One Great Editing Tip

While taking some acting lessons from Devon Ford, we spent one day working on one character in the piece at a time.

The scene we were practicing had seven speaking roles (and a few non-speaking) all in the same twelve-minute piece. It makes for a dynamic reading, but crisp differentiation in all the roles when delivering it is essential when the author is portraying all of them.

So Devon had me read one role at a time, while she spoke the lines of the rest to help with proper pacing. This way, I could work on the "voice" of the character without the other ones in my head.

Since the BryonySeries prequel Before the Blood is composed of several novels, each story arc has its own cast of characters. When I'm making my editing passes, I'm going to remember this.

Here's the tip: read through the novel's dialogue one character at a time to ensure that each "voice" stays true to the voice.

Two Quick Proofreading Tips

Want to weed out pesky errors from your edited work? 

Try this:

1) Read your story aloud. You'll catch errors and clumsy writing.

2) Read it backwards, same reasons.

Stay safe, stay warm, and may all your prose be smooth and error-free!

BryonySeries Throwback Thursday: CUT!

Tuesday, April 7, 2015

CUT!

During the self-editing process, after you have eliminated wordiness and tightened prose, reversed passive verbs to active, trimmed adjectives and adverbs, and banished all unnecessary "wases and weres," fixed bad grammar and typos, and filled plot holes, you congratulate yourself, thinking your work is now complete.

Well, not quite.

Set that manuscript aside for at least a week - maybe a month - and read it with fresh perspective. It's now time to cut and combine. What goes?

Any scene, exposition, or dialogue that does not fill at least one (and better if it's multiple) purpose or objective. Treat it like a lazy worker at a company. If it doesn't have a clear, defined job to do, give it one. If the scene still isn't working, send it packing.

Sample jobs: provide pertinent information, strengthen and/or move the plot, reveal character, build tension.

Just as filler words are a no-no, so are filler characters and scenes. 

Can't quite bear to part with some darlings? Try combining certain characters and scenes and see if that helps. If so, great. You win. 

If not, bring forth the editing knife and be ruthless.

Really ruthless.