Monday 4 April 2011

The Editing Process Begins

I'm up to 56% through my novel, The Wedding Favour, so Kindle tells me. I've just finished reading chapter 16 - it's one of my favourite chapters.  It's still one of my favourite chapters, I fear it could even be a 'darling'.  I hope I don't have to kill that darling!

I don't think I will have to.  Might need some general editing, but I think it was pretty impressive, if I do say so myself.  It was nicely revealing for the characters, and also ups the angst between them.

I hope I'm doing this editing lark right.  It feels a bit different to editing my fan fic.  I mean, if I got the editing wrong with the fan fic, it wasn't too serious.  I might get the odd terrible review (luckily that never really happened - only strict, constructive criticism at the beta/draft stage) - but it wasn't the difference between being published and not being published.

Anyway, the process has begun.  I'm going to read through the whole story, so I have an idea of how it flows - like a true book.  Then, I'll start doing the things I know that need fixing - thanks to those that have given me some feedback - then I work on reducing the word count.  It's around 90,000 words believe it or not, so Stephen King (On Writing) says I need to lose about 10% of it.

I have noticed that I've used 'can't quite put his finger on it' a few times.  Those are going to have to go!  They stand out like sore thumbs.

I've also realised I've got Sophie swearing too much.  Not very lady like.  There are a couple of times where it's allowable, but a few times I think I could tone it down.  She's not me - who swears like a trooper!

Right, well, I can't sit around here chatting, I've got a novel to edit.

2 comments:

  1. One of the best things for repeated words is to put your manuscript into http://www.wordle.net/create it tells you which words you have used too often. I usually change the settings to top 50 words and then work through them in word using find. Good luck with the editing. Mx

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  2. Thanks, Morton. I will look into that. Definitely will be useful.

    Teresa

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