On Editing

Alison is on vacation where its warm, and the sun is shining. She'll be back next week.

One thing I neglected to ask yesterday in my post was how other writers deal with editing and revision. My advice comes from Stephen King. In his book ON WRITING, he lists an editing formula:

2nd Draft = 1st Draft - 10%.

He also suggests omitting needless words, quotes Elmore Leonard about "leaving out the parts readers skip over" and letting your manuscript rest for six weeks after the first draft.

Is this viable advice? Anyone want to share their editing process or expertise?

Comments

[Stacey Cochran]

I've gotten in the habit of starting with a disclaimer on answering topics/questions like this. I'm unpublished. Everything I say regarding my process should be read in that light.

For what it's worth, I've written eight novels and two short story collections. Though, I'm not actually published, you can't write full time like that for about decade without developing a process.

Typically, the first draft of a novel takes about 4-6 months. I then put the manuscript aside for three months. Then, I'll make a major edit on my own, before handing the manuscript over to a writing group of four readers.

The writing group reads the manuscript for about a month, then we get together for dinner one night, and we talk very intensely about the manuscript for about 2-4 hours.

I then carry their (marked) copies of the manuscript home and work with those on my own for about another month, revising and cutting.

Then, I put the manuscript aside for another 1-3 months before making another read-through edit on my own.

At this point, I begin drafting a query letter for literary agents. For the last few novels, I've queried between 75-200 agents per novel, a process that takes about 4-6 months. During that time, I tinker with the manuscript and really polish it to a high-gloss shine.

For one of my manuscripts recently (last year), I landed an agent. The agent then came onboard and we worked nearly every day for about two months, and I edited per her critiques and we went back and forth and hashed out an even better manuscript.

Then, she began sending it out.

As yet, no editor has chosen to publish my work, so what has happened is that the manuscript gets shopped around by the agent for about six months.

After she exhausted of it, we talked and agreed that I could begin querying editors on my own, a process that takes about another six months.

After that period is over, I've decided to publish on my own (rather than just leave the manuscript completely unpublished; get the work out there, sell a couple dozen copies). Self-publishing a manuscript starts the editing process all over again, and I've found it takes me about 9-12 months to format, edit, and book a manuscript, commission cover art, design a cover, etc.

This is a pretty solid process, and I've decided to stick with it for every novel I complete from here forward. My hope is that eventually I'll break through.

As always, critiques and suggestions would be appreciated (particularly from those of you who have broken through). I've learned that a positive attitude, persistence and politeness, and a willingness to listen and learn really helps.

Stacey

[Karen]

I don't have time to let the manuscript breathe. I'm planning on giving it to my writers' group at our meeting on the 27th (yup, less than two weeks away) and by then I will have gone through it one more time since finishing up the first draft. I'm working on two to three chapters a night to fill those holes I mentioned and tweak it a bit. Then I'll sit for a couple of weeks, waiting for my group to read it and then give me their critiques. Then I'll start all over from chapter one again.

In the meantime, I'm also starting to hash over an idea for the next book.

[J. Carson Black]

Wow, Stacey, that's some process! You are a very hard worker, and one of these days that will be rewarded. Kudos!

Editing. That's the best part, for me--the second and third drafts. The first draft can be torture or fun, depending on where I'm at in the book, and usually just a slog. Put one foot in front of the other and hope for the best.

I divide the year roughly into three parts. Ideally, I'd like three months lead time to come up with the premise and characters and let it percolate. Like Karen, I find that part of that time is usually done while I'm in the finishing stages of the book before it. Just some noodling in my journal.

Then I allow four or five months to write the first draft. Sometimes it takes longer, sometimes less. I let it sit for a week and then I'm back at it, reworking the book. I do a Big Picture Draft, where I make sure everything is in the right order, and here's where I take out scenes, add scenes, move the whole damn thing around, come up with a subplot or dump a subplot or change a subplot or even change the killer. My Big Picture Draft for the first book took a month. The second, DARK SIDE OF THE MOON, took almost two months - that baby had to be reworked a lot - and the third book took two days. I think it just depends on the book---one novel will be harder than another. The last one, THE DEVIL'S HOUR, was basically easy, but that makes me worried about the next one.

Then I do the final draft, starting from chapter one. I pay attention to the writing, I bring out some things and soften others, I deepen character and often here is where I sharpen the theme, which I've suddenly just discovered somewhere in the last two drafts.

Meantime, I start thinking about the premise and gather bits and pieces for the next book.

[Rob Gregory Browne]

My revisions were more like 2%. And that was fine by me. I revise so much as I go along -- go back and read from the beginning and make revisions every morning -- that by the time it hits the desks of the powers that be, it's essentially about as done as I can make it.

A few minor changes don't bother me. In A MEASURE OF DARKNESS I went back through and changed the tone of the relationship between two major characters, but it was an easy fix that made complete sense. One it took my editor to see. And thank god for that.

But other than that and a few minor cuts and corrections, it pretty much remained the same as the day I typed THE END.

We'll see how it all plays out with book 2. I may be kicking myself by then.

[toni mcgee causey]

I love editing; I think it's my favorite part of the process because it feels like I'm taking raw clay and making it into something fun and useful and finished. (I hesitated to say "beautiful" because I write humorous action/capers.)

My process starts after I have two or three trusted readers' feedback. If there's a consensus about something being off, etc., I know where the major problems are. Since I come from screenwriting which had a fairly strict attitude about page count, I'm used to going through and cutting, which is what I'm doing right now for book 1. I go through the book and ask myself questions and mark the spots:

Does the pacing flag anywhere?

Is there consistency in a characters' actions / reactions? If not, is there a good reason why not?

Have I reached deeply enough into each character so that they're unique and not just an amalgamation of traits?

Do the stakes continually escalate? Is anything solved too easily?

Does everything flow logically? If I leave a question open somewhere, or a set up open, have I paid them off by the end? Is the pay off satisfactory?

Then I start looking at the smaller things... are my verbs the best choice? Am I giving the exact right visual detail? If I'm using a metaphor, does it feel original and/or organic to that character's POV? Is each character's dialog unique enough so that if you saw it on the page without signifiers, would you know who was speaking?

Well, I could probably go on for pages, but essentially, I look for the big consistency issues first (including logic) and then the details. Since I write humor, I'm also looking at each piece of dialog or humorous action and trying to take it to the unexpected level, the thing that will be both in character and hopefully make the reader laugh. That's probably the most difficult part of the process, because knowing that humor can be subjective means I have to reach hard for those moments to be creative and yet, widely appealing.

[Allison Brennan]

Editing . . . I used to write really fast first drafts, then edit ruthlessly. I agree with Stephen King--anything can be cut 10%. And I did. Then I would add like 20%. Sigh.

Each book I write seems to have had a different self-editing process. Right now I'm doing the write, revise, write, revise thing. James Rollins, a fantastic thriller writer, spoke to my local RWA chapter last year and shared his process. He wrote his 8-10 or so pages every day. Then that night he would edit them on hard copy. The next morning he would make the changes and that would bring him back into the story so he could keep up the thread.

I write at night, so I started editing during the day (I have five kids; writing during the day is a problem.) I clean up what I wrote the night before, and then think about the story. By the time I sit down to write, I'm already into the story, and because I know I'll be editing in the morning I'm not as concerned about word choices and sentence structure--it's all about getting the story down.

We'll see if this works. The process will probably change on the next book.

[Lori Armstrong]

Thanks, Stacey, Jake, Rob, Karen, Toni, and Allison for sharing your editing expertise. You've given me some new ideas :) Every little bit of advice helps, doesn't it?

[liz_golightly]

Very interesting to see all the comments from other writers. I've found the cutting process, noodling with this and that to be discouraging at times, so it's good to see that others go through the same thing!