Effective Editing: How to Take Your Writing to the Next Level

Citation preview

Topic Literature & Language

Effective Editing

Subtopic Writing

How to Take Your Writing to the Next Level Course Guidebook Molly McCowan Editor and Writing Coach

LEADERSHIP President & CEO. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PAUL SUIJK Chief Financial Officer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . BRUCE G. WILLIS Chief Marketing Officer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CALE PRITCHETT SVP, Marketing. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . JOSEPH PECKL VP, Customer Engagement. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . KONSTANTINE GELFOND VP, Technology Services. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . MARK LEONARD VP, Product Development. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . JASON SMIGEL VP, General Counsel. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . DEBRA STORMS VP, People . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . AUDREY WILLIAMS Sr. Director, Creative & Production. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . KEVIN BARNHILL Sr. Director, Content Development. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . KEVIN MANZEL Director, Business Operations & Planning. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . GAIL GLEESON Director, Editorial & Design Services. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . FARHAD HOSSAIN Director, Content Research & Alternative Programming. . . . . . . . . WILLIAM SCHMIDT Director, Creative. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . OCTAVIA VANNALL

PRODUCTION Studio Operations Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . JIM M. ALLEN Video Production Director. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ROBERTO DE MORAES Technical Engineering Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . SAL RODRIGUEZ Quality Assurance Supervisor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . JAMIE MCCOMBER Sr. Post-Production Manager. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PETER DWYER Production Manager. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . RIMA KHALEK Preditor. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . KATY MERRY HANNAH Studio Producer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . TRISH GOLDEN Content Developer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . JESSICA DARAGO Associate Producer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . SAM BARDLEY Graphics Manager. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . JAMES NIDEL Graphic Artist. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . DANIEL RODRIGUEZ Editing Manager . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . OWEN YOUNG Assistant Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CHARLES GRAHAM Audio Engineer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . CHRIS HOOTH Director. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ALEXIS DOTY Camera Operators. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ERICA CORSO RICK FLOWE Production Assistant . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . PAUL SHEEHAN

EDITORIAL & DESIGN Writer/Editor . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . ERIKA ROBERTS Sr. Graphic Designer. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . KATHRYN DAGLEY Sr. Editorial Associate. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . JENNIFER ROSENBERG Editorial Assistant. . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . WILLIAM DOMANSKI

Molly McCowan Editor and Writing Coach

Molly McCowan is an accomplished developmental editor, copyeditor, and writing coach. As the founder and lead word nerd of the editorial agency Inkbot Editing, she helps authors make their work the best it can be and navigate the often-complicated waters of traditional publishing and selfpublishing. She earned her BA in English from Colorado State University. Molly has worked as an editor for renowned publishers like HarperCollins, Routledge, Psychology Press, Oxford University Press, and Taylor & Francis Group as well as for corporations, magazines, universities, and nonprofits. She teaches writing and self-editing at industry conferences, writers’ groups, and writing organizations throughout the United States, and she hosts collaborative critique groups for writers driven to improve their work and get published. i

Presenter Biography

Molly is also an editorial business consultant who teaches workshops and multiweek courses for organizations like the Editorial Freelancers Association and ACES: The Society for Editing on how to operate a successful freelance editing business. She serves on the board of the Editorial Freelancers Association, and she’s the founder of the Fort Collins, Colorado, chapter of Shut Up & Write!, where she and her team of volunteers host free writing sprints every week. She is an active supporter of the writing community in Colorado and beyond.

ii

Table of Contents Introduction About Molly McCowan . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . i Scope . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 1

Guides 1

Understanding the Four Levels of Editing . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 2

2

Planning Your Edit . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . .9

3

Editing for Plot and Structure . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 15

4

Editing for Dynamic Characters . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 22

5

Tackling Point of View . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 28

6

Page-Turner Pacing: Scene versus Narration . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 35

7

Building Stronger Scenes . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 43

8

Showing versus Telling: Beyond the Basics . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 50

9

Dialogue That Sparkles . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 55

iii

Table of Contents

10

Sentences That Sizzle . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 63

11

Pruning Your Prose . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 70

12

When to Ignore the Grammar Rules . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 78

13

Beyond the Red Pen: What Comes Next . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 84

Supplementary Material Save the Cat! Beat Sheet . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 92 Character Transformation . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 97 Character Voice Journal . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 99 Building a Backstory . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 104 Editor Directories . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 108 Bibliography . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . . 110

iv

Effective Editing: How to Take Your Writing to the Next Level

Successful writers understand that writing isn’t actually the difficult part of what they do; editing their own work is. Best-selling science fiction novelist Michael Crichton, author of the Jurassic Park series, summed it up when he said, “Books aren’t written—they’re rewritten.” Creating masterful narrative writing, complete with strong characters and great pacing, is the result of effective editing—and learning how to edit your own work is the best way to achieve this. Self-editing is not easy, but with this course, you’ll develop a system of tools and techniques that will help you craft stories readers can’t put down while also elevating and polishing your prose. Across 13 lessons, you and your red pen will master the stages of the developmental editing and line editing processes. You’ll learn how to move from the big picture to the little picture with your edits. And you’ll build a custom toolbox for evaluating your own work with an editor’s eye. This course is targeted to fiction writers, but if you’re telling a true story about real people and events using the stylistic elements of fiction, such as scenes and dialogue, you’re also in the right place. With this course, you’ll discover how effective editing will take your stories from good to unforgettable. 1

1

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Understanding the Four Levels of Editing Imagine you’ve just completed a novel. It feels great to be done with your rough draft, and you’re so excited about it that you want to dive right in and start editing and rewriting. You start editing one chapter at a time, focusing on fixing typos and making sure your sentences flow nicely. After a week of this finely tuned editing, you decide to reread the entire book to see how it all fits together. And that’s when the trouble starts. You realize that the chapters you spent so many hours painstakingly editing need to be completely reworked or even cut entirely. Maybe they’re slowing down the pacing, or the character or plot development isn’t where it needs to be. In short, the problems are much larger than fixing typos. All the hours you spent making detailed edits and rereading the same sentence over and over again were for nothing. It’s one of the worst realizations for writers, and some end up feeling so defeated by it that they give up and put their manuscript in a drawer, where it sits for years. 2

Lesson 1 | Understanding the Four Levels of Editing

Without having a clear understanding of what the entire editorial process should look like, editing your own writing can quickly become a drain on your time and energy. The good news is that you can avoid these kinds of headaches—and heartaches—and turn your self-editing process into a well-oiled machine by understanding one of the key secrets of the publishing industry: the four levels of editing.

The order of operations in editing is critical. Always move from the big picture to the little picture with your edits.

3

Lesson 1 | Understanding the Four Levels of Editing

Developmental Editing You can picture the levels of editing as a large triangle divided into four levels. The foundation of the triangle is developmental editing. This level examines the biggest picture possible and analyzes how well your work is functioning as a whole. For narrative writing, there are three pillars of developmental editing: structure and plot, character development, and pacing. Characters are the number-one priority in narrative writing—and not just for fiction. If you’re writing a memoir or autobiography, you and the other people in the manuscript are handled like characters as well. No matter the genre, you can have an excellent, well-crafted, and tight plotline, but if your characters aren’t compelling and believable, no one will read the book. You’ll approach character development by learning how to spot common errors and tweak your characters to help them be even stronger. After character, developmental editing looks at the structure and plot of your narrative. Structure is the backbone of your entire work, and it’s based on turning points that need to happen at specific moments in the story. Editing your own work for structure means checking that all your scenes are in the most effective order and every story event happens when it should. You’ll want to be sure your work uses its structure to its maximum potential, heightening tension and compelling your readers to keep turning the page. The word plot can be anxiety-inducing for many writers, but at its core, plot is simply what happens to your characters and how they react. It relies on your characters having strong motivations, making decisions, and taking action. Editing for plot revolves around ensuring that the plot points, or beats, push the protagonist to transform. As you revise your plot, you’ll also want to make sure it includes enough twists and turns to make things interesting for readers.

4

Lesson 1 | Understanding the Four Levels of Editing

The third pillar of developmental editing is pacing. This is where you cut sections, and even entire chapters, that are slowing things down. Alternatively, you might find that sections of your work move too quickly and tell too much. Like the other aspects of developmental editing, editing for pacing relies on you being able to put yourself in your ideal reader’s shoes to see where they might start to get bored, anxious to skip ahead, or confused.

Line Editing The next level on the triangle is line editing, which focuses on the paragraph and sentence level of your work. Line editing looks for clarity and flow in your writing, and its main goal is to make sure your prose is clear and engaging. It focuses on transitions, run-on sentences and paragraphs, syntax (or how sentences are structured), rhythm, tense, and removing clichés. A line edit also addresses any confusing action or logical flaws, such as a character who enters the room—and then enters the room again two sentences later. It works on punching up the writing by using varied sentence and paragraph lengths, replacing passive voice with active voice, and omitting unnecessary or bland words, sentences, or paragraphs. It often involves making a lot of cuts and deleting large sections of prose. Note that this level does not fix things like grammar, punctuation, or spelling—these corrections need to wait until the copyediting stage. The trickiest part of line editing is resisting the temptation to correct every typo or mechanical error you come across. Practice ignoring tiny mistakes in favor of the bigger picture. If you skip ahead and focus on the tiny details before doing a thorough line edit, you risk wasting time and effort on passages that may need to be cut entirely.

5

Lesson 1 | Understanding the Four Levels of Editing

Copyediting Copyediting is probably the type of editing you’re most familiar with. This level focuses on correcting grammar, usage, and spelling, but it also looks at things like hyphenation, capitalization, numbers, quotations, abbreviations, and acronyms. The majority of the red-pen notes your teacher put on your graded papers were copyedits. Consistency is the name of the game with copyediting. You should be consistent with how words are spelled, how words are hyphenated and capitalized, and how you use numbers. For example, do you write out all numbers up to 100 or just numbers up to 10? There’s also internal consistency, which makes sure that character and plot details remain the same throughout the text. If a character has red hair on page 10 and blonde hair on page 90, that’s a problem with internal consistency.

There’s nothing wrong with leaving the style guides to the professionals. In fact, doing a true copyedit of your own work is difficult. Our brains simply aren’t wired to catch our own mistakes. Instead of reading and processing each word in a sentence, our brains combine the details to form what we would expect to see. This helps us comprehend material faster when we’re reading a textbook or studying for an exam, but it also means that when we try to copyedit our own work, our brains skip over the errors because we don’t expect them to be there.

6

Lesson 1 | Understanding the Four Levels of Editing

The biggest difference between line editing and copyediting is that copyediting involves an in-depth understanding of the mechanics of the English language and should always follow a style guide. Style guides are critical in copyediting because, unlike some other languages, English doesn’t have a standardized set of rules to follow. Since this course focuses on narrative writing, you’ll want to follow The Chicago Manual of Style, which is mainly used for fiction and nonfiction books, essays, and short stories. Fact-checking is the final part of copyediting, even for narrative writing. For a novel that’s set in a specific period of time, for instance, it’s crucial that everything in the story—slang words, fabrics or clothing, foods, products, and types of media—fits within that time period. For example, perhaps a musician character in 1910 says he’s going to a jam session. The problem is that term wasn’t coined until the 1920s.

Proofreading The final level of editing, proofreading, focuses on the finest details possible. This is a level you shouldn’t do yourself, as you absolutely need another set of eyes on your work at this stage to make sure you catch all the typos and other mistakes you don’t want in the final print version—as well as problems with layout or design. The proof is the polished work in its absolute, final form. Proofreading shouldn’t add anything new or change much; instead, it only looks for the tiny, leftover problems.

Questions 1 Before starting this course, what was your experience with self-editing? What do you find exciting about self-editing? What do you find intimidating? 7

Lesson 1 | Understanding the Four Levels of Editing

2 How many of the different types of edits were you familiar with before this lesson? (There are no wrong answers here.) After learning about the different types of edits, what did you find surprising? 3 The golden rule of editing is to always move from big-picture editing to little-picture editing. Have you gotten mired down in trying to fix little details before looking at your manuscript as a whole? Take a minute and brainstorm some strategies for how to look at the big picture before diving into details.

8

2

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Planning Your Edit The self-editing process is different for everyone, but one of the problems many writers face is the trap of focusing on editing too soon. If you find yourself obsessing over pages and making them “perfect” before you’ve even written five chapters, you’ll run your creativity into the ground. Don’t stop yourself in that drafting process and go back to edit—let it truly be rough for now. This course assumes you already finished your rough draft, which means you’ve naturally made the switch from writing to editing. Now, you know when you should start editing, but what about where? Should you start editing at the beginning of your manuscript or wherever it needs the most work? This question has a bit of a trick answer. It helps to think of what to edit next rather than where to edit next, focusing on one task at a time to strengthen the book piece by piece. The crucial aspect of preparing to edit your own work is developing your editor’s eye. Some of the techniques in this lesson can be done at any stage in your writing journey, while others need to happen before or during your revisions.

9

Lesson 2 | Planning Your Edit

Let Your Work Rest The first—and most important—technique for developing your editor’s eye is to let your work rest before starting revisions. If you’re still “in” the work and having trouble seeing it, you won’t be able to make the changes it needs. Set it aside for a while and don’t look at it or work on it. Put it into a digital or physical drawer and forget about it, ideally for at least a month or two. During this time, don’t give in to any temptations to open the file or pull out the physical manuscript. If an idea for a way to fix a scene comes to you, write it in a separate notebook or file. The manuscript itself has to stay on lockdown during this time to give you a chance to gain some distance, which will be paramount to a successful self-editing process.

Read Widely for Inspiration The second technique is to read widely for inspiration. Reading outside your usual genre is a fun way to expand your thinking about what good writing is, and you’ll be surprised by what inspires you. When you read outside your normal genre, you may find it easier to distance yourself from the story and think like an editor. What’s working and what isn’t? What does the author do that you like, and what don’t you like? If you can spot these issues in an unfamiliar story, you’ll be more likely to notice them when you turn back to your own, familiar story. 10

“Read, read, read. Read everything— trash, classics, good and bad, and see how they do it. Just like a carpenter who works as an apprentice and studies the master.” —William Faulkner

Lesson 2 | Planning Your Edit

Join a Critique Group Another way to develop your editor’s eye is to join a critique group. Critique groups usually work best when they’re small—say, three to five writers. Some critique groups focus on one genre, and others feature a blend of genres and writing styles. Both have their pros and cons, but especially for first-time fiction writers, it’s beneficial to be in a critique group that mixes genres. This creates an unreserved environment from the beginning, since the authors won’t be as concerned about someone else taking their ideas, whether purposefully or accidentally. Putting all this aside, the two most important components of a solid critique group are personality and skill level. You have to genuinely like and respect your group members and make sure that one or two people aren’t dominating the conversation. It also helps to be at similar levels in your writing careers. You want to be able to help each other grow and improve without one or two people feeling pushed into teacher or mentor roles.

Learn How to Give Feedback Even if you don’t join a critique group, learning how to give other writers honest, constructive, and tactful feedback is a great way to begin to trust your inner editor. As you learn to look for specific things in someone else’s novel or essay, you’re training your editor’s eye at the same time. Similarly, learning how to express your thoughts and ideas about a piece of writing without sounding didactic or harsh is a skill that takes practice. Receiving and giving feedback can be challenging at first, and it helps to set some ground rules. First, only give the type of feedback the writer is asking for. This means that the opposite also applies: The writer being critiqued 11

Lesson 2 | Planning Your Edit

needs to be specific about what they want. Instead of saying, “Let me know what you think of the chapter,” ask, “Is the protagonist’s reaction believable in this scene?” or “Does this section grab you and hold your attention?” If a writer gives you vague directions, ask them to share their top three concerns with the piece. The second rule is to always deliver feedback in a compliment sandwich. Start with something you like about the piece, move into a constructive comment, and end with another compliment. As you gain more experience giving others feedback, you’ll learn how to express things in a tactful, constructive way while still being honest and recognizing that all writers do things differently. Similarly, the more you ask for and receive feedback, the easier it will become to decide what to take on board and what to politely ignore.

Gain Perspective Even after you’ve let your work rest for a few weeks, you’ll likely start skimming over paragraphs, having trouble remembering where a scene or bit of dialogue is, and missing important details. This leads to the fifth technique for developing your editor’s eye, which is to find ways to gain perspective on your writing. The most popular way to get a fresh perspective on a shorter piece of writing—or a chapter or single page—is to print it out. Making the switch from staring at a computer screen to looking at a physical piece of paper can make all kinds of things jump off the page. While this especially happens with smaller errors, like typos or spelling mistakes, it’s also true for larger editing tasks, such as figuring out why a scene isn’t working or why a section of dialogue is falling flat.

12

Lesson 2 | Planning Your Edit

Another technique to gain perspective on your work is to read it aloud to someone. When we read aloud, we hear certain aspects of the story and the prose more clearly. And if you stumble over a word or sentence, it might be a sign that it needs a revision. You can also have someone read the manuscript aloud to you, or even have your computer read aloud to you. This doesn’t have the same nuance as a real person, of course, but it works well for a chapter or section that you need to finesse and aren’t sure how.

Try laying your printed pages down on the floor, tacking them up on the wall, or hanging them up on a clothesline. Be creative! Do whatever it takes to help your brain reset so you can bring your editor’s eye to your work.

Next, try changing the appearance of the words on the page. You can make the font bigger, choose a typeface that’s sans serif instead of serif, or even vary the page color. The idea here is to do everything you can to trick your brain into seeing the same words it’s read over and over again as new information on the screen. You can also try editing your work in a different physical location. If you start to differentiate your physical writing and editing spaces, you can train your brain to flip from writing to editing mode depending on where you are. And even if you don’t want to do this regularly, changing physical location even once can be a successful way to gain perspective on your writing and see things you’ve skimmed over many times. A fifth technique to gain perspective is to set time limits on editing. Instead of sitting down and getting lost in the editing process, set a timer for an hour and stop when that hour is up. This forces you to take breaks and edit faster and more intuitively. Breaks are when you’ll get your best thinking done, and training yourself to move quickly can help you become more efficient with your rounds of revision. 13

Lesson 2 | Planning Your Edit

One final way to get instant perspective on your book is to email it someone you want to impress. It could be an agent, editor, or writer you admire. Draft the email, prep the work, and get ready to push “send.” What last-minute things suddenly come to mind to change? Even attaching the file to an email and thinking about this other person reading it can remind you of passages or sentences to fix. You’ll be shocked by what instantly pops into your mind to revise as you draft the email—and you don’t even have to send it.

Reading Bell, James Scott, Revision and Self-Editing. Bell, Susan, The Artful Edit. Browne and King, Self-Editing for Fiction Writers.

Questions 1 This lesson examines a number of strategies and tools writers can use to edit their writing. What tools do you rely on when editing? Are there any tools from this lesson that you need to incorporate into your editing? 2 Your editing style will be reflected by your personal writing style. Take a moment and think about how your writing style could be applied to editing. Are you a planner, a pantser—someone who flies by the seat of their pants—or somewhere in between? Are you an over-writer or an under-writer? 3 What strategies do you need to use to take a step back to see your manuscript with new eyes?

14

3

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Editing for Plot and Structure Premise. Plot. Structure. You hear these terms all the time—often used interchangeably—but what exactly are they, and how are they different? If your story is about a girl who steals lockets, that’s the premise of the book. Maybe it’s the initial image or idea that sent you down the path to writing the story, but it isn’t the story itself. The plot is what happens in the story—the cause-and-effect events that allow your protagonist to struggle, grow, and change. And structure is how you organize your plot—the order in which you give information to the reader. You’re not alone if you feel a jolt of dread when you hear the word plot. But there’s an easier way to think about it: Everything revolves around what your protagonist wants. Most protagonists want something achievable. Captain Ahab wants revenge on Moby Dick. Katniss Everdeen wants to survive the Hunger Games. Many authors write their entire rough draft without knowing what their protagonist wants, but it’s the most critical element of the story. It not only drives the protagonist’s actions, but it’s also central to the entire emotional 15

Lesson 3 | Editing for Plot and Structure

journey of the book. It doesn’t matter how detailed and fancy the events in your book are—if you wrote it without knowing what your protagonist wants, you’re guaranteed to have plot and structure problems. Luckily, there are ways you can analyze your current plot and structure and fix what’s needed.

Story Beats One way to analyze your plot is to look at it through the lens of your protagonist. This involves using the basic units of a plot, which are often called plot points or story beats. Beats are the events that move the character through the story. They must be driven by what the character wants, and they always need to show that one action leads to a consequence, which leads to another action. The character tries something, gets thwarted, tries the next logical thing, and gets thwarted again. Storytellers have come up with several sets of story beats that are flexible enough to accommodate different stories but specific enough to effectively push the protagonist to transform. The one you’re likely using is the conventional three-act structure, which has been around since humans used oral history to pass down stories, myths, and life lessons through the generations. In Act I of the three-act structure, the protagonist is pulled into conflict. In Act II, they’re further from their goal. Act III is the resolution. This course uses the story beats from Save the Cat! Writes a Novel by Jessica Brody, which is based on the screenwriting series by Blake Snyder. Snyder analyzed hundreds of the best Hollywood movies and found that they were all structured around the same 15 story beats. Brody, a film-executive-turnedstruggling-novelist, realized Snyder’s beats could be found in all the best stories, across genres and across history—from Jane Eyre to The Shining. 16

Lesson 3 | Editing for Plot and Structure

Rather than thinking of this as a formula, consider this 15-beat structure as a type of universal code. Once you know and understand the code, you’ll be able to apply it to any type of story. And during the editing process, it’s a wonderful tool for auditing your draft to see what might be missing.

Save the Cat! Beats Save the Cat! follows a classic three-act structure that breaks Act I into five beats. First is the Opening Image, where you show the protagonist in their ordinary world. Think of it as a “before” picture. Near the beginning is also a quick, subtle moment called Theme Stated, which hints at the truth the character needs to discover. Next is the Setup. This beat is made up of multiple scenes showing more of the protagonist’s ordinary world and their main problem at the moment. What does the character want, and what’s stopping them? Near the end of the setup is the Catalyst, an event that permanently alters the protagonist’s ordinary world. The final part of Act I is the Debate. This is another multi-scene beat that shows the character in a tailspin as they resist change and decide what to do next.

17

You can use the beat sheet at the end of this guidebook to map out your story, or you can use software like Plottr, which lets you plug in scenes and drag and drop them around as needed. Scrivener is another software tool you might find useful for this. Even if you don’t use Scrivener to write the book, you can use its digital index cards to reorder scenes and add new ones.

Lesson 3 | Editing for Plot and Structure

Break into Act II launches the second act. Here, the character resolves the

Debate with an action that they think will solve the problem posed by the Catalyst. Next, the B Story is another single-scene beat that introduces a character who the protagonist could never have met or noticed in the ordinary world of Act I. This character may be a friend, an enemy, a love interest, or something else. Whoever they are, their presence or actions push the protagonist toward the change they truly need to make. Next is the Fun and Games, a multi-scene beat that should comprise about 30% of your book. In it, the protagonist goes on a roller-coaster ride of wins and losses. Because this section is so long, it must build toward an overall arc—either an upward arc toward what would seem to be a success or a downward arc toward what would seem to be a failure. The Midpoint of the book is a single scene that resolves the Fun and Games arc with either a false victory or a false defeat. This scene raises the stakes as you head toward the climax. After the Midpoint, you reach Bad Guys Close In. This is the second-longest beat of the novel, and it should make up roughly 25% of your book. Multiple scenes show how rising stakes and more attacks from the antagonist lead to everything falling apart for the hero. This beat concludes with All Is Lost, a single-scene beat that should be the opposite of the Midpoint. It’s a second false victory or defeat where, even in victory, the protagonist is brought to their lowest point. It typically forces the character to realize the conflict between what they want and what they actually need. This leads to the Dark Night of the Soul, where the protagonist struggles toward an epiphany that reveals what they must do to meet their need. This is a multi-scene beat, and it’s the last part of Act II. 18

Lesson 3 | Editing for Plot and Structure

Just like Break into Act II, Break into Act III propels readers forward into the next, and final, act. This is a single-scene beat showing the protagonist deciding on the right course of action to reach their new goal. The Finale comes next, and as the third-longest beat, it should take up roughly 20% of your book. This is a multi-scene beat where the protagonist takes that course of action and ultimately succeeds or fails in their quest. Last is the Final Image. This is a single scene showing the plot’s outcome. It should be the opposite of the Opening Image, showing how much the protagonist has transformed.

Editing with a Beat Sheet As you map out your current manuscript using the Save the Cat! beats, the first thing to look for is what’s missing. But rather than having a beat sheet with a bunch of holes in it signifying the missing beats, you’ll actually end up with a beat sheet that stops at the first missed beat. This is because beats have a cause-and-effect relationship. When you fix a missing beat, you can move forward, mapping out your book until you come across another missing or incomplete beat. One by one, you can repair any plot holes and ensure that your plot is character-driven. Maybe you’ll find that you weren’t clear on what your protagonist wants from the first page of the book, in which case you’ll need to do a lot more work in developing the character to fix your plot. The Save the Cat! beats are especially great because they show the inherent link between character and plot. Not only does your character have to want something, but in their struggle to get it, they learn that what they want isn’t actually what they need. By using this framework, you’ll make it easier to see what’s missing and what you can change to drive the plot forward. 19

Lesson 3 | Editing for Plot and Structure

And remember, you’re still very much in the stage of your selfWhile you’re editing, save editing process where messy is not different versions of your only expected—it’s a good thing. manuscript in case you Don’t be afraid to dive in and tear things up. You’re working on the need something in them. big picture, which often means That should free you stripping the work down to its up to experiment with bare bones and putting it back your plot and have fun. together. You’ll need to delete sections entirely, move things around, and rewrite. In fact, chapters become somewhat moot at this stage. Instead, think of everything as story beats. If it suits your working style, you can wait to put the book back into chapters until after the lesson on scenes.

Reading Brody, Save the Cat! Writes a Novel. Frey, The Key: How to Write Damn Good Fiction.

Questions 1 You discovered that the premise is the initial image or idea that sent you down the path to writing the story, but it isn’t the story itself. The plot is what happens in the story—the cause-and-effect events that allow your protagonist to struggle, grow, and change. With that in mind, what is your story’s premise? And what is your story’s plot? 2 Your plot should revolve around what your character wants. What does your protagonist want? Is this reflected in your answers to the previous questions? 20

Lesson 3 | Editing for Plot and Structure

3 Describe your plot one more time. What happens in your story and in what order? When answering this question again, don’t use the word then. Instead, replace it with so, but, and therefore. Does your answer still make sense? Are there clear cause-and-effect results between the events of your story? 4 Does your story fit a chronological structure or a nonchronological structure? 5 Can you identify all 15 beats in other books or movies? Are you missing any beats within your own story?

21

4

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Editing for Dynamic Characters As you saw from the previous lesson on plot and structure, everything about narrative writing is centered on character. The good news is that as you analyzed your story’s beats, you already started doing the heavy lifting on character development. Now, what work do you still need to do to ensure that your characters are dynamic and believable? Where are your weaknesses in character development, and how can you fix them? How positive are you that your draft shows a true transformation in your character? To answer those questions, it’s time to make sure your character passes the protagonist test. The test has four parts. If your protagonist passes all four, they’re in decent shape. If they don’t pass one or more, you’ll know what work you still need to do.

22

Lesson 4 | Editing for Dynamic Characters

The Protagonist Test Want, Need, Flaw: Does your character have a clearly defined want, need,

and flaw? Are they interconnected? Do they push your character to internal transformation? Review your beat sheet and decide which scenes need revising to better include the want, need, and/or flaw of your character.

The character transformation exercise at the end of this guidebook can help you fully map out your character’s want, need, and flaw.

Active versus Reactive: After the Catalyst, the protagonist must be willing

to fight, move, or lead to progress toward meaningful change. Does your character act or react after the Catalyst? Do other characters have to intervene to move the plot forward or resolve problems? Mark scenes on your beat sheet with an “A” where your character acts and with an “R” where your character reacts. Independent Agent: The protagonist must overcome all the major plot

obstacles themselves. Who is really making the decisions and acting within the story? Is it your protagonist or another character? Side characters are great for support but not when they take over the plot decisions. Review your beat sheet’s main scenes and put an “X” by any major scene where your protagonist takes the backseat. The Final Battle: For the protagonist to transform, they must at some point

face the villain on their own, whether the villain is an actual person, a system, or a society. Review your final battle scene and make sure your protagonist is the star of the show. 23

Lesson 4 | Editing for Dynamic Characters

Adding Conflict If your protagonist doesn’t pass the test, don’t be too hard on yourself. Learning how to reshape your protagonist during revisions is a crucial part of editing your own work. On the other hand, if you’re certain your protagonist passes the test but they still feel flat, shaky, or underdeveloped, the likely culprit is a lack of conflict. There are two types of conflict. External conflict is everything that makes it more difficult for the character to reach their goal. Internal conflict, on the other hand, is the struggle between what the character wants, what they need, and the flaw they’ll have to examine in order to transform. The external conflict pushes the character until they’re finally forced to look inside and deal with their internal conflict. Let’s say your protagonist’s internal conflict is that they’re scared of heights. Their external conflict is that they live in a city in the sky where people use jet packs to get around. You can add on more and more external conflict to force them to face their fear and change—maybe their young child needs to learn how to use a jet pack, for instance. Maybe a war threatens the city and they’ll soon have to evacuate. In both cases, the external conflict would force them to find alternatives to flying until they overcome that internal conflict and take to the sky. Both external and internal conflict are crucial to revealing the true nature of your protagonist and forcing them to grow and change. If your character passed the protagonist test but still feels underdeveloped, go back to the lesson on plot and make sure your story beats are introducing enough external conflict to push the protagonist to change. If you’d like to up the stakes even more, consider introducing additional internal conflict on top of the character’s want, need, and flaw to push your protagonist to transform.

24

Lesson 4 | Editing for Dynamic Characters

Characterization If you want to challenge yourself to make your protagonist even more realistic, try using an unexpected action that reveals their innate humanness. This could be something they do distractedly in a moment of distress or a tic that they don’t even notice. You can also bring out the humanness of your character by making them have strong emotions. The easiest way to write a flat character is to not let that character feel strongly about anything. Envy, fear, lust, love, malice, even blind optimism—no matter what the emotion of choice is, your protagonist should be passionate and conflicted. And this doesn’t mean they have to show these emotions outwardly; they may seem calm on the surface, but readers see the internal tension build until the character explodes and acts out at a key moment. Another small-picture revision for character development is to ensure your protagonist has a unique voice that’s consistent throughout the book. How does this person greet people when they first meet them? How do they respond to questions? Are they quick to offer an opinion, or are they reluctant to share their thoughts with others? Do they have a rich inner life but struggle to communicate with other people? This will inform their voice.

Work through the character voice journal at the end of this guidebook. After you get to know your protagonist’s unique voice, do a focused revision just to fine-tune their interior monologue, dialogue, and any of their narration throughout the book.

25

Lesson 4 | Editing for Dynamic Characters

As you were writing your novel, or before you started writing, you may have thought or even written about your protagonist’s past and how it shaped them. This type of work goes a long way toward developing dynamic characters with unique voices. If your protagonist needs more development, backstory work is a great place to dive in at this point in the self-editing process.

The backstory questions at the end of this guidebook can help you transform a flat character into a three-dimensional person. The key thing to keep in mind is this backstory work is largely done offscreen. You want to avoid adding content to your story where you explicitly tell readers this information or explain why a character is who they are. The protagonist should show themselves gradually through what they say and do. One final way to add depth to your protagonist at this stage is to use physical settings to give insights. Where your character spends their time says a lot about who they are. Try a round of revision that focuses on your story’s settings. Look for what each setting tells about your character, and see if there are changes you can make to show more about their want, flaw, and need.

Secondary Characters Finally, consider your secondary characters. One of the most common mistakes writers make is having too many named characters. This happens the most in the fantasy, science fiction, and thriller genres, but any manuscript is susceptible to it. Readers assume that if a character has a name, they’ll show up again somewhere in the story. This means it’s your job to ensure that each named character serves a purpose. 26

Lesson 4 | Editing for Dynamic Characters

It’s easy to lose track of how many characters you’ve introduced. One way to combat this is to keep a running list of all your named characters and where they first appear in your book. During your edit, you can analyze that list to see if a minor character needs a name or if you can refer to them generically, as the bartender or the girl. The second mistake many writers make with secondary characters is not making sure they either help or hinder the protagonist. To be worth naming, they must do one of the two. Either way, if they don’t reveal something about your protagonist and advance the plot, you need to rethink their role in the story.

Questions 1 Your character needs to undergo internal transformation within the story. You learned in this lesson that there are three keys to unlocking transformation—want, need, and flaw. Does your character have a clear want, need, and flaw? Are they interconnected in believable ways? 2 Does your character act or react? Are any of your side characters getting in the way of your protagonist acting? Or is your protagonist able to act independently? 3 Even with the groundwork of want, need, and flaw established, your character may still feel underdeveloped. Both external and internal conflict are crucial to revealing the true nature of your protagonist and forcing them to grow and change. Does your character face both external and internal conflict?

27

5

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Tackling Point of View When a reader picks up your book, they look through your characters’ eyes. The point-of-view character shows the reader the world of the book, the people in it, and what’s happening. This is what makes point of view one of the most powerful tools in your writing toolbox. The sheer creative power of this tool means it needs to be wielded thoughtfully. But things can—and do—go wrong. This lesson discusses the three most common mistakes: slipping from limited to omniscient, headhopping, and filtering.

If you wrote your book without knowing what point of view you were using, identify what sounds closest to what you did. This will help you figure out which mistakes to target as you edit. 28

Lesson 5 | Tackling Point of View

Types of Point of View The three main types of point of view are first person (I or we), third person (he, she, they, or it), and second person (you). First person is the only point of view where readers are limited to seeing out of the narrator’s eyes. Readers can’t know, see, hear, or feel anything they don’t experience. This immediacy allows a high level of insight into the character’s thoughts and feelings. A first-person narrator can be the protagonist of the story or a secondary character who’s observing the events. Either way, readers have to rely on the first-person narrator’s worldview— they don’t know what they don’t know, and their view may be intentionally or unintentionally skewed. Third-person limited is the most common point of view used today. It follows the character’s perspective and is limited to what they know, understand, sense, and feel. You can have one or multiple characters written in the thirdperson limited point of view, but either way, readers don’t know what other characters are actually thinking or feeling; they can only guess these things from their body language, how they act, what they say and how they say it, and sometimes what they don’t say. Third-person omniscient, on the other hand, uses a godlike narrator who knows everything happening within the world of the story, including what every character is feeling and thinking, and provides commentary on it. This point of view isn’t used as much in modern writing, as today’s readers generally prefer to draw their own conclusions about characters. The omniscient narrator also adds distance to the story, making it more difficult for readers to feel close to and invested in the characters.

29

Lesson 5 | Tackling Point of View

Finally, second-person point of view uses the pronoun you to directly address the reader. This is common in prescriptive nonfiction, which teaches something. In narrative writing, second-person point of view transforms the reader into a character. It’s rarely used in narrative writing because it triggers instant resistance in the reader. If the book says, “You’re riding a roller coaster,” you might think, “No, I’m not; I’m sitting on the couch.”

Slipping The most common mistake writers make with point of view is accidentally slipping from limited to omniscient. This applies only if you’re using thirdperson limited in your manuscript, but as it’s the most common point of view, there’s a good chance you’ve made this mistake at least once. Imagine you’re watching a crime documentary that switches back and forth between the narrator and reenactments. At first, you’re in the moment. The murder victim hears a noise coming from the garage, and you see through her point of view as she dials 911 with shaking fingers. And then the documentary cuts to the narrator sitting in his chair and sipping scotch. He sums up the next few minutes and explains why the victim’s husband was out of town in the first place. This is scene versus narration—sometimes called scene versus summary. If you stay within scenes, you stick to a limited point of view. But when you cut to that narrator sitting in his chair, you slip into omniscient. The narrator knows all: everything that happened to this character in the past, everything they’re feeling right now, and even what’s going to happen next. If you’re writing third-person limited, you don’t want the narrator making appearances like this. Instead, you need to stick to writing scenes and stay with what your characters are experiencing.

30

Lesson 5 | Tackling Point of View

Even if you’re writing in third-person omniscient, that doesn’t mean you can get away with dumping a bunch of information on readers. Yes, your narrator will come in from time to time and address your readers directly, but the best way to do this is to make sure you’ve developed your narrator in a way that makes them feel like a character. They should have a distinct voice so their intrusions are welcomed by the reader.

If you’re wondering how you’ll possibly be able to include all the information readers need if you only write scenes, ask yourself if the information you want to include in the narration is 100% relevant to the story. Some people spend a lot of time researching the details of their story’s setting, their character’s job, or how certain objects in the story function. And this is important work. But you should only use 5% to 10% of your research in the actual book—just enough to show readers what they need to know. Next, ask yourself if this is the right time in the story to include this information. If your character’s thoughts go off on a tangent about their childhood while they’re parachuting out of a helicopter, it’s not the right place for that backstory. And finally, ask yourself how you can show this information rather than tell it. The technique of showing versus telling will be covered in a later lesson, but for now, think about this in terms of the character, setting, or situation showing this information rather than the narrator stepping in to tell it.

31

Lesson 5 | Tackling Point of View

Head-Hopping The next mistake writers make with point of view is the dreaded headhopping. To understand head-hopping, think in terms of limited point of view, meaning you’re in the mind of the character. Then, mid-scene, midparagraph, or even mid-sentence, you’re suddenly picked up and dropped into another character’s head. This isn’t fun for readers. It’s discombobulating, and it’s a good way to frustrate them. The main way to tell if you’re committing this faux pas is if your characters seem to read each other’s minds, like in this sentence: “When he’d completed the task, Frank knew that Nanette wanted to take action.” But how does Frank know this? Does Nanette say something or use body language to demonstrate it? Here’s a revision to avoid head-hopping: “When Frank had completed the task, Nanette gave him a hug. ‘Let’s get to it,’ she said.” Instead of Frank reading her mind, Nanette shows through actions and words that she’s ready for the next task.

If you notice you’re using a lot of point-of-view characters per chapter, now is the time to give each one a hard look. Do you really need all those points of view? Why is that character’s particular perspective critical to how you’re telling the story? Each pointof-view character needs to be fully developed, just like the protagonist—complete with their own want, need, flaw, and transformation. Prioritize the ones you want to keep and drop the rest.

32

Lesson 5 | Tackling Point of View

If your book has multiple point-of-view characters, it’s critical to have only one viewpoint per scene. The clearer your point-of-view shifts are structured, the easier it will be for readers. You can use scene breaks to clue the reader in that a shift is coming. It’s also important to make the new point of view clear within the first or second sentence of a scene or chapter; you don’t want readers wondering whose point of view this is.

Filtering The third most common mistake writers make is filtering. This is when you use words that put a barrier between the point-of-view character and the reader, adding another layer of sensory distance. Instead of filter words, you should use concrete action to bring the reader closer. Think of filter words as red flags that alert you to areas of weak point of view. Here are the most common filter words and phrases. Remove as many of these as possible to strengthen your writing. † Saw † Felt † Knew † Watched † Noticed † Looked † Heard † Could see

† Could hear † Could feel † Could smell † The sound of † The feel of † The smell of † Seemed † Appeared

Focus on another revision pass that serves to remove as many filter words as possible. You can use your word processor’s search function to do this or refer to this list as you reread your work.

33

Lesson 5 | Tackling Point of View

Questions 1 After learning about the different points of view, can you identify which point of view your story is written in? Is this consistent throughout the story? (Don’t worry if the answer is “no”—the goal is to identify what needs targeting when you begin editing.) 2 If you’re writing from the third-person limited point of view, can you identify instances of head-hopping within your writing? (Remember that if you have multiple point-of-view characters, it’s important to stick to just one perspective within a scene.) 3 Readers want to know whose head they are in within the first few sentences of a chapter. Review your chapter beginnings, especially the first two sentences. Is the point of view clear and obvious? 4 Since filter words distance the reader, the goal is to revise your sentence (or even scene) to be grounded within the action on the page. Find an example of filtering within your story and rewrite it at least three different ways without using filter words. Which one fits best?

34

6

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Page-Turner Pacing: Scene versus Narration Pacing straddles the line between the big picture and the little picture in selfediting. If you’ve ever read a book and wished that something—anything— would happen, you’ve encountered a big-picture issue with pacing. On the other hand, if you’ve ever flipped ahead a few pages in a book or skimmed a few paragraphs to get to the good parts, you’ve experienced little-picture pacing issues. This lesson examines the most common pacing problems and shows you how to step on the gas or put on the brakes by effectively applying narrative techniques.

35

Lesson 6 | Page-Turner Pacing: Scene versus Narration

The Sagging Middle As with everything in editing, let’s start with the big picture. The most common issue with big-picture pacing is something writers and editors dread: the sagging middle, or a book that slows down in the second act. Think back to when you were writing your rough draft. If you got about 20,000 to 30,000 words in and didn’t know what to do next, you likely had, or still have, problems with your second act. Sagging middles are caused by weak structure. If your characters aren’t progressing on their story arcs by Act II, or if the stakes have deflated or the tension is lagging, it’s going to have a negative impact on your pacing. To fix pacing issues at a large scale, your first priority will be to push your characters to transform. If you never mapped out your book using a beat sheet, go back to the lesson on plot and structure and do that now. Keep a close eye out for individual beats that are taking too long or single-scene beats that are actually multiple scenes in your current draft. If one of your beats is longer than recommended, it’s guaranteed to be negatively affecting your pacing.

Infodumping After you’ve done the structural work needed to improve pacing at the bigpicture level, it’s time to move to the smaller picture and talk about the ratio of scene versus narration. Too much narration, or summary, is the most common pace killer.

36

Lesson 6 | Page-Turner Pacing: Scene versus Narration

Infodumping is when the narrator interrupts the story’s momentum to explain something. These paragraphs, pages, or even full chapters of summary jar readers out of the story to explain something that isn’t being shown. This usually happens when an author doesn’t believe the audience will understand what’s going on without an explanation. But readers want to fill in the gaps themselves and be immersed in the story rather than sit next to the narrator as they explain things. There are three main types of infodumping: backstory, worldbuilding, and research. Backstory infodumps are when the narrator butts in to tell readers why a character is who they are by giving their background or history. This type of writing isn’t engaging for a reader and slows the pacing by interrupting the moment. Weaving in the backstory instead of including it in chunks will help the pacing flow more naturally. Worldbuilding infodumps can happen in any genre, but the more complex your world becomes, the higher the risk of infodumps. Let’s say your book takes place in a different universe. You’ve done a ton of work to develop the world, which has completely different physical and magical rules than Earth. It can be tempting to have the narrator explain these rules and how they apply, but this pushes a “pause” button on the forward action of your story. Research infodumps are similar to worldbuilding infodumps. If you did a ton of research on something for your novel, whether it was on flying hotair balloons or the underground music scene in East Germany after World War II, you were likely tempted to include a lot of that information in your book. But you don’t want to get too granular with this information—it weighs down the pacing and frustrates readers.

37

Lesson 6 | Page-Turner Pacing: Scene versus Narration

Editing Infodumps One stage of self-editing involves going through your draft to see where you’ve fallen into one or all of the infodump traps. If you find a section where you cut away to the narrator explaining why a character is who they are or what happened to them in the past, highlight these sections in yellow. Next, find any instances of the narrator popping in to explain something about the world. Highlight these in green. Finally, locate anywhere the narrator explains a technical detail or your research, and highlight these in blue. Next, go through the highlighted sections and cut away as much as you possibly can. But don’t just delete the text; instead, put the cut sections into a separate document. Go through these cut pieces one by one and ask yourself if they move the story forward, teach something critical about the character, or show something readers need to know to piece together the rules of this world. Any parts that don’t do at least one of these things will need to be cut permanently.

As you’re editing, you can always store cut pieces in a new document for safekeeping—you may be able to reuse a sentence or two later on.

With the remaining pieces, you can now weave in pertinent tidbits of backstory, worldbuilding, and research as you go along—but wait until they’re needed to advance the story or better understand the character. Only give this information on a need-to-know basis, and keep it as brief as possible. It’s OK if readers have questions about your character’s backstory or the world. In fact, this is one way to keep readers interested. 38

Lesson 6 | Page-Turner Pacing: Scene versus Narration

Narrative Bridges Now, you won’t be able to use scenes all the time; books would be far too tedious if you gave a blow-by-blow account of everything that happens to your characters throughout the day. Narrative bridges connect scenes and move the story forward in time. There are three types of narrative bridges: timeline, travel, and voiceover. A timeline bridge shows a jump ahead in time and often includes the word later. For example, you could say, “A few days later, Martha picked up the phone.” Timeline bridges are naturally brief, usually taking just a few words to show the passage of time. A travel bridge shows a character going to a new physical location. These almost always show a jump ahead in the timeline as well. Here’s an example: “He boarded the bus and sat down, his suitcase wedged between his knees. He’d be in Denver by nightfall.” It’s important to keep travel bridges as short as possible. Unless something pivotal happens to the character on that bus, get them from point A to point B as fast as possible so the story can move forward. Finally, a voiceover bridge is only used in true third-person omniscient, where you’ve developed a strong narrator who addresses the reader directly: “You’ll have to forgive me for butting in right in the middle of their conversation, but it just would be too depressing to relay their exact words. Instead, let me tell you what happened next.” A brief, funny aside from the narrator is more effective than long-winded narration. You don’t have to stop and focus on your narrative bridges now, but as you continue to revise your manuscript, keep an eye out for bridges that take too long. Make them as brief as possible.

39

Lesson 6 | Page-Turner Pacing: Scene versus Narration

Slowing Down Your Pacing Pacing at the little-picture level focuses on how you’re using narrative techniques to control the speed of your storytelling. One of the main narrative tools for slowing down pacing is description. If you need to include a momentary pause between action or dialogue scenes, you can insert description whenever the character is at rest or taking a break. Be careful not to plop down description in the middle of the action, however—this affects the pacing the same way as an infodump, and it will frustrate readers. Another way to slow down the pacing is to use character introspection. This can reveal motivations, show internal conflict, and develop reader empathy for your characters. Pay attention to where you have more than a few sentences of introspection, however; like description, longer sections of introspection should be reserved for scenes where your character is taking a break from the action. The final way to slow down pacing is to use long sentences and paragraphs. In action and dialogue scenes, rewrite sections to use short, snappy sentences and paragraphs to quicken the pacing. In moments of introspection or moments where you want to heighten the tension, use longer sentences and paragraphs to slow things down.

As you gain more experience with pacing, you’ll intuitively understand where to hit the gas and where to apply the brakes.

40

Lesson 6 | Page-Turner Pacing: Scene versus Narration

Speeding Up Your Pacing It’s widely held that adding more action is a way to quicken the pace, and that’s usually true—but only when action is used in combination with downtime. Filling your book with action scene after action scene to move forward faster is a common mistake. Instead, good pacing is all about variety. If you do have a slow section of your novel with too much introspection or downtime, experiment with changing the scene to be action-focused to quicken the pace. Another way to speed up your pacing is by adding well-crafted dialogue. If you don’t have much dialogue in your book, you may be running into problems with slow pacing. Do a separate pass of your manuscript to go through the sections of the book that don’t include any dialogue, and play around with adding fast-paced dialogue that uses short sentences and doesn’t have any description or introspection. This will speed up the pacing of those sections. You can also insert cliffhangers, or scenes that take a surprise turn, to pick up the pace. Cliffhangers can quicken the pacing by pulling readers forward. It’s best to use these subtly as a way to introduce a story question that keeps readers intrigued.

Questions 1 Have you ever read a book or watched a movie and experienced a moment when you wanted to fast-forward to the good parts? Thinking back to the common reasons for poor pacing, why do you think that part of the book or movie failed to capture your attention? 2 Review your beat sheet. Can you identify any scenes that are primarily narration? How could you rewrite them to be action instead? 41

Lesson 6 | Page-Turner Pacing: Scene versus Narration

3 The three types of infodumping—backstory, worldbuilding, and research—can happen in any writer’s work, regardless of genre. Which type of infodumping do you tend to use in your writing? 4 Review your beat sheet and mark which scenes are action and which are breaks in between. Is there a balance between the two, or do you need to add more of one or the other? 5 Pacing is a balancing act. You want to have the reader linger over important, climactic moments and speed through less important information to keep the story moving. Are there any scenes in your book that need more attention to create tension and energy? How about slower scenes that need to be condensed?

42

7

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Building Stronger Scenes Most people have an intuitive understanding of what a scene is, but if you had to define it in one sentence, what would you say? Writers and editors have debated what makes a scene for centuries. But most agree that scenes are self-contained moments happening in real time that move the story forward through action. The ability to write great scenes is arguably your most valuable skill as a writer. And since you’re now in the revision stage, this means that the ability to spot weak scenes and either remove or rewrite them is crucial to your book’s success. This step of the self-editing process has perhaps the most bang for your buck—it’s hard work, but if you invest in it, you’ll be rewarded with the ability to craft spectacular scenes throughout the rest of your writing career.

43

Lesson 7 | Building Stronger Scenes

Marking Scenes The next step in the editing process is to sit down with your manuscript and review it closely, marking where your scenes begin and end. Even if you’ve already included scene breaks as you were writing, look again. You’ll likely find subtle narrative bridges showing a break in time or physical location. After you do this, put the manuscript aside for at least a week. Resist every urge to look at the book or open any of the files associated with it. If you’re too close to the manuscript, it’s impossible to see it clearly and make the changes it needs. Write any ideas that come to you during this time in a separate notebook or file. At the end of your week away from the manuscript, sit down with a piece of paper and a pen. Don’t go back to the manuscript file or printout yet— instead, make a list of your scenes from memory. It can be helpful to assign each scene a name, or you can just write down a snippet or a few words that will help you recognize it. Really push yourself to do this from memory, writing down the scenes that come to mind first rather than trying to go in the order they appear in the book.

Pay attention to your emotional state throughout the entire self-editing process. If you’re energized by the work and able to make decisions quickly, that shows you’re ready to continue. If you’re feeling burnt-out, tired, and are moving slowly—or worse, you’re starting to hate your book—you need a break. Step away from the manuscript when you need to. You’ll find that when you come back refreshed, you’ll be able to make the tough choices more easily. 44

Lesson 7 | Building Stronger Scenes

Once you have your list, pull out three highlighters. Use one color to mark which scenes on the list you feel the most satisfied with. These are your “good for now” scenes. They don’t have to be perfect yet—and it’s important to steer clear of that word in general throughout this entire process. Next, go through the list again and use a second color to mark which scenes you feel anxious about. Maybe you got stuck writing them, or they’re missing one or more of the essential elements. These are the questionable scenes. They’re not necessarily bad, but they’ll need more work. Finally, go through your manuscript and look for the forgotten scenes—the ones you didn’t remember as you were making your list. Write these down on the same sheet of paper and use the third color highlighter to mark them.

Cutting Scenes Take out a pack of index cards and write one scene per card, using the scene’s name or tag words at the top so you can recognize it easily. Be sure you have plenty of space at the bottom of each card to take notes. Use your highlighters to retain the color coding so you can easily see which of the three categories the scene belongs to. Once you have all your scenes on index cards, use the wall, the floor, or the surface of a large table to arrange them in their correct order. It’s also helpful to mark where the scenes are falling on your beat sheet at this stage. If you’re able to get your hands on some butcher paper, put that behind or underneath the cards and draw the beat sheet on it. You can also use a whiteboard or chalkboard, or even washable markers if you’re brave enough to draw on the wall.

45

Lesson 7 | Building Stronger Scenes

It’s now time to start making the tough choices, starting with your forgotten scenes. The scenes you forget are usually the bland, repetitive ones where not enough happens to make them memorable. You have two choices with these: kill them or rework them. Not all forgotten scenes automatically need to go, but any you choose to keep will have one strike against them. You may find that you can salvage parts of these scenes but need to cut the rest. Next, do the same with your questionable scenes. Which ones aren’t worth dragging forward? Which ones have parts worth saving but need to be trimmed back substantially? If you decide to cut a forgotten or questionable scene in a single-scene beat, that scene needs to go on a rewrite list—you’ll have to replace it to maintain the right beat structure. After you add it to your rewrite list, pull that scene’s index card off the wall so you can see where the gap is. If you cut a forgotten scene from a multi-scene beat, you may not need to replace it unless a key part of your story was removed with it. In fact, pay special attention to forgotten scenes that appear in multi-scene beats: Removing these is one of the best ways to trim excess bulk and fix remaining pacing problems.

Putting Your Scenes to the Test After you’ve made these initial cuts and changes, it’s time to put your remaining scenes to the test by addressing three additional elements that every scene must have: conflict, change, and agency. Every scene needs internal or external conflict to move it forward. Go through each scene one by one, and at the bottom of each card, write down “conflict” and the main conflict that scene shows. Make sure you save some room at the bottom of each card for other notes. If a scene doesn’t have internal or external conflict, keep its card on the board for now, but know that you’ll need to rework it later. 46

Lesson 7 | Building Stronger Scenes

Scenes must also show character transformation happening in real time, and each scene must include an emotional shift, however subtle. It could be the character moving from trust to distrust, anticipation to dread, or hate to admiration. This changing of the emotional landscape within each scene is what drives both the story and the character’s overarching transformation. On your index cards, write down the main emotional change that occurs in each scene.

If you’re having trouble identifying or naming emotions, check out The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Expression by Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi.

Lastly, look at each scene on your index-card board and ask yourself if the protagonist is being proactive. As discussed in the lesson on characters, your protagonist must have agency and be actively pursuing what they want. Write “proactive” on the scenes that show the protagonist making active choices. If you come across a scene where the protagonist is being passive, leave this section of the card blank. After you’ve done this for all of your scenes, take a step back and look at your index cards as a whole. The weakest scenes will be missing at least one of these three elements. These are the scenes you’ll need to either kill or rewrite. Take the time needed to go through each scene and make these tough decisions now.

47

Lesson 7 | Building Stronger Scenes

Putting Your Book Back Together Now, it’s time to start working through your rewrite list. Your index-card board likely has some gaps to fill, and you’ll need to focus on connecting those dots again. For most writers, this is a multiweek process, so don’t rush through it. Make sure each revised or new scene includes all of the essential elements of a scene. And feel free to refer back to the document where you put all your cut scenes. This is the time to use it as a story nursery, picking out the most robust flowers and planting them back into the manuscript where they’ll bloom the brightest. When you’ve completed your rewrites and your beat sheet is once again complete, it’s time to reorganize your scenes into chapters. You may find that your chapters now start or end in different places—this is normal, and it’s a sign that you’re doing the work needed to tighten and strengthen your scenes. Try to aim for three to seven scenes per chapter. This is by no means a magic number, but it’s based on what works best for today’s readers, and it will help you vary your pacing in a natural way. You don’t want every chapter to only focus on one scene, as this drives the pacing into the ground and is predictable and flat for readers. Finally, take a close look at the first and final scenes of the book: your opening and closing images. If these two images aren’t polar opposites—that is, if they don’t show a stark difference in what your character is like, how they act, what they say, what role they’re in, or where they are—you may need to rethink these scenes to push them to where they need to be.

48

Lesson 7 | Building Stronger Scenes

Questions 1 Watch an episode of your favorite TV show or read a chapter of your favorite book. Can you identify when a new scene begins and when it ends? 2 Think about your favorite stories. How is the beginning scene different from the ending scene? 3 Review the instructions given in the lesson and dive into your manuscript. After cuts and tweaks, do all your scenes have conflict? Do all your scenes have real-time transformation? Is your protagonist proactive? Are there any remaining long narrative bridges or infodumps?

49

8

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Showing versus Telling: Beyond the Basics Most writers have had the saying “show, don’t tell” drilled into their heads, and it’s one of the most common recommendations given to authors. But what does it really mean? What is showing, and what is telling? And why does it matter? This topic has been hinted at in previous lessons, but only at the big-picture level: examining why narrative writing favors scenes, which show, over large chunks of narration or infodumps, which tell. But as you move into line editing, the question becomes: Do you need to show 100% of the time, or is telling sometimes useful, too? This lesson examines how to use both showing and telling purposefully in your writing.

50

Lesson 8 | Showing versus Telling: Beyond the Basics

Showing and Telling Seeing showing versus telling in actual writing is the best way to learn how to spot each. Consider these two passages, and try to identify which is telling and which is showing: † “Walter was disappointed because he burned the turkey dinner.” † “Suddenly, a wisp of smoke curled through the door to the kitchen, setting off the smoke alarm. Walter jumped up and raced to the oven, but it was too late. His perfectly stuffed turkey was ruined.” In the first passage, readers feel distant to the action because it’s summed up and it doesn’t take them into the moment. This is telling. Compare this to the second passage, which takes readers into the moment as it unfolds, using action and reaction to bring the scene to life. This is showing. But you can’t show everything in narrative writing. If you painstakingly wrote out every tiny action and conversation in a character’s day, it would be mindnumbingly boring, and no one would want to read it. Some purposeful telling is needed. Narrative bridges, for example, are a form of telling, but they’re a fundamental piece of this style of writing. The key thing to remember is that for narrative bridges to be successful, they need to be concise. Telling allows you to say in one sentence something that would take many paragraphs or pages of unimportant action to show. Remember the percentages you want to shoot for here: Your book should be roughly 90% scenes and 10% narrative bridges.

51

Lesson 8 | Showing versus Telling: Beyond the Basics

Telling Words You’ve already done a lot of work removing infodumps, cutting down narrative bridges to be concise, and strengthening your scenes. Next, let’s talk about ways to spot more subtle telling throughout your book. Experienced editors can see this within a few seconds by keeping an eye out for two things: filter words and telling words. Filter words were introduced in the lesson on point of view. They keep the reader at a distance by filtering the character’s experiences rather than putting the reader in their head. These are the most common filter words: † Saw † Felt † Knew † Watched

† Noticed † Looked † Heard

The second tool you can use to spot telling in your writing is searching for telling words. Here are some of the most common ones: † Wondered † Realized † Decided † Hoped † Considered † Because

† In order to † Knew † Believed † Thought † Prayed † Assumed

Because is a classic telling word because it leads into more telling via explanation. For example, “Lily’s stomach growled because she was hungry.” If you remove “because” and the telling attached to it, you’re left with “Lily’s stomach growled.” That’s all readers need to know—the action of her stomach growling shows that Lily is hungry.

52

Lesson 8 | Showing versus Telling: Beyond the Basics

The phrase “in order to” functions in the same way as because in that it precedes an explanation. Instead of writing “In order to climb the ladder, Trevor stepped onto the first rung,” you can show this by simply writing “Trevor stepped onto the first rung.” Naming an emotion can also be a clear sign of telling. These are the most common emotion-listing constructs: † In [emotion] (e.g., in joy, in despair) † With [feeling] (e.g., with anger, with sadness) You don’t want to simply state the emotion the character is feeling. Instead of writing “In sadness, she walked down the road,” you can show the emotion through action or dialogue: “She wiped away a tear as she walked down the road.” Or, if the emotion is difficult to show in one sentence, work on weaving it into your character’s actions and dialogue over the course of an entire scene. Unlike filter words, which almost always need to be removed, telling words can be used successfully—as long as they’re on purpose. You will have telling words in your narrative bridges, since those are tiny snippets of telling needed to propel the story forward. But if you have a lot of telling words throughout scenes that you thought were showing, it may be a sign that you need to revise those moments. You don’t need to get rid of every single telling word, but examining them and making sure they’re being used purposefully will push your writing to even higher levels.

Reading Ackerman and Puglisi, The Emotion Thesaurus. Hardy, Understanding Show, Don’t Tell.

53

Lesson 8 | Showing versus Telling: Beyond the Basics

Questions 1 Can you list the most common filter words? What about the most common telling words/phrases? 2 Emotion-listing is a red flag for telling instead of showing. Find an example of emotion-listing in your manuscript. Can you think of at least three different ways the character can show that same emotion without naming it in the scene? 3 What are some examples of when telling is better than showing?

54

9

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Dialogue That Sparkles Playwright John Howard Lawson wrote in Theory and Technique of Playwriting that dialogue should be “a compression and extension of action.” Dialogue is action, not conversation: It should drive the story forward or reveal character—or both. This is one of the most powerful tools you have in your fight to show, not tell. A character’s dialogue can reveal their emotional or mental state through how fast they speak, the rhythm they use, and how coherent they are. It can give clues to their background through their dialect, slang, or use of idioms. It can show their educational level through their sentence structure and word choice. It can uncover their inner world through mistakes, accidental admissions, or Freudian slips. And it can establish their character flaw—their jealousy, spite, or lack of humility, for instance.

55

Lesson 9 | Dialogue That Sparkles

Some authors only include sketches of their dialogue and interior monologue in their rough draft and then flesh these out as they revise. Others agonize over these items in their draft only to discover that they still need work. Either way, your dialogue and interior monologue will likely need to be tweaked during your self-edit. This lesson explores the most common mistakes with these two elements of narrative writing.

Overexplaining and Infodumps Dialogue often falls into the same telling and narration traps discussed in the previous lessons. The two worst offenders when it comes to telling in dialogue are overexplaining and using dialogue as a way to sneak in infodumps. Overexplaining dialogue is common in rough drafts, and if you still have some sections of telling left in your manuscript, this is likely where it’s hiding. Summarizing things for the reader assumes they won’t understand the subtext—or worse, that there isn’t any subtext. If your dialogue needs an explanation, it means it’s failing. Just like with overexplaining, dialogue is often the last holdout for any remaining infodumps in your manuscript. These are places where you’ve had the characters sneak backstory, worldbuilding, or research into what they say out loud. But readers can spot this immediately. For example, imagine that a character says, “As you know, Karen, my wife Rose and I have been married since we were 19. We were divorced once in our mid-20s, but then we fell in love again and got married for the second time.” This is obvious telling. This backstory needs to be woven into the fabric of the narrative instead.

56

Lesson 9 | Dialogue That Sparkles

One of the most challenging aspects of revising your dialogue is making sure it fits the character’s voice. If you didn’t create character voice journals when you were working on your draft or back in the lesson on character development, now is the perfect time to do that. Similarly, another type of dialogue infodump is when the characters explain something they both already know or recap an event that happened offstage. If both characters already know something, it’s unrealistic for them to explain it to each other. And dialogue is not an excuse to have characters talk about offstage events. If the event is important to the characters’ development, show the actual scene. And if the book can do without it, skip the recap.

Conflict and Action Another common error is creating dialogue that’s an exact copy of real speech. In real life, we talk in circles, and we spend 30 minutes catching up with someone and making small talk. This doesn’t work in dialogue because it isn’t action—small talk and friendly chats don’t propel the story forward, develop the characters, or push the protagonist toward change. This is because these types of real-life conversations are missing a crucial element that successful dialogue relies on: conflict. If there isn’t any conflict in the dialogue, it’s often a sign that there isn’t enough conflict in the scene. What’s the emotional shift in the scene? What’s the current obstacle the characters are facing—in other words, what’s stopping them from getting what they want right now? After you’ve made sure the scene itself has enough conflict, dialogue becomes a tool to show this at a deeper level, giving readers insight into how characters interact to get what they want, hide what they want, and overcome the obstacles facing them. 57

Lesson 9 | Dialogue That Sparkles

The main way to introduce conflict into dialogue is to identify either an opposing viewpoint or an opposing goal and either raise or lower the intensity of the conflict based on what’s at stake for the characters in this scene. An opposing viewpoint simply means the characters don’t see eye to eye on something. An opposing goal means they want different things right now. After you’ve established one or the other, you can show this intensity in the dialogue by making the characters refuse to have the conversation the other person wants to have, for example, or sprinkling in some action to show subtext without using words. While dialogue shouldn’t mimic real-life speech, the actions that surround the dialogue—gestures, movements, and body language—need to be realistic. These tiny actions are sometimes the only clues to what people are thinking or feeling. We don’t go around shouting about our worries and insecurities. We also don’t stand completely still and lifeless when we’re talking to someone in real life. Where we focus our eyes, where we place our hands, whether we fidget—all these actions can be brushed into your dialogue to show what’s happening beneath the words. The trick is to not overdo it: Don’t allow these descriptions to interrupt the flow of the dialogue.

Dialogue Tags Dialogue tags are words or phrases that let you know which character is speaking. It used to be perfectly acceptable to use fancier tags, like explained, inquired, demanded, countered, and offered. But by today’s standards, this variation in dialogue tags is distracting, which is why it’s best to keep it simple, using said and asked the vast majority of the time. If you’re worried about a long list of “he said, she said,” on the page, don’t be. These tags are invisible to modern readers.

58

Lesson 9 | Dialogue That Sparkles

Using action also helps show who’s speaking, so you’re able to drop some dialogue tags entirely without confusing the reader.

Some editors may disagree, but tags that show the volume of someone’s voice—such as shouted, yelled, and whispered—are also OK, as long as they’re used sparingly. But don’t use laughed as a dialogue tag, as in “‘You’re hilarious,’ she laughed.” We don’t laugh words—we say something, laugh, and say something else. The same goes for sighing, chuckling, smiling, grinning, and breathing. Similarly, avoid the tag hissed unless the character is pronouncing something with S sounds, like scenario or strikes. A second common problem with dialogue tags is the use of adverbs. Some writers lean on these in tags to tell readers what the character is feeling, which is almost always a sign that the dialogue needs to be reworked. This is because adverbs tell; they don’t show. It’s the actions between their spoken words where characters really reveal their emotions. Lastly, don’t try to get around dialogue tags by having characters address each other by name all the time. We don’t refer to other people by name unless we’re greeting them, trying to get their attention, scolding them, or professing our love for them. And even then, we don’t say their names that often. Keep the name-dropping to a minimum.

59

Lesson 9 | Dialogue That Sparkles

Contractions Another common problem with dialogue is not using contractions. For example: “I do not really want to go to the park right now, but thank you for asking. You are sweet. I am just not feeling well.” This is so stilted that it sounds robotic.

Try reading your dialogue aloud to spot any leftover problems. You can even record yourself reading it and then play it back— you’ll be surprised by what you notice.

Consider the same dialogue with contractions: “I don’t really want to go to the park right now, but thank you for asking. You’re sweet. I’m just not feeling well.” Contractions make the dialogue flow better, and more importantly, readers believe that a character might actually say this. It’s not overly formal and choppy, and the rhythm is more natural. Even if you’re writing a historical novel set in Britain in the 1800s, your characters don’t need to sound stiff. In fact, people in the past often didn’t speak more formally than we do; they just spoke differently. Good historical dialogue is all about using words and mannerisms that are appropriate for that time period and the character’s life circumstances. Researching primary documents like diaries and letters can go a long way here, but once you have some idea of what would be technically correct, you can take some artistic license to modernize it for today’s readers.

60

Lesson 9 | Dialogue That Sparkles

Interior Monologue When used well, interior monologue is a powerful tool that brings readers closer to your character and provides insight into their internal conflict and emotions. Like dialogue, interior monologue should show action, conflict, and an emotional shift. It’s tempting to use interior monologue often, since it’s a direct line to your character’s innermost feelings and thoughts. But this is a tool that needs to be wielded carefully and lightly. Having too much interior monologue can tell too much, meaning it can slow down the pacing and be boring or tedious. It’s especially important to avoid letting monologue overwhelm dialogue and action. It is possible to not have enough interior monologue if you’re writing in first person or third-person limited. A main character without any thoughts on the page can end up flat and underdeveloped, since knowing what they’re thinking in moments of external conflict gives more insight into their internal conflict. But the opposite is almost always the case: Most rough drafts have too much monologue. If you think your draft is suffering from this, go through and highlight each instance of interior monologue. If you find yourself highlighting at least a few lines on every page—and especially if these interrupt action and dialogue— you need to pull it back a bit. Many writers also wonder how they should format interior monologue. Should it be in italics? Should it be its own paragraph? Should you use the tag thought, or should you try to blend it in more seamlessly? The only real rule here is to not use quotation marks with interior monologue. This content isn’t being said aloud, so it should never be in quotes. Otherwise, it’s up to you to decide what’s right for your book.

61

Lesson 9 | Dialogue That Sparkles

Reading Bell, How to Write Dazzling Dialogue.

Questions 1 What are some of the best lines of dialogue you remember reading or hearing? What makes them stand out to you? 2 Find a scene of dialogue in your manuscript that you feel is struggling. What do the characters want in this scene? Is there conflict between them? Are they communicating that conflict up front or through subtext? 3 Find two different scenes of dialogue in your manuscript. Are they low-stakes or high-stakes situations? Does the intensity of the dialogue reflect that? 4 Pull several snippets of dialogue from different characters and read them aloud without dialogue tags. Can you differentiate who is speaking based on character voice? 5 Do your characters come to a resolution to act or have an emotional change in interior monologue? Remember, all dialogue or monologue needs to move the action forward and/or reveal something about the character.

62

10 Sentences That Sizzle

TABLE OF CONTENTS

Ernest Hemingway rewrote the final page of A Farewell to Arms 39 times before he was happy with it. When an interviewer asked what stumped him, Hemingway answered, “Getting the words right.” You’ve officially arrived at the part of self-editing that everyone recognizes: line editing. This is where you’ll finesse your writing at the paragraph and sentence level, elevating your language by scrutinizing adverbs, adjectives, and verbs. It’s always easier to focus on one or two things at a time, so don’t try to pack everything into one round of revision. And remember that it’s always crucial to take breaks to achieve distance from your manuscript.

Writing for Your Ideal Reader As you begin to focus on the words you’re using, it’s vital to keep your ideal reader in mind. Who is the one person, imaginary or real, who’s the perfect audience for your book? What word choice will most benefit them? What do they expect when it comes to language? How can you push the boundaries and surprise them while still staying within the limits of what they’ll tolerate? 63

Lesson 10 | Sentences That Sizzle

You are not your ideal reader, and neither is “everyone.” Everyone is most certainly not going to read your book. You need to get as specific as possible with your ideal reader now, since audience will inform every choice you make in line editing. Age is a big factor with audience—the word choice for a middle-grade book will be much different than an adult book. Your ideal reader will also expect certain word choices depending on the setting and the characters’ backgrounds. As you prepare to go through your manuscript in detail, imagine your ideal reader looking over your shoulder. Get comfortable with who they are as a person. You should be able to look through their eyes and spot jargon or slang that may go over their head or confuse them, for instance, or big words that you threw into the writing to boost your ego.

Adverbs The first way to elevate your writing is to remove adverbs ending in -ly, like suddenly, quickly, deliberately, and happily. It’s normal to rely on these modifiers too much in a rough draft. As you write, you often choose the easiest verb. Then, because the verb isn’t showing what it needs to yet, you tack an -ly adverb onto the sentence. Now that it’s time for line edits, you want to take out the adverb and choose an active verb that better shows the action and emotion you want to convey. Instead of “he ran quickly,” say “he sprinted” or “he dashed.” Instead of “he listened covertly,” say “he eavesdropped.” And instead of “he spoke softly,” say “he whispered.”

64

Lesson 10 | Sentences That Sizzle

Adverbs are at their worst when they’re added to verbs that are already strong, like in this sentence: “She stormed loudly into the publisher’s office and glared furiously at him.” The verbs stormed and glared are doing the work needed to show these actions, so the adverbs loudly and furiously just add pointless weight. As with almost everything in the English language, however, there is an exception to the -ly adverb rule. These adverbs do have a place in one scenario: when they’re used to change the meaning of the word they modify. The adverb in the phrase “she laughed happily” doesn’t offer anything new because readers assume that when someone laughs, it means they’re happy. But what about “she laughed sadly”? This adverb could be OK because it changes the meaning of laughed and provides fresh insight. Put each adverb to the test by asking two questions. Does it convey a vital piece of information better than a stronger verb could by itself? And does it change the meaning of the word it modifies? If you answer yes to at least one of these questions, the adverb may be able to stay. The vast majority of your adverbs should be removed at this stage if you want to elevate your language. On the other hand, bending over backward to avoid a word just because you were told to avoid it isn’t a good idea. If your rewritten version is more cumbersome than the first, stick with the original.

Adjectives As you might have already guessed, most adjectives are also unnecessary, and the same rules apply. Common adjectives—like happy, sad, good, bad, big, and little—add little to your writing, especially if you’re using them often.

65

Lesson 10 | Sentences That Sizzle

Pay close attention to sentences overburdened with adjectives. Lists of modifiers slow down the pacing and make the prose clunky and hard to understand. Adjectives are common in rough drafts because writers often start with simple nouns and tack on an adjective to fill them out. For example, you might start out with “hunting dog” instead of “hound,” or “fruit farm” instead of “orchard.” And like adverbs, the worst adjectives are redundant, like “ancient artifact,” “closed fist,” “unexpected surprise,” or “hopeful optimism.” Artifacts are ancient by nature, fists are always closed, surprises are never expected, and optimism is hopeful by definition. You’ll typically want to swap adjectives for specific nouns. But you may be able to retain adjectives that convey crucial information that a specific noun couldn’t by itself and change the meaning of the noun. Adverbs can get away with doing just one of these things, but that isn’t the case with adjectives. Every adjective must add crucial information, and it also needs to automatically change the meaning of the noun—otherwise, it’s redundant.

Character Descriptions Adjectives are most commonly overused in character descriptions. Just like with all other rough writing, writers tend to rely on simple nouns and then add on adjectives to qualify them in.

66

Lesson 10 | Sentences That Sizzle

Listing a character’s height, weight, and eye color enters into cliché territory. This type of description is so vague that it could be almost anyone in a crowd, and it doesn’t show what’s unique about this person. Also, how often do you notice someone’s eye color when you first meet them? We don’t experience people this way in real life, so it shouldn’t be a feature in your narrative writing either. If you do want to include hints of a character’s physical appearance, use specific verbs instead of adjectives. Rather than writing that a character has gray hair and glasses, use stronger verbs to help the description come alive: “Wisps of gray hair floated atop his head, bobbing slightly as he removed his glasses.” Specific verbs automatically translate description into action and movement. You can even take this one step further by introducing characters without including any of their physical attributes. If you do the work to show how the character moves through the world and interacts with others, you may not need a classic character description at all. Instead of introducing readers to “Christine, who had long brown hair and green eyes,” they want to meet “Christine, the only woman in the country to wrestle a grizzly bear and survive.” We’re drawn to what a person does, and how they interact with others, more than their physical attributes.

You may think you’re doing your readers a favor by describing everything at a high level, but the signal you’re actually sending is that you don’t trust your reader to bring their own imagination to the table. Instead, use a light touch with both adjectives and adverbs, and let your readers fill out the world for themselves.

67

Lesson 10 | Sentences That Sizzle

Helping Verbs and Participial Phrases During line editing, watch out for -ing words. The main troublemakers are past and present participles, or the verb forms that use -ing. These verb forms cause three potential problems in your manuscript: wordiness, tired phrasing that makes the action less direct and annoys readers, and problems with two actions happening at the same time. Participle forms rely on helping verbs, such as am, are, is, was, were, be, being, been, has, have, or had. These constructions can always be strengthened. For example, compare “I was dancing onstage” to “I danced onstage.” Or “Gregor was walking to the park” versus “Gregor walked to the park.” The versions that use simple past forms are more direct and concise. These verbs can make an action less direct by putting it into what’s called a participial phrase, like the first part of this sentence: “Taking off his coat, he turned to face her.” There’s nothing wrong with starting a sentence with a participial phrase, but it makes the action less direct than it would be if you wrote this instead: “He took off his coat and turned to face her.” Participial phrases are overused, and the more you use them, the more readers will notice. Try to vary your sentences instead. Participle forms can also create concurrent actions that aren’t physically possible. For example, if you wrote “screaming, she took a deep breath,” there would be a problem—a person can’t scream and inhale at the same time. Time warps like this often find their way into rough drafts, and it’s those good old participles that create them. Remember to watch your -ing words when they’re paired with a helping verb, when they start a sentence with a participial phrase, and when they present two actions as happening at the same time. Fixing and strengthening these will elevate your writing in a big way. 68

Lesson 10 | Sentences That Sizzle

Reading Clark, Writing Tools. Hale, Sin and Syntax.

Questions 1 It’s tough to see a manuscript with fresh eyes. Evaluate your mindset while editing: Are you excited and brimming with ideas while revising? Or are you tired and discouraged? Don’t force yourself into burnout. It’s important to take frequent breaks to stay fresh. 2 Know your audience: How would you define your ideal reader? What would they look for in a book? 3 Instead of thinking about what your characters look like, ask yourself: What do they do? 4 Which set of words or phrases (adverbs, adjectives, participial phrases, tired phrasing, etc.) do you struggle with the most? 5 What is your plan of attack for line edits? Sketch out a plan, remembering to keep passes focused on just one or two elements at a time.

69

11 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Pruning Your Prose The number-one rule of the final stage of line editing, pruning your prose, is to keep your writing simple. Some writers push back against this. For them, simple means boring. They want to add spice and pizzazz, and they think that using abstract words and complex sentences does this. But simplifying your writing is an art, and it’s essential if you want to communicate. It doesn’t mean toning down your style or message; it means improving your writing by cutting out everything unnecessary, confusing, or purely ego-driven. The more you can do this while retaining your unique voice, the less chance you’ll have of a reader losing interest.

Unnecessary Words One way to address wordiness is by removing all unnecessary words from your manuscript. This may seem simplistic, but it’s important to start here as you begin this work.

70

Lesson 11 | Pruning Your Prose

Here are the most common offenders that contribute to wordiness in your writing. Some you can replace, while others should be removed entirely. Replace:

† In order to → to † All of the → all the † Whether or not → whether † At this/that point in time → now/then

† At the same time as → while † Due to the fact that → because † Make an effort → try † Off of → off

Remove: † It’s important to note that † Made out of † The fact that † Needless to say † First and foremost † In the process of † In my opinion † For all intents and purposes † Tend to † I think that † There is … that † It is … that

† The reason why † In the event of † By means of † Until such a time as † In light of † Given that † Considering that † In the near future † With regard to † As the case may be † In the midst of † Sooner rather than later

Qualifiers Next, you can reduce wordiness by keeping qualifiers to a minimum. Qualifiers are words that precede adjectives and adverbs, and they can lead to sloppy, wordy writing. 71

Lesson 11 | Pruning Your Prose

Take the sentence “This sandwich is very good.” Very is the qualifier here; it modifies the adjective good. But “very good” isn’t specific. Instead, why not find the perfect word and be as concise as possible? A potential revision would be “This sandwich is excellent” or “This sandwich is superb.” Here are some common qualifiers to watch for in your draft: † Very † Somewhat † More † Less † Most

† Least † Too † Almost † Fairly † Really

Redundancy The third way to overcome wordiness is eliminating redundant words, phrases, and passages. Redundancy frustrates readers because you’re saying the same thing over and over again. As you prune your manuscript at this stage, you may start to notice redundant sentence structures you rely on too much. For example, you may notice that you tend to start new paragraphs with a proper noun and a verb: The first paragraph on a page starts with “Emily walked down the street,” the third starts with “Henry stared at the sizzling pot pie on his plate,” and the fourth starts with “Emily sat on the sofa.” This is a redundancy of sentence structure, and you’ll want to work on varying your paragraph openings. Redundancy can also come in the form of using two or more words when only one is necessary, such as “collaborated together” instead of “collaborated,” “past history” instead of “history,” and “the reason why” instead of “the reason.” As you revise to keep it simple, train your eye to spot all the places where you used a redundant phrase where one word will do. 72

Lesson 11 | Pruning Your Prose

Keeping Your Writing Real Writers sometimes rely on complex words to the point of abstraction. But the strongest writers use simple words and sentence structures to convey powerful messages and imagery. It takes courage to prune your writing to its bare branches, but this is where you’ll discover that your words have the most potency. Using simple language forces you to focus on the writing’s emotional, psychological, symbolic, or universal truth. You can think of this as keeping your writing real—watching for anything that feels pretentious, artificial, or uninspired. The more you prune away, the more you can strengthen what remains. You should strive for truth in at least one of the four senses in every sentence on the page. But keep in mind that truth in writing isn’t easy to define; it’s an abstract concept that’s more intuitive than scientific. The best way to spot places where truth is obscured is to note any lines or passages that feel off to you: Something doesn’t “Use the smallest resonate, an image doesn’t come word that does through like you intended, or a character’s dialogue doesn’t quite the job.” sound like them.

—E. B. White

Clichés A cliché is an overused phrase that shows a lack of original thought. Instead of bringing a unique worldview or image to the page, you borrow a phrase people hear all the time. 73

Lesson 11 | Pruning Your Prose

Common clichés include: † Head over heels † The calm before the storm † Play your cards right † Read between the lines † My blood ran cold † All in due time

† On thin ice † He stopped dead † Gut-wrenching † Avoid like the plague † A breath of fresh air

Clichés are lazy, and they rob you of your originality. Unless one of your characters has the annoying trait of constantly speaking in clichés—which is the one time you might be able to get away with it—these tired expressions need to be removed. Eliminating a cliché doesn’t mean you have to try to make every image or phrase unique. In fact, the opposite is almost always true. Favor simple language over the complex. When you do want to highlight an important truth or image, work on using simple words and sentence structure to show it in a new way.

If you’re having trouble finding clichés in your writing, ask yourself this question: Can your readers guess how the phrase ends? For example, “As white as [blank],” “Think outside the [blank],” and “When it’s all said and [blank].” If it’s a common expression and readers know how it will end, it’s likely a cliché.

74

Lesson 11 | Pruning Your Prose

Exclamation Points and Italics Two smaller items to pay attention to as you pare down your prose are exclamation points and italics used for emphasis. These are the two elements that scream “amateur” to anyone in the publishing industry, so they need to be used carefully. Exclamation points are, in a way, a form of telling. If you rely on them to tell the reader that a character is angry, upset, or excited, you’re not showing this through their actions and dialogue. The goal is to show these emotions so well that you barely need to use any exclamation points. At some point in your final line edits, use your word processor’s search function to find exclamation points and remove them. Similarly, proceed with extreme caution when it comes to using italics for emphasis. In the book Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, Renni Browne and Dave King write that “frequent italics are the equivalent of an elbow in the ribs and a frantic, ‘Did you get it?’ ‘Did you get it?’” These italics also fall into telling instead of showing. Other than stylistic items that need to be in italics, such as the title of a book or movie, you should aim to only use italics for interior monologue—if you’ve made the conscious decision to format it that way. Even if your character speaks a different language, you can skip the italics on those words. Italics increase distance and label the language as “other.” Instead, weave it in naturally and explain it using context.

75

When in doubt, skip the italics. Your copyeditor will know where to add them back in if they’re required by your style guide. Otherwise, push yourself to show rather than tell readers where the emphasis should be.

Lesson 11 | Pruning Your Prose

Rhythm After you prune your prose as much as possible, you may find that your sentence lengths and structures are too similar, leading to problems with rhythm. Here’s an example: “She went to the store. She bought eggs and milk. She walked to the car. She drove home.” Rhythm is created by punctuation, sentence structure, and sentence length. Good rhythm is varied rhythm, but at this point in the self-editing process, even the best writers can have sentence structures and lengths that start to feel too formulaic. The best way to spot these problems is to read your work aloud. There are many ways to improve rhythm. You can add punctuation to connect sentences or break them up differently; you can lengthen or shorten your sentences using word choice; or you can remove sentences entirely.

Repetition Repetition is different from redundancy in that it’s used purposefully to lend power and weight to sentences or words you want to emphasize. It can be used to show strong emotion; drive a point home; imitate a sound or rhythm, like the ocean or the pattering of rain; make a phrase more memorable; give structure to a list; or clearly link two ideas. Repetition is also a great way to inject humor, especially when it’s pushed to maximum effect. You can also repeat your sentence structure across phrases or sentences to use a parallel structure that brings a satisfying rhythm and balance to your writing. Dickens did this in the opening paragraph of A Tale of Two Cities: “It was the best of times, it was the worst of times, it was the age of wisdom, it was the age of foolishness,” and so on. 76

Lesson 11 | Pruning Your Prose

In your last revisions, watch for places where you can add repetition and parallel structure into your manuscript in key moments you want to highlight.

Reading Orwell, “Politics and the English Language.”

Questions 1 Clichés can result in wordiness. Are there any favorite clichés that you lean on in your writing? How could you express the same idea with a fresh perspective? 2 There are three main culprits when it comes to wordiness: unnecessary words, qualifiers, and redundancy. Do you notice your writing relying on one of these more than the others? 3 What is the strangest piece of description you’ve come across? Why is it effective? 4 Read your work out loud. Do you notice a lack of rhythm or unhelpful repetition? (Remember, repetition can be good if it lends weight or power to what you want to emphasize.)

77

12 TABLE OF CONTENTS

When to Ignore the Grammar Rules You’re now officially in the copyediting phase of self-editing, which means you’re focusing on grammar and usage. Whether you understand how it works or learned it via osmosis, grammar is the foundation of both spoken and written language. Without it, we wouldn’t be able to communicate. It’s important to understand, however, that grammar and usage aren’t the same thing. Grammar is the set of rules a language must obey to construct words and sentences. All languages have grammar, and native speakers internalize these rules so they can communicate. Usage, on the other hand, is broader. It has to do with everything from word choice and punctuation to capitalization and spelling. This is where your style guide and dictionary come into play. Everyone needs outside eyes on their work, so trying to do everything yourself at this stage will result in a poor finished product. Instead, this lesson explains five grammar and usage myths you can safely ignore as you prepare to send your manuscript off to a professional.

78

Lesson 12 | When to Ignore the Grammar Rules

Passive Voice One of the most misunderstood grammar and usage rules is to never use passive voice. First, it’s important to understand that passive voice is not a grammatical error; it’s a style of writing, just like active voice. The active voice takes the form of X does Y: “The man dropped the paper.” Passive voice, on the other hand, takes the form of Y is done by X—“The paper was dropped by the man”—or, simply, Y is done: “The paper was dropped.” Passive voice does make your writing weaker when used improperly, but it can serve a purpose. You may need the passive voice when you want to focus on the object being acted on, when the character either doesn’t want to say or doesn’t know who did it, or when it doesn’t matter who did it and you want to get to the next scene quickly. The first two scenarios happen a lot in mysteries and thrillers. Let’s say the maid has been killed and the butler finds her body in the drawing room. If the detective wants to keep the focus on the maid and off the butler for some reason—maybe he suspects the butler but wants to gain his trust, for example—he may simply tell the lord and lady of the house that “the maid’s body was found in the drawing room.” Whatever his motive, he wants to keep the focus on the body, not the butler. Scenario three comes up when you need to provide a fast narrative bridge between scenes. Say you have a group of characters traveling together and you have to get them out of camp and into the next scene quickly. You might write, “An hour later, the horses were fed and watered, and the bags were packed.” This is passive voice, but since it doesn’t matter who does the action and you need to get to the next scene as fast as possible, it’s an acceptable usage. Just be careful to use the passive voice in this way only when you need to. 79

Lesson 12 | When to Ignore the Grammar Rules

Sentence Fragments The next so-called rule is the idea that you should always write in complete sentences. By definition, a complete sentence must have, at minimum, a subject and a verb. In the sentence “She ran,” she is the subject and ran is the verb. An incomplete sentence, or sentence fragment, is missing one of these items. Here’s an example: “Because of the gecko.” This fragment has a noun but no verb. It leaves readers wondering, “What happened because of the gecko?” If this appeared in prose, it wouldn’t make sense. Instead, write something like: “Because of the gecko, the store had to close.” But the best narrative writing uses incomplete sentences all the time because it’s how people talk in real life. You want to infuse your writing with a realistic, unique voice. Let’s say someone in your story asked, “Why did the store close, Brian?” and Brian said, “Because of the gecko.” It’s incomplete, but it’s authentic. You can also use sentence fragments for emphasis. Take this example: “Jessie wanted that trophy, and she was going to get it. No matter what.” “No matter what” is a fragment, but it serves as a quick punch to up the drama here. Fragments can also be used to slow down a moment and build tension: “Lettie walked home. Alone. In the dark.” Fragments are a powerful tool to use in your narrative writing, so don’t shy away from them.

80

Lesson 12 | When to Ignore the Grammar Rules

Ending a Sentence with a Preposition English teachers still seem to tell their students to never end a sentence with a preposition. But following this “rule” at all costs can greatly affect the two most important elements of writing: clarity and effectiveness. Grammarians and writers have debated the correctness of the terminal preposition since the 1700s. In the 1800s, some prescriptivists starting telling writers to avoid ending a sentence with a preposition. But by the 1900s, most language experts and usage guides had concluded there was nothing wrong with it, and for the past hundred years, they haven’t changed their views on this. Some people are determined to hang on to this rule no matter how many times they’re told that it isn’t one. If you have a sentence that ends in a preposition and there’s no easy way to shuffle words around, just leave it be.

Split Infinitives Next is another favorite rule of grammarians, although it’s finally starting to fall out of favor: Never split an infinitive. A popular example of a split infinitive is the Star Trek catchphrase “to boldly go where no man has gone before.” The infinitive verb “to go” has been split by the adverb “boldly.” Writing this without splitting the infinitive would result in the sentence “To go boldly where no man has gone before.” It gets the same point across, but it doesn’t have the same pizzazz.

81

Lesson 12 | When to Ignore the Grammar Rules

This so-called rule is similar to the one about prepositions in that there is no rule—and there never has been. Someone likely made up this piece of advice because in Latin, infinitives are single words that can’t be split. But the same idea doesn’t apply to English. Your primary goal is to convey a narrative to your audience, so use your best judgment and write your infinitives the way they sound best.

Starting a Sentence with a Conjunction There’s a widespread belief that it’s an error to begin a sentence with a conjunction, such as and or but. Again, this rule has no historical or grammatical foundation. In fact, starting sentences with conjunctions has been common for centuries. Writing samples dating back to 9th-century Bible translations show this. The key here is to not overdo it. Make sure you’re varying your sentence structures to keep things interesting.

Reading Garner, The Chicago Guide to Grammar, Usage, and Punctuation. Walsh, The Elephants of Style.

Reference Materials Merriam-Webster, www.merriam-webster.com. The Chicago Manual of Style Online, www.chicagomanualofstyle.org.

82

Lesson 12 | When to Ignore the Grammar Rules

Questions 1 Is grammar your friend or your foe? How did this lesson change (or reinforce) your opinion on these grammar “rules”? 2 Find examples of passive voice in your manuscript—one that should be written in active voice, and one where passive voice is used correctly. 3 Do you shy away from sentence fragments? Experiment with adding some to dialogue or interior monologue and read the result aloud. Do you notice that the fragments add authenticity or emphasis?

83

13 TABLE OF CONTENTS

Beyond the Red Pen: What Comes Next You’ve now reached the tinkering phase, where you reread pages and change a word or punctuation mark here and there. This is an important part of finessing your manuscript, but it’s also a dangerous place to be. Writers can get stuck in the tinkering phase for months, or even years. It might reassure you to know that good writers never feel 100% happy with their manuscripts: There will always be something to improve, fix, or tweak. The key with the tinkering phase is to set a time limit and stick to it—two weeks to a month at most. Once that time is up, save the manuscript file and tuck it away. Ending the self-editing process is an exercise in letting go and abandoning perfectionism.

84

Lesson 13 | Beyond the Red Pen: What Comes Next

Now that you’ve done everything you can to strengthen the book, what happens next depends on how you plan to publish it—or if you plan to publish at all. If you want to reach a larger audience and are planning to traditionally publish or self-publish your book, you’ll need to hire professional editors. This lesson walks you through that process.

Traditional Publishing Many writers think they don’t need professional editing before they start submitting their manuscript to agents or publishers. They assume that once they land a publishing deal, the company will do any editing the book needs, so they should be able to submit their draft without a professional edit. There’s an obvious flaw with this logic, however, because unless you’re already represented by a publisher, what matters is getting your foot in the door. And that means first securing a contract with a literary agent. You’ll have only one shot to impress agents who are flooded with inquiries every day of the week. And literary agents are not editors or writing coaches, so if your book suffers from lingering developmental problems, has typos or spelling errors, or far exceeds the recommended word count for its genre, you’ve made it easy for agents to say no. It’s well worth the time and investment to get your manuscript in excellent shape before you start submitting. If you have a healthy budget, put your manuscript through two rounds of developmental editing and two rounds of line editing. Ideally, both types of editing should be done by the same editor or by editors who work together regularly. This ensures that the process is as fluid as possible.

85

Lesson 13 | Beyond the Red Pen: What Comes Next

If you have a limited budget for editing, invest in at least one round of developmental editing and one round of line editing. This provides the most value for your money, since you’re still addressing any remaining problems at the big-picture level and you’re also making sure the manuscript is in great shape at the little-picture level before sending it out.

Self-Publishing If you’re self-publishing, you’ll be seeing your book through the publishing process from start to finish. That means you’ll have special considerations when it comes to making sure it’s as clean and polished as possible before it goes to print. Word count is an important consideration for self-publishing. Even though you don’t need to conform to the word-count norms for your genre, you’re also bankrolling the publishing process. As word count goes up, so do your costs for editing and formatting. This should be a huge motivator for you to transform your book into a lean, mean machine if you haven’t already. For self-publishing authors with healthy budgets, it’s ideal to do two rounds of developmental editing, one combined line edit and copyedit, two rounds of formatting—for print and eBook editions—and at least two rounds of proofreading. You’ll also need cover design, a back cover blurb, and sales copy. If you’re working with a tight budget, you can do away with the second round of developmental editing, use a template to format the book yourself, and write the back cover blurb and any sales pages yourself. But your book cover is your most important sales tool, so it’s worth investing in one that will spark interest when potential readers are scrolling through hundreds of books and deciding which one to buy.

86

Lesson 13 | Beyond the Red Pen: What Comes Next

If you have no choice but to keep your editing costs as low as possible, you absolutely need to put the book through a combination line edit and copyedit as well as two rounds of proofreading. Be sure your proofreader is a different person than whoever did the combo line edit and copyedit. Even the best editors have blind spots and may miss things that the proofreader will see with fresh eyes.

Beta Readers One way to keep your editing costs down no matter how you plan to publish is to do a few rounds of beta reading before you hire an editor. You’ve likely already done what’s known as alpha reading: Alpha readers are family members and friends who give you feedback on your draft. Beta readers, on the other hand, are people who either don’t know you at all or don’t know you that well. They take a look at the polished manuscript and offer whatever feedback you ask for. Beta readers are avid fans of your genre who generally offer their critiques for free or in exchange for a beta read of their manuscript, if they’re writers themselves.

Beta readers don’t replace a professional editor, but most editors are thrilled to hear that a manuscript has already been through beta reading. If you’ve already solved the basic, widespread problems, the editor can then focus on high-level issues and make the book as successful a product as possible.

87

Lesson 13 | Beyond the Red Pen: What Comes Next

There are many ways to find beta readers. If you already have an author website and an active email list, consider sending out an email to your followers to see if anyone would be interested in getting a sneak peek at your book in exchange for giving their feedback. Or you can join beta reader groups on social media or other online forums. It’s important to think about what feedback you want before going into a round of beta reading, as many people who aren’t trained in editing will automatically zoom in on things that might not be helpful for you at this stage, such as pointing out typos when you really want big-picture feedback. Developing a brief list of questions for your beta readers can help avoid this problem. The best-case scenario with beta readers is that they all point out the same issues. If multiple readers say the same thing, it’s usually a clear sign that it needs to change. But keep in mind that beta readers will often contradict each other. One person will love a secondary character and want you to develop their story further, for instance, and another person will say you need to cut that character entirely. Try finding an odd number of beta readers—ideally between five and nine—so you can tally up the feedback and avoid having a stalemate.

How to Find an Editor Just like with most services you hire someone for, the best way to find a good editor is to ask around. Reach out to your fellow writers and see which editors they recommend. Most writers are happy to sing the praises of an editor who did great work for them. If you come up empty on personal referrals, you can search the member directory of the Editorial Freelancers Association, or EFA. The directory lets you filter results based on content type, skills, genre, and even location. You can also post a job to the EFA Job List, which goes out to the entire membership and allows interested editors to contact you. 88

Lesson 13 | Beyond the Red Pen: What Comes Next

The Professional Editors Network and ACES: The Society for Editing also provide member directories, although they aren’t as searchable. And if you’re outside the US, check to see if your country has its own editorial organization, like Editors Canada, the Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading in the UK, or the Institute of Professional Editors Limited in Australia and New Zealand. Whether someone recommends an editor or you find one via a directory, do your research. Go to their website and read their services pages. Look through their testimonials to make sure they’ve had lots of happy clients. This is where you’ll start narrowing down your list based on which editors seem like they’ll be the best fit for you. Next, reach out to the top three editors you’re interested in working with. Some will have you upload your manuscript into the contact form itself. Don’t let this scare you; they have to take a look before they can give you any details on pricing, timeline, or the services they recommend. The best editors will generally want to speak with you over the phone, in person, or via video call before they send you their recommendations. This is to make sure they understand what you’ve already worked on, where you’re at now with the book, and what your publishing goals are. These editors also want to make sure you’re a good fit for them personality-wise, and vice versa.

Hiring an Editor After your call, the editor will send you a proposal detailing what they recommend, including the price, any payment plans and options, and their timeframe for completing the project. The majority of professional freelance editors will have you sign a contract or some sort of agreement outlining the project details and what’s expected from both parties. 89

Lesson 13 | Beyond the Red Pen: What Comes Next

As with hiring any professional, there are a few red flags to watch out for. If the editor you approach seems disorganized, isn’t able to talk about their experience with books or your genre, or doesn’t ask to see your manuscript before sending over prices, be wary. There are a lot of inexperienced freelance editors out there, and there are many types of editing. This is why your best bet is to work with a well-rounded editor who’s familiar with the type of publishing you’re interested in. As you prepare to read through your editor’s feedback, brace yourself for an initial wave of defensiveness, or even anger. Keep reminding yourself that your editor is there to help. And you should find their comments and feedback helpful, even if they’re surprising or difficult to take in at first. Highly trained editors have years of experience in providing constructive feedback and wording things in a way that promotes collaboration. For big-picture editing, take at least a week to let the editor’s feedback percolate before contacting them for your follow-up call. Let them know that you received the files, but don’t give in to an impulse to defend yourself point by point or go through their editorial letter and respond to everything you disagree with. Most of these impulses will quiet down after a few days, and you’ll start feeling more receptive to their suggestions. If you do disagree with a point your editor makes, let them know. No good editor wants to force you to write something you’re not passionate about or that you don’t agree with at a fundamental level. Their goal is to collaborate with you to make your book the best it can be, and that requires good communication and mutual respect.

Edits aren’t personal, even though they can feel that way. Remember that your editor’s job is to find and propose solutions to any problems in the manuscript, and they want you to succeed. 90

Lesson 13 | Beyond the Red Pen: What Comes Next

Reading Friedman, The Business of Being a Writer. Pickett, Perfect Bound: How to Navigate the Book Publishing Process.

Questions 1 Have you made it to the tinkering phase? Before you go any further, set a deadline for the tinkering period so you don’t get stuck. 2 Before contacting beta readers, what lingering questions do you need answered? Make a list of possible questions for beta readers so feedback can be targeted and helpful. 3 What is your plan for your finished book? Are you interested in traditional publishing, self-publishing, or something else? 4 Based on your answers to the previous questions, what kind of editing services might your manuscript need? 5 You’ve made it through the journey of learning how to self-edit, and now it’s time to put the pen down and reflect. What highs and lows did you experience while editing? What did you learn about yourself as a writer? And lastly, what is the next step on your writing journey?

91

Save the Cat! Beat Sheet Beats are the driving moments throughout the arc of a book. The percentages in this beat sheet show where in the book that beat takes place, with 0% representing the beginning of the book and 100% representing the end. Beats that include multiple scenes are highlighted.

ACT I Opening Image (0%–1%): The first thing seen; think of it like a snapshot of the protagonist in their ordinary world. This will set the tone of the story and should be the opposite of the Final Image.

Setup (1%–10%): The introduction of the world and characters as well as what’s wrong in that world and/or character’s life. What does the character want, and what’s stopping them? The Theme Stated, a quick paragraph or sentence hinting at the truth the character needs to discover, should happen early in the Setup.

92

Save the Cat! Beat Sheet

Catalyst (10%): The trigger that starts the plot. This is an event that permanently alters the protagonist’s ordinary world.

Debate (10%–20%): The protagonist resists change and ultimately decides whether or not to do whatever it is they need to do.

ACT II Break into Act II (20%): The protagonist has to choose to take action and move the story forward.

93

Save the Cat! Beat Sheet

B Story (22%): Readers are introduced to a secondary character who either helps or hinders the protagonist. They should play a pivotal role in moving the protagonist forward in some way.

Fun and Games (20%–50%): The protagonist goes on a roller-coaster ride of wins and losses. They try to get what they want, they fail, and then they pivot and try again.

Midpoint (50%): The middle of the book is a single scene that resolves the Fun and Games arc with either a false victory or a false defeat. This scene raises the stakes as you head toward the climax.

94

Save the Cat! Beat Sheet

Bad Guys Close In (50%–75%): Things start to fall apart for the protagonist.

All Is Lost (75%): The opposite of the Midpoint, this is a second false victory or defeat where, even in victory, the protagonist is brought to their lowest point.

Dark Night of the Soul (75%–80%): This is the deep soul-searching of the protagonist to find the solution to the problems facing them. The protagonist starts to realize what they actually need versus what they want.

95

Save the Cat! Beat Sheet

ACT III Break into Act III (80%): The protagonist decides on the right course of action to reach their new goal.

Finale (80%–99%): The climax, where the protagonist takes that course of action and ultimately succeeds or fails in their quest.

Final Image (99%–100%): This is a single scene showing the plot’s outcome. It should be the opposite of the Opening Image, showing how much the protagonist has transformed.

96

Character Transformation Your protagonist must have a want. And it’s not enough for your character to want to be happy—they must want something specific, and they have to think it will solve their problem. What is your character’s want?

Blake Snyder, creator of the Save the Cat! methodology, said that the protagonist’s flaw is like a shard of glass. It’s buried deep under the skin, which has grown up around it over time. Even if none of the other characters can see it—even if the protagonist has forgotten it—the shard of glass is always there, holding the protagonist back. What is your character’s flaw?

97

Character Transformation

Through the events of the story, your protagonist must find out that what they want isn’t what they need. They’re finally forced to deal with their fundamental character flaw, which allows them to transform. What is your character’s need? How is the character pushed to realize what they need?

Remember, a character’s flaw, want, and need are not chosen at random. They’re interconnected. If your protagonist’s flaw is arrogance, but they’re never forced to become humble to achieve what they want, then the character doesn’t grow and change. The plot becomes pointless, and the outcome is unsatisfying.

98

Character Voice Journal Your protagonist should have a unique voice that’s consistent throughout the book. If you’ve struggled to write dialogue and interior monologue for your protagonist, it may be because you haven’t developed their voice enough. What makes your character’s voice distinct? If you’re finding it hard to narrow down, start by answering the following questions.

How does this person greet people when they first meet them?

How do they respond to questions?

 re they quick to offer an opinion, or are they reluctant to share their A thoughts with others?

99

Character Voice Journal

 o they have a rich inner life but struggle to communicate with other D people?

What would the character write about?

What word choice and phrasing would they use?

What topics would they choose or avoid?

How would they write about the people in their lives?

100

Character Voice Journal

Another way to work on your character’s voice is to work through voice prompts written from their point of view. Here are a few prompts to get you started. In the Spotlight: Your character is being interviewed on a popular

TV show or radio program. Brainstorm a list of interesting interview questions, and then answer them from your character’s point of view, as if they’re speaking. Pay close attention to the attitude, phrasing, subtext, and wording of their responses. Do they reflect your character’s personality and background? If not, how could you make their answers reflect your character better? † Bonus: Answer these same questions but imagine instead that your character is talking to a confidant instead of publicly. How would their answers change? 101

Character Voice Journal

Dear Diary: Pretend your character keeps a diary. Write three entries:

one about their normal day, one about a historical event in the character’s life, and one after a big life change for the character. How do they react and respond to each event? How does the character write when their thoughts are private? † Bonus: Pretend your character is writing a memoir. How much of their private thoughts do they share? When writing about their life for a public audience, how does their writing change, and how does it stay the same?

102

Character Voice Journal

 etold: It’s your character’s mission to tell someone about their favorite R book or movie. (For the sake of this exercise, make sure it’s a real book or movie that you’re familiar with.) Which details do they include? How much do they summarize? Now, have your character retell their favorite scene in detail. What sticks out most in their mind? Is it the dialogue, the characters, or something else? What do they focus on the most in their retelling? † Bonus: If your character were to write a book or produce a movie of their own, what kind of story would they want to tell? How would they go about doing so? 103

Building a Backstory Your character’s want, flaw, and need didn’t just appear overnight—they were developed over time and were shaped by your character’s past experiences. What does your character’s past look like? How have their experiences shaped who they are now? Here are some questions to get the ball rolling with building your character’s backstory: When did your character first realize what they want? What started this want?

What is your character’s earliest memory? Is it positive or negative?

What is your character’s relationship with their close family? How about their extended family? 104

Building a Backstory

How many (if any) close friends did your character have growing up? How did they meet those friends?

When did your character first start exhibiting their core flaw?

What is your character afraid of, and why?

What tics or idiosyncrasies does your character have? (Do they avoid stepping on sidewalk cracks? Always wink at themselves in the mirror? Hum the Mission: Impossible theme while grocery shopping?) How did these tics start? 105

Building a Backstory

When did your character start needing their core need?

What did your character want to be when they grew up? How did that change or remain the same as they got older?

What has been the hardest lesson for your character to learn about life so far?

What lies does your character believe about life, themselves, other people, etc.—and conversely, what truths do they reject?

106

Building a Backstory

Who was your character’s childhood hero, and why?

If your character was in a room with all the people they’ve ever loved (romantic, familial, friend, etc.), who would they go to first?

What does your character believe about themselves and/or the world? What made them believe this?

If your character had to write a story about their life, where would they start? Would they include every detail, or would they fictionalize?

107

Editor Directories United States—General ACES: The Society for Editing https://aceseditors.org/resources/for-hire. Editorial Freelancers Association (EFA) https://www.the-efa.org/membership-directory/. Professional Editors Network (PEN) https://pensite.org/directory/. United States—Regional Bay Area Editors’ Forum (BAEF) https://www.editorsforum.org/search_editor.php. Chicago Women in Publishing https://www.cwip.org/php/searchtype.php. Northwest Editors Guild https://edsguild.org/member-directory/#!directory/ord=rnd. San Diego Professional Editors Network (SD/PEN) https://sdpen.com/find-an-editor/. 108

Editor Directories

Australia and New Zealand Institute of Professional Editors Limited (IPEd) http://iped-editors.org/Find-an-editor. Canada Editors Canada https://www.editors.ca/ode/search. United Kingdom Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading https://www.ciep.uk/directory/directory-search. South Africa Professional Editors’ Guild https://www.editors.org.za/FindAnEditor.aspx.

109

Bibliography Ackerman, Angela, and Becca Puglisi. The Emotion Thesaurus: A Writer’s Guide to Character Expression. 2nd ed. North Charleston, SC: Writers Helping Writers, 2019. An in-depth list of 130 emotions and their associated body language, cues, and thoughts. A must-read for showing instead of telling. Bell, James Scott. How to Write Dazzling Dialogue: The Fastest Way to Improve Any Manuscript. Woodland Hills, CA: Compendium Press, 2014. An excellent primer on crafting stronger dialogue. ——— . Revision and Self-Editing: Techniques for Transforming Your First Draft into a Finished Novel. Cincinnati, OH: Writer’s Digest Books, 2008. A well-rounded plan for editing your own work, complete with exercises. Bell, Susan. The Artful Edit: On the Practice of Editing Yourself. New York, NY: W. W. Norton & Company, 2007. One of my favorite books on selfediting and one that will help you develop your editor’s eye. Bradbury, Ray. Zen in the Art of Writing. Santa Barbara, CA: Joshua Odell Editions, 1994. A love note to creative writing from one of the masters of the craft. Brody, Jessica. Save the Cat! Writes a Novel. New York, NY: Ten Speed Press, 2018. The clearest beat sheet I’ve found and my go-to for successful narrative writing. Browne, Renni, and Dave King. Self-Editing for Fiction Writers: How to Edit Yourself Into Print. 2nd ed. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2004. A succinct, humorous title with tips for improving your self-editing skills.

110

Bibliography

Cameron, Julia. The Artist’s Way: A Spiritual Path to Higher Creativity. New York, NY: Jeremy P. Tarcher/Penguin, 2007. A primer on nurturing the creative process. Read it through, then keep it on hand for moments when you’re feeling stuck or burnt-out during the revision process. Campbell, Joseph. The Hero with a Thousand Faces. 3rd ed. Novato, CA: New World Library, 2008. The classic text on mythic structure. Clark, Roy Peter. Writing Tools: 55 Essential Strategies for Every Writer. New York, NY: Little, Brown and Company, 2006. A concise guide to writing effective prose, with plenty of examples and exercises. Didion, Joan. “Why I Write.” The New York Times, December 5, 1976. An essay on the craft from a modern master. Dillard, Annie. The Writing Life. New York, NY: Harper Perennial, 2013. A brief but rich glimpse into the daily life, and trials, of a writer. Einsohn, Amy, Marilyn Schwartz, and Erika Büky. The Copyeditor’s Handbook: A Guide for Book Publishing and Corporate Communications. 4th ed. Oakland, CA: University of California Press, 2019. The go-to reference book for copyeditors. Helpful if you’re interested in getting into the finer details of editing your own work. Frey, James N. How to Write A Damn Good Novel. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Press, 1989. Although older, this book doesn’t show its age. It’s still one of the best books on writing a novel. ——— . The Key: How to Write Damn Good Fiction Using the Power of Myth. New York, NY: St. Martin’s Griffin, 2002. A primer on how to use the mythic structure. Start here if this structure is brand new to you. Friedman, Jane. The Business of Being a Writer. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2018. An in-depth guide to publishing and marketing your writing. 111

Bibliography

Garner, Bryan A. The Chicago Guide to Grammar, Usage, and Punctuation. Chicago, IL: University of Chicago Press, 2016. A quick-reference guide to the inner workings of the English language, from The Chicago Manual of Style’s grammar and usage expert. Green, Jonathon. Cassell’s Dictionary of Slang. 2nd ed. London: Weidenfeld & Nicolson, 2005. If you use slang in your book, make sure it fits the right time period with this tome, which includes definitions and historical information. Also good for a belly laugh as you read slang of yore. Guise, Stephen. How to Be an Imperfectionist: The New Way to Self-Acceptance, Fearless Living, and Freedom from Perfectionism. Seattle, WA: Selective Entertainment, 2015. Perfectionism keeps you stuck in tinkering mode—or worse, it stops you in the middle of your draft. Break the cycle with this short, effective book. Hale, Constance. Sin and Syntax: How to Craft Wickedly Effective Prose. New York, NY: Broadway Books, 2001. A primer on elevating and pruning your prose with style. Hardy, Janice. Revising Your Novel: First Draft to Finished Draft. Oklahoma City, OK: Fiction University Press, 2016. An in-depth self-editing guide, complete with plenty of questions to ask yourself as you revise. ——— . Understanding Show, Don’t Tell (And Really Getting It). Oklahoma City, OK: Fiction University Press, 2016. One of my top recommendations for narrative writers. Even if you think you’ve mastered showing, use this book to test your knowledge. Horowitz, Stuart. Blueprint Your Bestseller. New York, NY: Penguin Group, 2013. A self-editing method that will help you discover where your scene breaks truly are and map out scenes using index cards.

112

Bibliography

Jarrett Andrew, Elizabeth. Living Revision: A Writer’s Craft as Spiritual Practice. Boston, MA: Skinner House Books, 2018. A philosophical, thoughtful examination of the revision process. Especially relevant to memoirists. Jung, Carl. Man and His Symbols. New York, NY: Dell Publishing, 1964. If you’re interested in mythic structure and want to know more about symbolism and mythology, this is one of my favorite books on the topic. King, Stephen. On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft. New York, NY: Scribner, 2000. There’s a reason that almost every writing class recommends this book. Maran, Meredith, ed. Why We Write: 20 Acclaimed Authors on How and Why They Do What They Do. New York, NY: Plume, 2013. Learn some tips and techniques from masters of the craft. Merriam-Webster. Merriam-Webster Dictionary. https://www.merriam -webster.com. The leading dictionary for American English. Mittelmark, Howard, and Sandra Newman. How Not to Write a Novel: 200 Classic Mistakes and How to Avoid Them—A Misstep-by-Misstep Guide. New York, NY: HarperCollins, 2008. A laugh-out-loud guide to mistakes everyone makes when starting out in narrative writing, including how to avoid them. Murdock, Maureen. The Heroine’s Journey: Woman’s Quest for Wholeness. Boston, MA: Shambhala Publications, 1990. This book adapts the hero’s journey to women. Orwell, George. Why I Write. New York, NY: Penguin Books, 2005. A collection of essays on Orwell’s journey to becoming a writer. Includes “Politics and the English Language,” which examines the failings of complex language.

113

Bibliography

Pickett, Katherine. Perfect Bound: How to Navigate the Book Publishing Process Like a Pro. Silver Spring, MD: Hop on Publishing, 2014. A guide to publishing your own writing, including information on how to best work with a professional editor. Reynolds, Susan. Fire Up Your Writing Brain: How to Use Proven Neuroscience to Become a More Creative, Productive, and Successful Writer. Blue Ash, OH: Writer’s Digest Books, 2015. Ways to fuel creativity and be more productive in both the drafting and self-editing stages. Roach Smith, Marion. The Memoir Project: A Thoroughly Non-Standardized Text for Writing & Life. New York, NY: Hachette Book Group, 2011. A short, eccentric guide to writing memoir from a respected teacher in the field. The Chicago Manual of Style Online. https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org. The go-to style guide for narrative writing. Van Cleave, Ryan G. Memoir Writing for Dummies. Mississauga, ON: John Wiley & Sons Canada, 2013. A good starting place if you’re writing your first memoir. Includes answers to many frequently asked questions. VanderMeer, Jeff. Wonderbook: The Illustrated Guide to Creating Imaginative Fiction. 2nd ed. New York, NY: Abrams Image, 2018. A visual treat packed with writing tips and musings. Vogler, Christopher. The Writer’s Journey: Mythic Structure for Storytellers & Screenwriters. Studio City, CA: Michael Wiese Productions, 1992. One of the key texts on using the mythic structure. Vonnegut, Kurt. “How to Write with Style.” International Paper Co., 1980. Part of a series of advertisements, this article features Vonnegut’s timeless writing tips.

114

Bibliography

Walsh, Bill. The Elephants of Style: A Trunkload of Tips on the Big Issues and Gray Areas of Contemporary American English. New York, NY: McGrawHill, 2004. A lighthearted book that delves into the biggest bugaboos of the English language. Zinnser, William. On Writing Well: The Classic Guide to Writing Nonfiction. 7th ed. New York, NY: Harper Perennial, 2016. It’s right there in the title— it’s a classic for a reason. ——— . Writing about Your Life: A Journey into the Past. New York, NY: Marlowe & Company, 2004. If you’re writing memoir, autobiography, or personal essays, this book has valuable tips and insights.

115

Copyright © The Teaching Company, 2021 Printed in the United States of America This book is in copyright. All rights reserved. Without limiting the rights under copyright reserved above, no part of this publication may be reproduced, stored in or introduced into a retrieval system, or transmitted, in any form, or by any means (electronic, mechanical, photocopying, recording, or otherwise), without the prior written permission of The Teaching Company. 4840 Westfields Boulevard Suite 500 Chantilly, VA 20151‑2299 USA 1-800-832-2412 www.thegreatcourses.com