Am I Making Things Worse?
what I've learned from line-editing so far
How It’s Going
Chapters edited: 12
I’m well into my fourth draft now, right around the 25% mark. Overall, this draft has been my favorite so far. It requires a lot less of my creative energy, as I’m just tweaking things rather than completely rewriting them, so I can work on it for longer periods of time. I’m also able to edit each chapter faster, which has been great.
But I’ve never line-edited before, so there’s definitely a learning curve. I’m still trying to figure out how to approach this draft. Since each draft has its own purpose, they all require their own “strategies.” For example, for the first draft, I adhered to the “write it messy” advice, because the purpose of it was just to tell myself the story. But that doesn’t really apply to the line editing draft.
Right now, I’m trialing and erroring my way through it, and figuring things out as I go. So I thought I’d share some of my insights in case anyone else is bumbling their way through line edits too (or is curious about that part of the process for once they reach it).
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Is My Book Getting Worse?
When working on each of my previous drafts, I felt like I was improving my book. I had this gut feeling that I was going in the right direction. Which was good, as the point of each draft is to make the book better.
But with my fourth draft, it was the first time that I started to worry I was actually making things worse. It felt like I was going backwards. I no longer had that internal knowing of what needed to be fixed. I was lost.
Dealing with this uncertainty and doubt is something I didn’t see coming, and I’m trying to adjust my approach so that I can feel like I’m going in the right direction again. There are two areas where I’m modifying what I’m doing: rewording and condensing.
Changing Things Just Because
One of the hardest lessons that I’ve had to learn while working on this draft is that changing things doesn’t always make them better. Sometimes it just makes them different.
I was doing a lot of rewording of my sentences, thinking they needed to be sharper or better or smoother. But in reality, there was nothing wrong with them. I just felt like I had to improve them, because that was supposedly the purpose of a line editing draft. To make each line sound better.
But I started to realize that after I reworded something, I would read it back and find that I preferred the old version. I wasn’t making it better. I was just changing things to change things.
So what I started doing was only changing what actually needed to be fixed. How did I determine that? Well, if I got tripped up on something when reading through it, I knew it needed tweaking. But if it flowed well enough, and I didn’t have to think too much about it, I kept it the same. Because chances are, if I changed it, I would just make it worse. Or at best, different.
Delete, Delete, Delete
I am an over-writer for sure. I tend to love run-on sentences and unnecessary information and saying the same thing in multiple different ways. So I knew going into the fourth draft that I needed to focus on condensing things.
And for the first ten chapters, I did condense. A lot. Which was good, because I had to get my word count down.
However, I was going a bit too crazy with the delete button. I was shortening things that I wasn’t even sure needed to be shortened, and I started to feel like I was taking out all the fun. Sure, my sentences were tighter, but they didn’t flow very well, and it just wasn’t as enjoyable to read.
So now, I’m listening to my gut and only deleting things that I’m certain need to be deleted. That way, I’m not taking out things that are actually good and should stay in. This has helped me to stop doubting my editing and finally feel like I’m going in the right direction again.
What’s been the hardest part about editing for you so far? Let me know in the comments!
For me it is just getting started. The first draft or I should I say, 90% of a first draft, flowed super easy. The problem now is the shear volume of edits that will need to be done are almost like writing the book again. There is a lot to fix
It is very easy to over-edit, especially if you continue to go over and over the passages until you A) kill it, or B) never progress.
I am moving from one genre to a completely different one. My current project really wasn't meant to be published, so I have no idea how good this really is. The 2 styles are vastly different in style.
Here is my writing process:
!. General idea of the entire piece (in this case it's continuously evolving.
2. Pick a chapter/a story arc, however you organize. Scaffold it. I tend to do thia with dialogue and set directions. Like a script.
3. I will draft 1 about 50 pages. No edits. Just write.
4. Leave it alone for a week. Scaffold your next bit if you're motivated.
5. Go back to draft 1. Get a friend to look at your rough draft 1. Get someone who isn't going to give you happy rainbows about everything. Once you get that fixed.....
6. Read it outloud to yourself. (Finish of Draft 2
Because I'm now doing serial fiction, it's easier. I still dont bother to do a draft 2 until I am about 50 episodes in. Then once I do all that, I do a skim edit right before I post each episode.
Hope this helps?