my first full-length manuscript for what will be a 120,000-word novel. I will start editing it soon. What follows is not the sage advice of one who has been there and done that, but a look at how I plan to break this task down, the steps I plan to take to complete it, the manner in which I will organize the work. After I complete the editing of my recent novel, I will come back to this posting and update it to take into account the experience of following my own advice.

THE SIX PHASES OF THE EDITING PROCESS

There are six phases in editing a novel. Each requires hard work. After completing a draft of a novel, the idea of hard work should not put you off. In fact, editing is usually regarded by most people as much easier than writing itself. You are freed from the need to constantly create original material (although you may yet create some original material through adding scenes or rewriting scenes from scratch). You simply look at words on a page and play critic -- "Oh, that's wonderful!" "Why did he do that?" "This makes no sense!" "I wonder what's going to happen next?"

PHASE ONE: DOCUMENTING "WHAT IS"

If you did a thorough job of planning before you started writing your manuscript, you should have lots of tables, notes, outlines, etc. The documentation that guided you during the writing was helpful then, but it may not be accurate at this point. While you wrote you may have changed things, and even if you attempted to update your notes to keep them current, you probably forgot a few things.

After completing your manuscript, you should let it sit a while. Then, when you are ready, set out to document what you actually wrote. Instead of comparing what you wrote to your previous planning notes, start fresh and create a new set of notes. It's quick and easy. It should only take a few days, or a week at most. You can do this immediately after finishing the manuscript, then take your break, or take a break then do this. Either way, you will benefit from doing this before you set out to change things during the editing process. The purpose of this phase is to give you an objective look at "what is", the current state of the manuscript. It helps you shift to more objective thinking. All you do is document what is actually on the page. Don't evaluate it yet, just document it. This work includes creating a Master Scene List with short paragraph descriptions and word counts of each scene in each chapter, a fresh new outline of chapters, a glossary of character names, place names and concepts (in case you created special words or ideas, as often happens in fantasy and science fiction novels), and similar documentation. These notes will provide you with both a quick overview and in-depth detail. You will refer to them in the next step. (Note: In subsequent postings I will share specific examples of these items.)

PHASE TWO: PLANNING "WHAT WILL BE"

Now, if you haven't already done so, take a break from your novel. Don't think about it. Put it away, put it out of mind. Let a few weeks or a couple of months pass, long enough that the pages will not look so damned familiar to you when you see them again. They probably became far too familiar to you as you went over them again and again while writing the complete manuscript. Get some distance from them now. This break allows you to gain a fresh perspective, allows your subconcious to reflect on your story without your even knowing it, and allows you to be emotionally distant and therefore more objective when you begin to edit the novel in earnest.

After your refreshing break, look over your notes and remember the idea of what you wrote, the concept, the general flow of the story, the scenes as you remember them visually in your mind. Begin making additional notes of things that work, things that don't work, alternate versions of scenes, new scenes, etc., etc. Take the time to think, meditate, dream, envision, reflect, and make notes as you brainstorm ways to take a good story and make it better. I suggest working in this way first, from your memory, from your "documenting what is" notes, without actually looking at your manuscript. What stuck in your mind is what you are mining first. You will remember some chapters where you thought a scene could have been rewritten from a new angle, or some plot points where other alternatives came to mind. This is the time to take what was in your mind and heart after writing and reflect on it and work out some new ideas, new plot directions, new outcomes at key moments in the story. Focus on STORY, not text (the ideas, not the words on the page). Give yourself whatever time is necessary to really get into the story and really explore alternatives. You can't rush it. This work will open up new avenues, ways of deepening your work, making it more meaningful, more dramatic, funnier, more suspenseful, whatever it needs to be. Doing a good job here will make the rest of the editing so much more effective. This is fun, a time when anything is possible again, just as it was when you first started planning the novel (Step One).

Only after spending adequate time on this should you finally sit down and reread the novel from start to finish. Read it on your computer or print it out, whatever works best for you. You will have read and reflected. Now you will see how your thoughts stand up when held up against your actual manuscript. You will see where you were already on track with thoughts for revising. You will find additional areas that need attention. Continue to add to your revising notes. If you printed out your manuscript, scribble notes in the margins, on the backs of previous pages for the current pages, add blank sheets into the stack if the notes are so extensive. Catch everything, note it somewhere, so that you can look back over it and remember your ideas in the weeks and months to come. Some of your revision ideas will work great and you'll use them. Others will fall to the cutting room floor. But keep track of everything you can, since you never know what will ultimately prove helpful until you get there, and the work ahead will take time.

Reflect, read your manuscript, review your notes of "what is" and create notes of "what will be"! And make sure it will be something wonderful! You will know you are finished with this phase when you have a thorough, detailed plan for what to fix and how to fix it. Of course you'll still come up with more ideas later as you actually do the editing, but get as much of this in mind NOW before you start that and it will pay off in higher quality editing and a better finished product. Lay the best foundation you can!

PHASE THREE: MACRO-LEVEL EDITING

Using your notes, set to work to change the big things. Add a missing scene into a chapter, break a long chapter into two and edit the two so they can stand alone. Fix major issues you found that run through several chapters. Hopefully there aren't any of these, or many, or they aren't too complex, but you have to fix them if they need fixing, so dig in and get to work!. Bring about the larger balance and consistency that your story needs. Some of this will be a return to writing mode, where you create additional original text. Some of this will be editing existing text, but you are doing so because the work is relevant to larger story issues or larger story flow and balance. You will know you are done with this phase when you have a complete story with all its necessary scenes and chapters, no unnecessary scenes and chapters, and every scene that needed it has been rewritten, even entirely reconceptualized, to draw out its greatest dramatic potential. Your manuscript now resembles the finished product, though it still needs a thorough touch-up to make it sing.

PHASE FOUR: MICRO-LEVEL EDITING

Take what should resemble a finished mansucript and go over it in explicit detail. Look at every sentence from start to finish. Every word. Make sure you are satisfied with what you see on the page. This is the time to hone the prose itself, to rephrase things, rewrite a paragraph here or there, otherwise edit a scene for clarity or tone or suspense or whatever it needs. The major story issues have all been decided, you now know everything, you have no signficant questions left to answer. You are simply revising your prose to draw out the best sense of what it can be. This is the time to look for phrases like "she was angry" and turn them into "she narrowed her eyes and sneered at him with such forcefulness he literally stepped back as if physically assaulted" (or however you'd care to put it -- turn those "tell" moments into "show" moments!). You will know you are done with this phase when your mansucript "reads well" both silently and when read aloud. It will now look like a finished product, from the first page to the last page and everywhere in between.

PHASE FIVE: FEEDBACK/REVISION

This phase involves giving copies of your novel to a few people that you trust to serve as Readers for you as a Writer as you move toward completion of your work. The Readers have a job description. They are to read your novel and give you feedback. The quality of their feedback is important. You need to work out exactly what you are expecting to receive from them. You might invite them to write on the copies you sent them (your story will be revised again in the next phase, so it's not like these copies are the ones you will send to publishers!). Ask them to point out what's good, what's boring, where they had strong questions that pulled them in (suspense), where they thought they knew what would happen next, where they knew they knew what was going to happen next (you want suspense, never for it to be too obvious). Ask them to mark anything confusing or not clear. Anywhere they became aware of the story rather than feeling wrapped up in it (what was jarring, pulled them out of the joy of reading, caused them to notice they were reading rather than experiencing the story). Where did they become convinced this story sucks? Where did they become convinced you really are a genius? The Readers do not need to be Writers themselves, although I think it's helpful if some of them are. They should be people who read, though, preferably a lot, and who enjoy the genre or sort of novel that you written and who will have experienced other novels that they can compare it to in their minds as they read. You want them to tell you whether this is something worth publishing. If not, where does it fail?

When you get all the feedback, use it. Make your story better. Revise. It's not their job to tell you how to fix it. That's your job. If they've pointed out where the story has problems, you can take it from there. Figure out what's wrong and fix it.

PHASE SIX: FINAL POLISH

After all is said and done, and all your work is complete, and the novel is now in what you think is its final form, set it aside again for a while and then come back to it. Tweak it. Fix little things. Discover it anew as if someone else had written it. Formulate a fresh, new impression of it. Is there anything that still stands out, a word, a phrase, a scene, that just doesn't work for you? Fix it. This should involve only minor touching up, but it's still not too late if you want to fix that scene that you've been wondering about and finally see how to make better.

When this phase is complete, your novel is done. It's as good as it's going to get. You have other novels to write. Start sending this one out, which is to say start sending inquiries to agents and publishers and try to interest someone in it. Take whatever route you can based on your contacts and prior experience. Whether it sells or not, you did your best, learned a lot, and you will do better with your next novel. You always improve because you always work at it, always try to learn, to improve. And if someone is interested in publishing your novel, they may ask for some additional revising. Do it. Everything can always be improved.

Don't forget to celebrate! Finishing a novel is enough cause to celebrate. Having one published even more cause.