Cindy Dees's Blog - Posts Tagged "editing"
LISTEN TO YOUR INSTINCTS...OR NOT
I've been working on a new book the past few weeks, and last week, I abruptly hit a wall where the story didn't feel right. It was as if the train just jumped off the tracks and refused to move forward any more.
I've learned over the years to recognize this as a sure signal that my story has taken a wrong turn. It's time for me to stop, go back to thinking about the plot of the story, the overall arc of the characters, and the relationship between the characters. There's a fatal flaw somewhere in the mix.
It's a waste of my time to keep writing forward until I figure out where I've gone wrong. I have to circle back and fix the problem before my story will flow naturally again.
Yay! I listen to my instincts and they save me every time. Right? Maybe not.
So here's the thing. You have to know enough about story structure and character development and relationship dynamics and a host of other technical aspects of story writing to correctly identify where the story has gone off track in the first place.
Some people have a sense of story rhythm developed from lots of reading, or maybe from a family of storytellers, or maybe from actual instinctive knack for it. But I humbly think this is the exception rather than the rule.
This is my pitch for reading books on how-to-write, for taking classes, workshops, or seminars on writing, and for learning the technical craft of storytelling. It's not fun, and it's not glamorous, but it is important to be able to deconstruct your story either before, during, or after the drafting process to discover its critical weaknesses.
Plotters, of course, will love this advice. They're all about being organized before they put sentences on paper.
Pantsers, however, may hate this advice. Thing is, I'm not telling pantsers to force themselves to write in a technical way. I'm saying pantsers need to have enough knowledge stored in their mental hurricane of creativity for their instincts to warn them when they're drifting off course.
Both types of writers would do well to develop an acute and sensitive feeling for when the story isn't going well. It's something to specifically watch out for as you write.
I think this sense of intuitively feeling problems in the story structure is one of the skills that distinguishes successful writers from those who struggle to get stories right.
How to develop it? Learn the craft! For most people, this "intuition" has nothing to do with actual intuition at the end of the day. It has to do with having enough knowledge to spot a big story problem right as it starts to unfold instead of writing hundreds more draft pages before realizing your story doesn't work.
Writers talk about this skill in words like instinct and intuition, but ultimately, it's a learned ability. It's a synthesis of technical knowledge and your creative "feel" for your story. You need BOTH.
I've learned over the years to recognize this as a sure signal that my story has taken a wrong turn. It's time for me to stop, go back to thinking about the plot of the story, the overall arc of the characters, and the relationship between the characters. There's a fatal flaw somewhere in the mix.
It's a waste of my time to keep writing forward until I figure out where I've gone wrong. I have to circle back and fix the problem before my story will flow naturally again.
Yay! I listen to my instincts and they save me every time. Right? Maybe not.
So here's the thing. You have to know enough about story structure and character development and relationship dynamics and a host of other technical aspects of story writing to correctly identify where the story has gone off track in the first place.
Some people have a sense of story rhythm developed from lots of reading, or maybe from a family of storytellers, or maybe from actual instinctive knack for it. But I humbly think this is the exception rather than the rule.
This is my pitch for reading books on how-to-write, for taking classes, workshops, or seminars on writing, and for learning the technical craft of storytelling. It's not fun, and it's not glamorous, but it is important to be able to deconstruct your story either before, during, or after the drafting process to discover its critical weaknesses.
Plotters, of course, will love this advice. They're all about being organized before they put sentences on paper.
Pantsers, however, may hate this advice. Thing is, I'm not telling pantsers to force themselves to write in a technical way. I'm saying pantsers need to have enough knowledge stored in their mental hurricane of creativity for their instincts to warn them when they're drifting off course.
Both types of writers would do well to develop an acute and sensitive feeling for when the story isn't going well. It's something to specifically watch out for as you write.
I think this sense of intuitively feeling problems in the story structure is one of the skills that distinguishes successful writers from those who struggle to get stories right.
How to develop it? Learn the craft! For most people, this "intuition" has nothing to do with actual intuition at the end of the day. It has to do with having enough knowledge to spot a big story problem right as it starts to unfold instead of writing hundreds more draft pages before realizing your story doesn't work.
Writers talk about this skill in words like instinct and intuition, but ultimately, it's a learned ability. It's a synthesis of technical knowledge and your creative "feel" for your story. You need BOTH.
WHY COPY EDITS MATTER
They ain't sexy, and they ain't glamorous, but spelling and grammar matter.
A few days ago, I was getting ready to put up my first self-published book on Amazon, and a spell checker during the conversion of the file to mobi inserted the mother of all typo's into my story. The original line reads that the hero and heroine are going to eat poolside, and it auto-corrected to "eat poopsite." Took me two days to figure out how to fix that freaking typo! But there was NO WAY I was publishing the book with that glaring of an error in it.
Getting the spelling and grammar right shows a reader that you care about your work. It marks you as a professional. A "real" writer, as it were.
The idea is to convey that, if quality of technique is high on your radar, maybe high quality of story will be, too. Also, you want the reader to lose themselves in the story, not get hung up on the words or punctuation marks on the page.
The best way to ensure that your manuscript is free of typos and grammar errors is to get several different readers to proofread your story. I work with some of the best editors in the business, and even they miss errors from time to time.
And you, the writer? You're going to miss catching more mistakes than you can believe. The problem is you're too familiar with the story and too familiar with what you thought you said/typed. You won't see what's actually on the page.
Every story, and I mean EVERY story, needs an impartial outsider to copy edit it. NOTE: copy editing is a fancy word for proofreading. A copy editor will also point out word repetitions and verify dates, facts, and technical details, but the copy editor's main job is to get the commas right and catch the typos.
If you can't afford to pay a professional copy editor, find a friend--or better, several friends-- who are REALLY good with spelling and grammar, and barter, beg, or bully them into going through your manuscript as carefully as they can.
One reason traditionally published books tend to be very clean is because many people see the manuscript before it's published. There are multiple opportunities for errors to be spotted and corrected. If you're self-publishing, you need to mimic this part of the process as closely as possible. Get lots of eyes on the manuscript before it's finalized.
The fastest way to pull a reader out of the story is to have them stumble over a glaring error in the writing itself. Getting the spelling and grammar right matters. A lot.
A few days ago, I was getting ready to put up my first self-published book on Amazon, and a spell checker during the conversion of the file to mobi inserted the mother of all typo's into my story. The original line reads that the hero and heroine are going to eat poolside, and it auto-corrected to "eat poopsite." Took me two days to figure out how to fix that freaking typo! But there was NO WAY I was publishing the book with that glaring of an error in it.
Getting the spelling and grammar right shows a reader that you care about your work. It marks you as a professional. A "real" writer, as it were.
The idea is to convey that, if quality of technique is high on your radar, maybe high quality of story will be, too. Also, you want the reader to lose themselves in the story, not get hung up on the words or punctuation marks on the page.
The best way to ensure that your manuscript is free of typos and grammar errors is to get several different readers to proofread your story. I work with some of the best editors in the business, and even they miss errors from time to time.
And you, the writer? You're going to miss catching more mistakes than you can believe. The problem is you're too familiar with the story and too familiar with what you thought you said/typed. You won't see what's actually on the page.
Every story, and I mean EVERY story, needs an impartial outsider to copy edit it. NOTE: copy editing is a fancy word for proofreading. A copy editor will also point out word repetitions and verify dates, facts, and technical details, but the copy editor's main job is to get the commas right and catch the typos.
If you can't afford to pay a professional copy editor, find a friend--or better, several friends-- who are REALLY good with spelling and grammar, and barter, beg, or bully them into going through your manuscript as carefully as they can.
One reason traditionally published books tend to be very clean is because many people see the manuscript before it's published. There are multiple opportunities for errors to be spotted and corrected. If you're self-publishing, you need to mimic this part of the process as closely as possible. Get lots of eyes on the manuscript before it's finalized.
The fastest way to pull a reader out of the story is to have them stumble over a glaring error in the writing itself. Getting the spelling and grammar right matters. A lot.
