Fine-Toothcomb Editing

The devil is in the details, they say. I disagree. I think heaven is in the details. There’s no such thing as an almost-right computer code, nor a nearly-there manuscript. Details matter. Details are what separate the amateurs from the professionals.

Several years ago, I attended a lecture by an Irish writer. Asked how he approaches editing his work, he said, “I print my pages and then I go through them, line by line, with a ruler under each line I’m working on. Not till I’m sure it’s perfect do I move on.”

As you can imagine, this is a time consuming and eye-exhausting process. I’m not saying it’s the only way, only offering it as an example of how nitpicky writers have to be in this last stage of editing.

If you opt to edit your work on your computer, it helps to change the font for your manuscript. I’ve no idea why this helps, but somehow it does. Also, whether you print your MS or not, having a different coloured background can also help. No, I don’t know why.

Whatever process you use, some mistakes are notoriously difficult to spot. Check out this tweet that was posted by the Blue Earth Society:

Tell @NOAA to end shark-kill tournaments like the The Alabama Deep Sea Fishing Rodeo (19-21 July), which STARTS TODAY by signing this petition.

Did you spot it? If not, don’t worry, I’ve posted the answer at the bottom of the page.

You can do quite a lot of editing on the computer. MS Word will handle grammar checks, spelling checks, punctuation reviews, and even tell you what percentage of your story is in the passive voice. However, Word is not infallible. It has an annoying habit of calling out some perfectly correct words as misspelled. ‘All right’, is not spelled ‘alright’, for instance. It also doesn’t know a homophone from a telephone. These are things you, the author, need to check with those weary, red-rimmed eyes. In fairness, the editing option in Word was designed by computer technicians, not writers, so proceed with caution.

You can adjust the editing function in Word so it will match your requirements more accurately. It won’t solve all the issues, but it will help with some. Oh, and if you have a newer version of Word, you can set the usage to match a specific manual of style, such as APA or the Chicago Manual of Style. However, the options, as far as I can tell, are US specific, even if your language choice is British English. (You’ll find the language option on the bottom left of the page in Word.)

Aside from the techy option, here are some other methods you can use to help the editing process:

Listen to the story being read. Hearing the story can help you catch clunky sentences, overuse of any specific words, gaps in the story, and mistakenly repeated words.

Since the speed of the out-loud reading is generally much slower than your natural reading speed, it can also prevent you from moving too quickly over potential errors. The downside of this method, however, is that this will not help you catch spelling or grammar errors, misused word, or homophones.

Get a Beta reader. Firstly, not all Beta readers are created equal. Your mum may love you (I hope!) and your writing, but that doesn’t mean she has a good eye for catching bad dialogue or misapplied words. You may do better with a fellow writer, perhaps someone from your writing group, but even then you must tread with caution. Not all aspiring writers are fully cognizant of the rules of grammar and spelling. Worse, some may be so jealous that you have completed an actual novel, they may try to sabotage you with overly-picky critiques. Not deliberately, of course. But, yeah.

If you are as lucky as I am, you will find a friend whose reading tastes match your own, and who really wants you to succeed — thanks, Jane! — they will give your work as much care and consideration as if it were their own. This Ideal Reader is intelligent, literate, and very familiar with the type of writing that you do. They will be honest always, blunt when necessary, and supportive in more ways than you can imagine.

Engage a professional. There are any number of companies and individuals out there that offer to edit your manuscript and ‘prepare it for publication’. For a fee. The good thing is these companies have no horse in the race, so you can expect an unbiased report.

Make sure you know what they are offering. Some companies will read for story only. They will critique the plot and the characters, but not look at the punctuation or word choices.

If you are a struggling newby writer, you may find the prices for these services too rich for your taste. As they say, you pays your money and you takes your chances.

Teach yourself how to edit. The downside here is that you develop blinkers when it comes to something you have been working on for a year or so. On the other hand, no one will ever care as much about your novel as you will.

There are online classes that will will teach you the finer points of editing. Writers’ Digest offers one, I believe. Such classes can help you become a better writer and a better editor. And having a certificate in editing can allow you to offer your services to other writers, if you wish.

Summing Up

The items you need to check as you review your manuscript are:

Constancy. Don’t change the hero’s name half way through. Nor change the heroine’s eye colour. If a character is afraid of cats in chapter one, he should remain so in chapter ten, unless you have explained the change in him.

Logic. Even in science fiction, you have to establish the rules by which a spaceship or planet operates. In this world, Newton’s laws apply. Furthermore, different countries have different laws and customs. Make sure your story follows these norms. If someone falls off a cliff, you can’t expect them to bounce. Don’t show the sun rising in the west. Whatever the rules are in the story, you have to follow them, or give us a very good reason why not.

Rhythm. Even though you may not be aware of it, there is a rhythm even in prose writing. Writers, at least the ones I know, do this instinctively. Think of a short sentence containing one-syllable words. If you’ve seen Peter Jackson’s Lord of the Rings trilogy, you might notice that Theoden does this a lot. “Is that it?” “Let them come,” and so forth. While this works with his character — and he does use longer words and phrases when necessary — it would be boring if the whole book were written like this. Ideally, a sentence should contain a variety of long and short words. By the same token, paragraphs that are always the same length can be equally annoying, especially if said paragraphs are very long. Here’s a test: shrink your Word page down to about 30% and see how the pages look. Ideally, the print should look jagged on the page. You definitely don’t want big walls of text. At this stage I should admit that it took me ages to get through Henry James novels for this reason. Those forbidding long, long, long pages of text made my eyes water.

Incidentally, did you notice my repetition of ‘long’ there?

And how long the ‘rhythm’ paragraph was? Followed by the short?

That’s rhythm.

Repetitions. For the sake of the rhythm of a sentence, you may very occasionally, repeat a word. One of the best examples in the title of a Raymond Carver story, ‘Will you please be quiet please.’ That second ‘please’ adds a note of desperation. But if you do this, do it very seldom and with excellent reason.

Chapters. Rhythm applies here too. Chapters don’t have to be all the same length. A short chapter that is mostly exposition might follow one of intense action. Think about Tolkien leaving the Hobbits as captives of the Orcs, only to switch in the next chapter to Aragorn, Legolas, and Gimli. If you are reading or listening to your story and it sounds flat, take a look at the rhythm.

Point of View. Try to be consistent with your point of view. Even if you opt to tell the story from several perspectives, don’t tell us what everyone thinks. If the story is about four sisters living in a tenement house in 1920’s Dublin, do we really need to know what the postman thinks about them? I’m not saying he’s irrelevant, that depends on his role in the story, just think about what each character should contribute.

If a point of view character is used, it shouldn’t be just once. Someone is either a POV character or they are not. Make a decision and stick to it.

Don’t switch POV in the middle of the sentence. Not even in the middle of a paragraph. It makes things confusing for the reader. Your job is to make the story clear to them, even if that clarity only comes fully at the end of the story, such as in a mystery.

Grammar. Learn it. Apply it. You can break the rules — I do it all the time with sentence fragments, such as my ‘that’s rhythm’ comment above. But break them knowingly and with good reason.

Spelling. If you’re writing British English then use British terminology. Pants don’t mean the same thing in US English. Neither do bonnet, purse, or gas. Be consistent.

Homophones. There’s no quick way around these. Learn them and don’t confuse them. Bear and Bare, Two, Too, and To, Complement and Compliment… The list isn’t endless, but it’s long enough. Keep a print out by your desk and refer to it often. Eventually the usage will become second nature.

Also… Know the difference between effect and affect. Flotsam and Jetsam. Fewer and Less, etc.

Did you spot the error in the tweet? Tell @NOAA to end shark-kill tournaments like the The Alabama Deep Sea Fishing Rodeo (19-21 July), which STARTS TODAY by signing this petition.

See, it happens to the best of us.

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