To those of you who have just started NaNoWriMo: Yay for you! Kudos for every word! If you have questions as you chug along, please post them here. I probably won\u2019t get to them quickly, but other writers likely will. Break a leg\u2014but no fingers or hands!<\/p>\n\n\n\n
On October 27, 2020, Katie W. wrote, How do you get better at editing? I ask because one of my WIP\u2019s is my late grandmother\u2019s novel (I mentioned this back in June, asking how to blend our styles), and I really, really, really want to do a good job on it. My grandfather is so proud of what she did (some of her shorter stories won awards) and I want to make him proud, too. But while some of the work that needs to be done is fixing consistencies in POV and deleting infodumping and such, it\u2019s around 175,000 words, so it really needs some major shortening. The problem is, when I\u2019ve tried to do things like that on my own work, I mangled it until it only made sense to people who already knew the characters, and I can\u2019t afford to do that here. Any advice?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n A short back-and-forth followed.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Christie V Powell: Using beta readers should help with taking out relevant information, especially if you can find new ones each time who haven\u2019t read the story before.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Have you considered splitting the story into two or three books? You\u2019d be able to keep more of your grandmother\u2019s work and still have a good-sized book. Would the structure allow for that?<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n Katie W.: Beta readers would definitely help, but I\u2019m not sure I could find enough of them willing to take on the whole thing. And I don\u2019t think I can split it. It\u2019s long, but it\u2019s all one story, if that makes sense. There\u2019s a side plot about the MC\u2019s parents that I might be able to take out, but I haven\u2019t actually finished transcribing the story from my grandmother\u2019s notebooks, so it could be absolutely vital to the climax or something like that. I have about three-fifths of the story, but I haven\u2019t been able to go back and transcribe the rest of it. Not like that absolutely has to keep me from working on it. By this point, I\u2019m starting to think it\u2019s just a convenient excuse.<\/em><\/p>\n\n\n\n I\u2019m very aware that Katie W.\u2019s question came in a year ago and she may have completed the revision. If so, how did it go? How much did you cut? What strategies worked for you?<\/p>\n\n\n\n Before starting the editing, we might revisit the short stories the writer (Katie W.\u2019s grandmother) completed. How long are they, for one thing? Do they tend to be almost novellas? How resolved are the endings? What did she seem to delight in writing? And any other questions that suggest themselves. We should write down our questions and the answers we come up with.<\/p>\n\n\n\n We can also think about what she said about her writing. We might ask other people as well as consulting our own memory. What seems to have been most important to her? Character? Plot? Setting? Theme? We write this down too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n When we go into her manuscript, we can keep these matters in mind.<\/p>\n\n\n\n As important as everything else, we have to remember that we have our own esthetic. We can\u2019t become the original writer because that simply isn\u2019t possible. We need to respect the artistic choices we make that arise out of what we like, what we think is interesting, exciting, and pleasing. We aren\u2019t destroying. We\u2019re respectfully shaping and adapting the manuscript. Later, someone else (your granddaughter, Katie W.?) may want to take the work in another direction.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Next, we might start on the manuscript itself, but before we do, this is important<\/em>: Unlike almost everything else on the blog, we\u2019re not editing our own work. The process is different. If we\u2019re editing a living writer, we don\u2019t want to be mean, but we owe it to that person to be honest and follow our truest ideas in the changes we make, even if we suspect they may not be welcomed. If the writer is absent from the process, there may be other people who are emotionally invested, but we still can\u2019t let things stand that don\u2019t serve the story.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Our first step can be to create a few new documents:<\/p>\n\n\n\n More are possible:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Once we have these, we linger over them. We ask questions\u2014and write them down along with possible answers: Do we need every chapter? Can some be combined? Do some plot or character developments repeat unnecessarily? Do we need every character? Can a few be combined? If the plot can\u2019t be summarized in two paragraphs it may be overcomplicated. Can we simplify it to give it more force? Is the timeline stretched out? Can we compress to provide more urgency?<\/p>\n\n\n\n On a more general level: What did we admire? What did we not like? Were there places where our attention wandered? Was there too much telling? Not enough showing? Or were there spots where the showing could be summarized by telling? Does some description go on too long? Dialogue too?<\/p>\n\n\n\n However, even in a manuscript that\u2019s too long, there may be places that we need to expand. If the story demands it, we have to do it. Take a deep breath.<\/p>\n\n\n\n My most helpful teacher when I was starting out, Margaret (Bunny) Gabel (who retired long ago), used to say that a book should be is long as it needs to be. Some are very long\u2014David Copperfield, Moby Dick, The Da Vinci Code<\/em>\u2014to name just three.<\/p>\n\n\n\n Here are three Bible-based prompts:<\/p>\n\n\n\n Have fun, and save what you write!<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":" To those of you who have just started NaNoWriMo: Yay for you! Kudos for every word! If you have questions as you chug along, please post them here. I probably won\u2019t get to them quickly, but other writers likely will. Break a leg\u2014but no fingers or hands! On October 27, 2020, Katie W. wrote, How […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":[],"categories":[97],"tags":[],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1561"}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1561"}],"version-history":[{"count":5,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1561\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1566,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1561\/revisions\/1566"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1561"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1561"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/gailcarsonlevine.com\/blog\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1561"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}