Top Ten Things I Know About Editing

A month of rewriting!

To help you launch into the rewriting process, here are some next steps that can be taken in whatever order is useful to you.

1. Cut, cut, cut.

When you first start writing, you are reluctant to cut anything. Believe me, I remember. But the truth is, beginning writers very, very, VERY often duplicate scenes, and characters, too. And dialogue, oh man, do inexperienced writers duplicate dialogue! The same things happen over and over again, are said over and over again. It will be less painful for you to cut if you learn to look for and start to recognize when you’re duplicating scenes, actions, characters and dialogue. Those are the obvious places to cut and combine.

Photo by Denise Jans on Unsplash

Some very wise writer (unfortunately I have no idea who) said, “If it occurs to you to cut, do so.” This seems harsh and scary, I know. Often I’ll flag something in a manuscript as “Could cut” and leave it in my draft for several passes until I finally bite the bullet and get rid of it. So, you know, that’s fine. Allow yourself to CONSIDER cutting something, first. No commitment! But once you’ve considered cutting, you almost always will. It's okay if you bitch about it all the way to the trash file, too - I always do.

2. Re-card your story on Index Cards and the Story Structure Grid.

I said last post that what you actually wrote is not what you thought you were writing. So there’s nothing better than putting the story you did write up on Index Cards and the Structure grid again, to see what you’ve actually got.