Trick from the Editor’s Hat: Use Paper or an Ebook Reader

You spend hours/days/weeks editing and you're struggling to get through it. Here is just one of the many tricks that I employ when editing both my own and clients' writing.

Use Paper or an eBook Reader

I never do all my editing directly on the computer. The back-lit screen is too much on my eyes. The smooth reflective surface will catch the overhead lighting, adding to the eye strain. This is why I don't use a tablet for editing either. They too are back-lit and reflective. No, when I can, when the size of a document permits me, I will print out the manuscript and pull out my trusty red pen, writing all over that printed document. In those instances where the manuscript is too large, say 100k words, then out comes my Kindle and I'll read the document on that, adding comments and notes to the file as I go. (Yes, you can do that on a Kindle.)

Editing Reality Check

When writers have spent such a long time at writing, crafting their stories, many will happily turn their attention to editing. However, it saddens me to realize that many writers don't fully understand what editing actually entails.

In a post earlier this year, I spoke about the who, what and when of editing. In that article, I mentioned that editing falls into four main categories: critique, developmental, line and copy-edit. Each stage is important for a manuscript's development but for different reasons. Unfortunately, the number of writers that seem to miss the critique and developmental editing phases, going straight to line editing, is surprising.

Trick from the Editor’s Hat: The “Was” Edit

Trick from the Editor’s Hat: Read Aloud

You're staring at a manuscript that you have spent countless hours, days, weeks, preparing for publication or submission. It's as stellar as you can make it. Or is it?

Here is just one of the tricks that I occasionally pull out of my hat when editing. This technique is the best method of making dialogue sound natural and will pick up the awkward sentences faster than any other method. There are times when I use this technique while writing too. It is one of the best tricks one can have stashed under their hat.

Read Aloud

You can read a line over and over again, but you still don't see the mistake. It's something incredibly simple, like a missing "the", but you still don't see it. Our eyes filter what our minds see. The eyes make the corrections needed and hence our brains don't register anything different. However, when we read something out, vocalize the line, our brains work differently. And guess what... That missing "the" becomes obvious.

Give me the Em-Dash

Billy said… Diana said…

Trick from the Editor’s Hat: The Backwards Edit

You're staring at a manuscript that you have spent countless hours, days, weeks, preparing for publication or submission. It's as stellar as you can make it. Or is it?

Here is just one of the tricks that I occasionally pull out of my hat when editing. It can be slow going, but it can help you isolate those awkward, sticky sentences and eliminate those beasts.

The Backwards Edit

During a backwards edit, you read a manuscript from the last sentence backwards to the first. When you do this, you're unable to focus on the story; sentences lose their contextual meaning. As a consequence you focus entirely on the words.

Fiction is NOT a Genre…

Recently, I was skimming through a fellow editor's website (who shall remain nameless) and encountered a page where people were listing the titles of their manuscripts and their respective genres. OMG, the number of people that listed their genre as FICTION...

People, FICTION is NOT a genre. It tells us nothing about your story, except for the fact that it's made up. And it's not good enough to tell us the you write Young Adult or Middle-Grade either. All this tells us is who your target audience is. Let's face it, a science fiction story is very different to a western. (However, you could have a Western SciFi — Firefly is the perfect example of this sub-genre.) A Young Adult SciFi and a Middle-Grade SciFi, on the other hand, will contain similar elements, all related to the SciFi genre.

Struggling with #NaNoWriMo word-counts? Maybe you’re trying too hard.

We have just crossed the mid-month point and you’re looking at those word counts. Some of you are starting to freak out. Maybe you haven’t hit 25000 words yet and are seeing that you need to write over 2000 words per day to make it on-time. Maybe when you sit down at the computer to write (or with the pen and paper if that is your method) you find that only 200 words grace the page, and you’ve been at if for hours. Maybe you just stare at the blank page and your mind goes blank as well. Or, the worst of all, maybe your story doesn’t excite you like it did when you started. Well, you know what… These are all things that happen to every writer. They’ve happened to me too. But there are some simple easy things that you can do to get out of this rut and get back on track for NaNoWriMo.

You may have a high total word count left to write and your required daily count to hit that 50000-word target is getting higher by the day. The first thing that you need to do is forget about the total word count and those mounting required daily limits. If you keep staring at that big number of words left to write, you’ll never make it. There is a philosophy out there that the most successful people are the ones that have the ability to take every problem and break it down into smaller chunks. Let’s face it. You can’t add 2 + 2 together and have it mean anything unless you have a concept of what 2 is in the first place.

Make no mistake about it, 50000 is a big number. Can you imagine what you could do with $50,000? Just imagine the goodies you can buy with that. Write it down. Look at that… You’re writing again.

What? You were reading, not writing? Should I shake my head now, or later?

No, seriously. Here’s a little trick that I’ve started using this year with the WriMos in my region.Read More→

Tag Archives: Writing and Editing