The Beginner’s Guide To Self-editing Part C

The beginner’s guide to self-editing Part C

These are notes I took from a wonderful writing symposium called Life, the Universe, and Everything. We have a lot of talented people in Utah and visitors with a great deal of knowledge. Any Misinformation is the fault of the note taker. With the length of my notes, I will present this in three sections. This is part C.

Setting:
– A place needs to be constructed from the history of the city. Like Provo, what happened to create a city that is now in the story? History builds a sense of place.
– Your magic system needs to make system needs to have clear rules, needs to be consistent.
– Have a city on a different planet what is the atmospheres, gravity how have they evolved differently. What is the structure of buildings with that gravity?

Line editing:
– Should take place at the very end.
– Showing versus tell: Not all telling is bad.
– One cliché is to start the scene when a character prepares for the day.
– Use strong verbs and use specific details.
– Good books are characters that make hard choices and they have to face the consequences from those choices.
When it comes to trimming
– Dialog tags.
– Avoid adverbs (ly words) and hedging.
– If you have a lot of adverbs> look at the sentence to see what is causing their use.
– Hedging example: almost laughed.
– http://www.hemingwayapp.com/
Elementary excess:
– Crush word: there are words you used a lot like smiled. Do Ctr F and search the manuscript for their overuse. (Melva: use of ‘he’ in a paragraph can be an example).
– Omit redundancy he nodded in agreement. Blink her eyes. Shrugged his shoulder. Free gift.
– Consider your words cost 15 cents a word. That can motivate you to trim.
Active voice:
– Was and were examples of passive voice.
– Sticky sentences> is, as, the, that (look up Do a CTR F to find them. (google them)
– https://www.publicationcoach.com/sticky-words/
– https://www.publicationcoach.com/sticky-writing/
– Melva: make word macro to do a search for consistent issues with writing so can copy and paste new text into that word file.
– You can use a 5 cent word can be found rather than a $5 word. Can make it more accessible to the reader.
Tone:
– The tone is how your story feels. It may be conveyed by the environment of the scene. It’s constantly cloudy.
– It’s ok for your story tone to change.
– If you have multiple points of view characters it’s appropriate to have tone different as defined by that character.
Subtext:
– Is what is happening below the surface of the book.
– A character says one thing but feels another.
– Show a person who is traumatized. At the beginning of the story, their once clean house is now a mess and the person avoids decisions.
Voice:
– Pay attention to how people speak.
– Each uses different word choice.
– Worde choice can be influenced by the mood of the character.
– If a character changes from one scene to another then the reader needs to understand why they changed.
Other suggestions
– Maybe swap service for a service to get an editor’s help to avoid high cost.
– Punctuation: You are permitted only three! points per manuscript.
– Very conjunctions and tenses: May errors are consistent in your manuscripts. When you find it on one spot and look for it in other spots.
– For a flashback,> need to have a stimulant to trigger the flashback.
– Visually look at the book and look for blocks of text.
– Formatting: One space after a period and look for scene breaks.
Final pass:
– Read your book out loud. Microsoft word can read it out loud for you. Melva: maybe read a chapter a day and record it.
– If you trip over sentences you reader may trip over too.
– Microsoft Word can read your book to you.
– Read things out of order to look for mistakes, flow clarity.
– Give yourself time to edit a manuscript.
– Sensitivity readers: Send to LGBT friend (if you have an LGBT character in the story) to get feedback. It helps to avoid stereotypes. Have different genders read your book.
– Let your mind rest.
– Time is the best editor. You can gain insight.