No, I’m not blogging about a TV show. I’m celebrating finishing my edits for WHERE SHE BELONGS (Five Star Expressions, Dec. 2011). A few things I learned through the editing process:
- My characters smile and laugh and chuckle too much in this manuscript. I could not see this until my editor pointed it out. She axed a bunch of smiles, and I axed more after axing hers.
- I overuse ellipses…and why not? I love ellipses! But my Five Star/Cengage editor isn’t the first editor to point out my overuse of the dot-dot-dot. Penny’s last editor for Red Sage Secrets caught me on it, too. To me, ellipses are a stylistic technique, but I can see how too many ellipses can…slow down the pacing (I had to think about that, thus the ellipses). I don’t think I STET’ed any ellipses that my editor took out (she replaced them with commas or dashes). My problem is, I need the editorial eye to point out which ellipses should stay and which should go. I’m too close to the characters and the story. Because I know I’m too close to the story, I didn’t “accept all changes” (using Track Changes in Word) and then read the manuscript to see what screamed “Clunk!” Instead, I went through each and every change, a learning experience.
- I overuse italics…and why not? I love my italics! I love my italics sooooooo much! I love my freaking italics! I do know I’m not alone in overusing italics. You see, Penny’s last Red Sage Secrets editor caught me on them, too, but assured me that I overuse italics less than other authors. So there. That my Five Star/Cengage editor and my Secrets editor both caught me on my two biggest faux pas…I realized something. They both must be right! So, yes, alack, alas, amiss, I agreed with 95% of my Five Star/Cengage editor’s corrections.
- I overuse “then.” This is the first editor who’s ever pointed that out to me, so maybe it’s a stylistic/house thing. You know, those sentences, “I did this, and then I did that.” Or “I did this, this, then that happened.” My Five Star/Cengage editor prefers another “and” to “then.” Or starting a new sentence. Okie-doke, I’m easy-peasy.
Other than that, I rocked! No revisions, just the edits. I was pretty happy.
After going through my editor’s edits, though, I couldn’t help but notice other things popping out at me that I’d never noticed before with this manuscript. So I went ahead and fixed them.
- I overuse “just.” I’d love to justify my overuse of “just,” but I’m afraid I…I just can’t. I took out all the extraneous justs and just left the ones that just had to be there.
- I gave two extremely minor characters, one who isn’t even seen on the page, similar names—Ellen and Elaine. I did not see this before re-reading the manuscript five times in one week. So Elaine is now Louisa.
Realizing that I’m too close to my manuscripts is a reason I’m hesitant to go the self-Kindle/”indie” route at this point in time. If I ever did go that route, I’d want to hire a copy editor to go over my manuscript first. We think we’ve caught every error, we think our critique partners or beta readers might point out overuse-age, etc., but, frankly, critique partners and beta readers, IMO, should read more for story. A good editor who has never looked at the manuscript before, who hasn’t brainstormed story elements with you, is the person who will catch little ditties like my Five Star/Cengage editor caught for me. Plus, that she liked the story feels great. I’d love to work with her again.
What are your editing bugaboos?
Congrats on having such an easy revision! I know I use the em dash too much. I think it’s my own skittish ADD mind. I often can’t finish a thought or a sentence. So my characters have inherited that.
I have taken a lot of the “justs” out of my book. I try to be conscious of it when I write. I probably overuse “then.” Oh well.
I’m going the indie route, but because I didn’t have an editor, I had 6 writers read my ms. So I hope I did well.
My editor pointed out the “just” thing too…and “so”. I used “so” an incredible number of times in my first book, but you won’t see that because they got cut before publication. Heh.
I love edits, because I am able to catch the stuff in all subsequent manuscripts. No more “so” for me. Yay for improvement!
Edie, you sound like me! I use ellipses in humour a lot. An old cp once told it was like a “wink” to the reader. So they worked for her.
I’ve been over this book countless times and I’ve had several cps over the years go over it, and yet I still benefitted from the editor’s eye. I think, though, if I knew it wasn’t being professionally edited, well, you could just go through a search for popularly known editing bugaboos and fix yourself there. Or, if you gave your 6 readers permission to line edit, then you’re probably okay. I will line edit if a cp wants me to. As our writing has evolved over the years, though, when I read for someone they usually want me to focus on the story and characters. Their editors catch the edits, LOL.
Avery, I know I’m guilty of the so thing in one manuscript I need to revise before sending out again.
I don’t mind the editing process, either. If I don’t have revisions, or I only have minor revisions, I love to focus on editing and get the manu as perfect as possible. Note the “as possible.” You could fiddle forever.
Thanks for sharing your weak spots. It makes the rest of us feel better that we’re not alone in having these problems 🙂
You might find the AutoCrit Editing Wizard helpful. It’s great at finding problems like overused ‘chuckles’ and ‘smiles’. It also checks for overuse of words like ‘just’, ‘that’, etc. It makes a HUGE difference to my manuscript.
I’ve never heard of that, Kay, thanks. I’ll keep it in mind when I’m to the self-editing stage of the book I’m currently revising.
I don’t any writer is ever alone in weak editing spots. Editors always tells me I deliver very clean manuscripts – but they can always still teach me something, too.
Thanks for dropping by!
I just took Angela James’ self-editing workshop and discovered I used “so” a lot, but not in the way she listed it, as a qualifier/enhancer, but as cause-and-effect. I changed a lot of them. I use “just” a lot, too, and I think “then,” but I haven’t looked at them all yet.
But you know what? When you do a “find” and check every instance of a usage, it makes it look horribly egregious, and makes you (me, anyway) feel like a truly lousy writer. But when you have 85,000 words, would a reader REALLY notice 356 instances of “so”?
Which is NOT to say we shouldn’t aim for perfection and fix the things we do too often. But I wonder if we worry about them too much, and if they were left alone, if the readers-who-aren’t-editors would really notice. I know it’s difficult not to go to the opposite extreme, remove them all, and make things worse sometimes! 🙂
Natalie, I agree with you. What I do when I’m checking for the justs and the so’s and so-forth is check the number of pages between uses. If I’m not using just three pages in a row, for example, but ten pages apart, then it stays in.
I’ll also re-read the manu after attempting to reword those pesky over-use words, and if the sentence clunks too much, I put it back the way it was.
I do have a manu page with three “so’s” in WHERE SHE BELONGS. Try as I did, I wound up not cutting a single one. In the book (which is now “in production,” – yeah!) they might wind up on different pages anyway.