Ask An Author: How do you start editing your story?

Each week, a new author will serve as your Camp Counselor, answering your writing questions. Liz Coley, our second counselor, has been a member of the NaNoWriMo community since 2006. In 2013, her NaNo-novel, Pretty Girl-13 , was published by HarperCollins.

How do you start editing your story? Is there an actual process or is it much simpler than it seems? — sn03flake12 

As a veteran November Wrimo, I went to Camp NaNo last July and came home with 266 Yesterdays, a manuscript that has been on submission with editors for some months now. Here’s how I went from raw to ready:

I’m a slightly naughty Wrimo; I start the revision process as I am laying down my 1,667 words per day. Usually I get my first 300-400 words of the daily quota by going back over yesterday’s sparse prose and adding action to dialogue, description to setting, and verve to verbs. I take out all the boring “he turned”/”she looked up” filler tags and write real stuff. I expand on what’s on the page, letting the subconscious mind of the pantser-I-am ponder where I’m heading next. That means that at the end of the month, I emerge with a foundation draft employing pretty decent use of words. The next question is—how’s ‘The Story’?

I used to rely entirely on my writers’ group (long-distance writing friends) and my trusted first readers for feedback. You might think that polishing prose first and then analyzing story is bassackwards, and I admit, it might be, but it’s my process. I don’t show anything I think is poorly written to first readers. In the case of 266 Yesterdays, I had my agent answer The Story question for me. At the risk of seriously derailing myself, I sent her the rough-polished first ten chapters mid-July. Fortunately, she loved the characters and the way the plot was headed.

As I chugged along, I made post-it notes on issues to fix or revisit—like “Why didn’t he just tell her?” or “Is that friendship busted for good” or “Don’t forget to plant hints about this earlier.” I promised myself I’d finish revising in August.

First, I hit all my sticky-note points and then did two full re-reads to polish:

for consistency,
for clarity,
for the unique voice of the narrator, and
for colorful turns of phrase.

A final read-thru focused on super-proofreading. On August 31, I sent my agent a submission-ready manuscript. That’s the fastest I’ve ever created a novel, but setting a hard deadline for revision laser-focused my efforts.

Check out my NaNo post "Four Questions to Ask About Each Draft" for more details, and thanks for listening.

Next week’s Camp Counselor is Heather Mackey, author of the upcoming middle-grade fantasy Dreamwood. Ask her your questions here!