I am at That stage of writing my novel: Editing.
You either love editing or hate it.
This is what I want to look like when I’m editing.
It is taking your words and ideas and refining them. It is looking at the forest after you’ve spent months in the weeds. It’s hard. It’s painful. But it can be exciting too—you might find that the scene you slaved over reads smoothly and adds so much to your story. Or you might discover a clever turn of phrase you hardly remember writing.
I love editing the work of other authors, but sometimes editing my own work can be downright depressing.
When I wrote the last words of my manuscript I thought I was done, boy was I wrong! I have been very fortunate. I’ve had books which just flowed out of me and needed very little editing.
The book I’m working on now is exactly the opposite. I’ve spent one and a half times as long writing this book than I normally do, and as I’m reading it through I’m finding so much that simply needs to be rewritten or fixed.
This is closer to what I actually look like.
Yeah, this baby isn’t close to being finished. Here are some of the biggest problems I’m finding:
Timeline. I had to create an actual calendar to make sure my timeline was correct and logical.
Story Arc. A novel doesn’t have just one story are. It has many, and some may be smaller arcs making up a larger one.
I need to trace or graph out each arc and make sure it makes sense and doesn’t have any holes in it. Yeah, you guessed it, I’m finding holes and I need to figure out how to plug them.
Word count. Yes, I look at my word count. I tend to write short and this book is no exception. I wanted to reach at least 70,000 words. I’ve got 63k. That means I need to add another 2-3 scenes that don’t sound superfluous, that are necessary to the story, and move it forward.
These are the problems I’m facing with my manuscript, and they are clearly not little ones. I’d also like you to notice that these are not anything an AI could have found. Please don’t count on one to edit your books. Read through it yourself, looking for these issues and more (does the dialogue read smoothly and naturally, is the pacing appropriate for the scene, are the characters consistent throughout the book, etc). Once you’ve corrected all of the errors you’ve found, give it to a professional editor (a real, live human) and have it edited again because they are certain to find things that you missed.