I’ve written about NaNoWriMo several times in the past. If you’ve read those, you know NaNo is not for me, but I still think it’s a good thing
If you don’t know, NaNoWriMo is short for National Novel Writing Month and it takes place in November, and the basic idea is to, well, write a novel in a month.
For some writers, this is just the kick in the pants they need to finally get going. For others, is it like Old Home Week. They get together with old friends and make new ones and talk about, and make, exciting things. Some plan this month out several months in advance, making an outline and planning the novel so they can jump right in and write it. Others, like me, tend to write by the seats of our pants, making things up as we go. There’s really no wrong way to NaNo, as long as you’re having fun.
But the fun does end.
Eventually, you have to edit what you wrote, and I know very few authors who enjoy that. There are some, but we are few and far between.
Wait…
Did I just say “we?”
Yup. I did.
Once upon a time, I got my first “professional” edits back from a professional editor who had gone over my first novel. And I all but cried. I put that novel aside for over a year before I went back and looked at the edits again. I ended up cutting close to 30,000 words from that novel. I almost didn’t publish it. (I was goaded into publishing it by a few people who had read it and really liked it.)
In the years since then, I have read hundreds, maybe thousands, of unpublished works (long and short) from authors trying to figure out what to do and how to do it. The more I read those, the more I started to recognize reoccurring issues in their writings. Issues I had in my writing as well. Little things that add up to eventually throw the story off kilter and send it listing sideways into the dustbin. Little things that once I saw them, I couldn’t unsee them.
This had a side effect: I stopped doing them in my writing. I started recognizing the mistakes as I made them, so they didn’t go into the writing.
Eventually, my writing got better.
Which meant, editing became easier.
Which means I actually like editing my own stuff now. Why? Because when I go back through it to self-edit, the things I change tend to be related to the story and the characters. I add cool new ideas in, instead of deleting or re-writing whole chapters that were plagued with misplaced modifiers, ambiguous pronouns, run-on paragraphs, or worse, just gaping plot-holes and rambling narrative.
Now when I go back and edit, I can add in things that resonate across chapters or the whole novel. I can play with whitespace. I can play with the rhythms of my sentences and paragraphs, and enjoy doing it.
My point is, the more you know, the fewer mistakes you make while putting things together. The fewer mistakes there are at the beginning of a project, the fewer things there are to be fixed at the end. Which makes the whole thing more fun.
In 2018, I wrote an article for for NaNoEdMo, or National Novel Editing Month, which takes place in January, for all the authors who wrote novels in November. I am sorry to say that, while you can still find references to NaNoEdMo, the website is gone, and few people talk about it. Probably because few people like to edit their own stuff. (I’ve reposted that article at the end of this post.)
So, I feel pretty lucky that I enjoy revisiting my stories after I’ve finished them.
Anyway, as you gear up for NaNoWriMo, consider adding one of my tools to your pack. I suggest reading it before you start NaNo, so you can apply the knowledge from the beginning of the project.
You know… I shouldn’t admit this, but someone once asked me what reference tool I used the most, and I told them the one I wrote. Because, all the things I can never remember, I put in it, right where I could easily find them.
I had fun editing this one, too. Honest. The whole point of the 2nd edition was to fix a couple of mistakes and update some of the self-publishing information that had gone out of date, but I ended up adding around 40,000 words. That’s a whole ‘nother book, let me tell you. And that didn’t happen because it wasn’t fun. I enjoyed it.
Here is that reposting I promised:
The Little Things Matter — Sam Knight
(Originally published in 2018, at http://www.nanoedmo.com/little-things-matter-sam-knight/)
There are a few things in life that make everything else a lot easier, if only you know them. But they always seem to be hard lessons to learn. Sometimes people won’t tell you something because they think you already know. Or they don’t care. Or they think it’s amusing that you don’t know. Or it’s not their job. Or they are too embarrassed for you.
Life is full of little things like that. Like knowing that if you close the zipper on your pants by pointing the pull tab on the slider down, it will be much less likely to unzip when you don’t want it to. Some people have no idea that some zippers have a little pin lock that fits into the teeth of the zipper and stops the slider from working its way down. See? Life hack.
One I learned the hard way.
Like knowing that you can put soda in a sippy cup—but not one that uses a straw. Because it squirts out at you. Another lesson learned the hard way.
Writing is the same way. Sometimes there are little things you didn’t know about that can change everything, and that’s why I decided to write this guide.
The above quote is an excerpt from the introduction to my book, Blood from Your Own Pen. I decided to open this article with that not because it is a shameless plug (although I embarrassedly admit that it is…) but because it conveys the idea I wanted to bring to your attention:
The little things matter.
It’s the little things readers notice (or don’t) that add up to create an overall impression of the quality of your writing. Have you ever read a really good story, but you could tell it hadn’t been professionally published because of the all the little mistakes? Have you ever read story you didn’t like, but you “knew” it had been professionally published by the way everything else was perfect?
Some of those things are easy to spot and recognize. Some of them, some writers do automatically, without thinking about them or even being aware of them. But some are the result of trial and error and authors learning what works and what doesn’t.
The next time you write or edit a story, here are some things I would like you to keep in mind. I am not asking you to try to inject them into a story you’ve already written, I am merely asking that you be aware of them. Some of these may seem obvious, once you realize they exist, and some are eternally confusing (at least to me). Either way, merely being aware of them can help you take advantage of using them, or, if they are a mistake, help you to avoid them.
I don’t have enough space here to go over each of these thoroughly, so if any of them are a new concept for you, or if you don’t feel you completely understood something, please take the time to do some research. In the long run, you will be a better editor, and writer, for knowing them.
Consistency-This is probably one of the biggest rules for me. Be consistent. I don’t mind if an author chooses to use “toward” or “towards”, “gray” or “grey”, or a hundred other things people quibble over, but they need to pick one and use it, not switch back and forth in the same story. This applies to grammar mistakes, punctuation mistakes, the preferred spelling of an archaic name, and just about anything else. I can read around a consistent “mistake” I don’t agree with, but I can’t enjoy a story when the writing keeps changing. (Especially when it’s the name of a character or a place!)
Raising Questions in the Narrative- A subtle way of filling plot holes, or at least covering them up, is to mention them in the story. If a character ponders the “why’s” and “how’s” of something, even if they never reach a satisfactory conclusion, readers tend to accept the issue as having been addressed. This technique can save a huge re-write, if properly applied.
Starting Sentences with Pronouns and Proper Nouns- Repeatedly starting sentences with pronouns and proper nouns creates a repetitious pattern that carries over into the rest of the writing and affects the flow and pacing of the story. Scroll through the story and check to see if every (or most) paragraph starts with the main character’s name (or “he”, or “she”). If they do, then there is a good chance that nearly all paragraphs, and the sentences within them, follow the same structure. This will create a story that can be less interesting to read.
Repetitive Word Use- Most of us know that reusing a word in the same sentence, or the next one, can catch a reader’s eye and look strange, but using an uncommon word repeatedly in a story, even chapters apart, can also make it stand out to a reader (which ruins the reading experience), especially if it is a word they don’t know or don’t like. Some words shouldn’t appear in a story more than once or twice at most.
Redundancy- Many of the things we write have implied meanings, but we feel the need to add on a descriptor of some sort anyway. This creates a redundancy that some readers don’t notice and others are thoroughly irritated by. Removing these is a great way to avoid “wordiness”, reduce word count (if you have a limit), adjust the pacing of a scene, and generally “clean up” the prose.
Example:
Bobby chewed his food slowly as he ate.
We already know Bobby is eating, because he is chewing his food.
White Space- White space is very closely related to pacing. Too much or too little of it can have a detrimental effect upon the story. A full page of text, with few or no indentations showing new paragraphs, becomes an intimidating block of words that most people dread trying to read. Too much white space, such as three or four pages of dialog consisting of short statements by different characters, can look strangely messy and can just “feel” wrong.
For an example of the power of white space, look back to the top of this article, where I set the line “The little things matter” on a line all by itself, with white space above and below. Do you feel like that gave it an air of importance?
-ly words- Many adverbs are redundant and don’t add much to the description. Sometimes they detract from the pacing and impact of the other words. Overuse of descriptive adverbs can make a story seem amateurish as the author appears to struggle to get every (unnecessary) nuance of description onto the page. Limiting the use of adverbs will also increase impact of the ones still in the story. I use the global search function to search for “ly” so that I can easily find the adverbs and re-evaluate them on a case-by-case basis.
Vague Time Periods and Measurements- Sentences mean next to nothing when the descriptors in them have no basis for comparison or contrast. While they are fine when used in colloquial dialog, the use of vague descriptions in the narrative can hinder the reader’s understanding. Sometimes the answer is found in the adjacent sentences, which is also fine, but sometimes the author forgets to add in that extra information.
Examples:
They were small. (Compared to what? An ant? Or Godzilla?)
It was long.
There were a lot.
After a while we went home. (After ten minutes, or two hours? The difference can show the dedication of a character.)
Rarely did he cheat on tests. (But he does cheat, so telling us how often helps us better judge the flaw in his character.)
Later, they got married. (This makes time pass unusually fast. Are we skipping hours or years?)
Poor Contrasting- The words “so”, “really”, “only”, “very” and “just” are some of the biggest offenders here. They all imply a contrast but are often used without one, which puts them in a situation where they actually convey no information. As with vague time periods and measurements, these are fine when used in colloquial dialog, but their use in the narrative can hinder the reader’s understanding and come off as amateurish.
Examples:
She was so tall.
The flowers were really yellow.
It was only a few hours.
There were just so many.
He was very big.
Meaningless Descriptors and Weak Words-These are similar to the ideas of vague time periods and measurements and poor contrasting. When writing, we tend to need a lack of ambiguity. When we describe things, either they are or they are not. They happened or they didn’t. The characters think or believe something, or they don’t. If the author is not being clear as to whether something is or is not, readers will have problems comprehending what actually happened in the story.
Words like “seemed”, “about”, and “almost”, can be good indicators this mistake is being made, as are phrases such as “it was like”, “it was as if”, and “it was as though”.
Here are some examples lifted from an early draft of my book, Lucid Nightmares:
He sniffed at the air and the taste of dank rotten garbage that had exuded from the demon seemed to fill his mouth.
Did it fill his mouth or not? It “seemed” to, but did I intend this to be a mystery? Did I want the reader to spend the next few sentences guessing about whether the stench was some sort of separate entity, or if my character couldn’t tell what happened inside his own mouth? If not, then I needed to just say that it did fill his mouth; otherwise I have weakened the description.
His good mood seemed to dissipate with the sunlight as the sun melted over the mountaintops.
Did his good mood dissipate or not? Is he in a bad mood now? Again, is this something I am hiding from the reader? If not, I needed to take the word “seemed” out of the sentence, as it weakened the description.
The reverse of this problem is also true. Readers need a lack of ambiguity, so the writer saying that something is, when it actually isn’t, can be very confusing. Make sure metaphors are not mistaken for actual things/events. If a space traveler sets foot on a planet for the first time, and the author says the ground was ashen, I need to know if I am being told it is gray or if it is really covered in ash. If a wizard opens a magical doorway to a gilded land, I need to know if the land is literally covered in gold or just bathed in golden sunlight.
Final tips on editing:
-Read aloud. Saying the words out loud requires more attention and concentration and you will find mistakes you missed otherwise. Sometimes you will discover a missing word and sometimes you will discover sentences that make no sense at all.
-Read the story “backwards”. Start at the last line and read each sentence, or paragraph, out of the normal context. This will help you pay less attention to the story and more to the sentence structure. This is good for finding things like sentence fragments and misplaced modifiers.
A final recommendation:
One of the first things I did, when I decided to become serious about writing, was make myself a list of things I felt I needed to make sure I hadn’t done. Kind of like the opposite of a to-do list. It was a list of things I knew I always get wrong, or to remind myself of lessons learned hard.
The list had “search and destroy” words, like “realized”, “slowly”, “suddenly”, and “really”. (Pretty much all –ly words, actually.) It had a reminder to run spell check 3 times, because sometimes spellcheck has problems with larger documents, and a reminder to search for extra spaces between sentences and at the end of paragraphs. (Those can really screw up formatting.) Searching for “was”, “were”, and “by” reveals most places I used the passive voice.
I highly recommend you make your own list. We all have our own idiosyncrasies, so you should make a list that works best for you. Don’t be afraid to add new things to the list as you find them. New things on the list mean that you are still learning, still growing, and still improving. And that is a goal all editors should strive for.
A final word of encouragement:
We all make mistakes. We all miss things. It doesn’t mean we should give up. There will always be one more mistake, one more typo, and one more thing. Don’t get overwhelmed by it, and don’t let it eat at you.
When I finally published my book on editing (which you know I edited the crap out of!), I started finding mistakes. A lot of them. In spite of the fact that it had gone through two professional editors (Neither of which were me. I know better than to trust only my eyes on my own work.), a proof reader, and a half-dozen beta readers. Some of the mistakes are just flat out embarrassing. But, there they are. It happens.
And when it happens to you, learn to roll with it. Editors, just like writers, have to develop thick enough skins to withstand the criticisms. We need them so that we can learn and grow and improve.
Now, go get ’em, tigger!
