Editing tips



I am hardly ever lost for words but a blank screen is another thing. Face it as you would a friend. Just chat for a while. Scribble. And soon thoughts will flow. 

Having finished the first draft of my second novel, a psychological thriller, No Missed Call I was for a while stuck in a literary limbo. What next? Should I send it to a professional for feedback or plunge right in with editing? The standard advice is to put the manuscript away for a few months and then attempt editing thereby giving your brain a chance to gain objective distance. But as I needed to polish the opening pages for a course application I decided to jump right into the editing phase. So far so good. While the story is fresh in my mind, I find myself catching errors, inconsistencies, gaps in the plot and sentences that are clunky and need rewriting.

My pet hate used to be editing, enjoying the first fling with the characters and abandoning them in their barely clad personalities. But now, I am actually enjoying this stage. I treat it like a love affair. The second phase is when you confront your own weaknesses and that of your partner’s. It doesn’t mean you fall out of love. You give your relationship a greater depth. 

Get to know your characters. What motivates them? What drives them to do what they do? Think like the other person. They can’t all be like you so you have to be in their heads. What would he or she do next? Check the dialogue. Would they really speak like that or is it you speaking? For example, I had put no kidding as a character’s thought. But he is a middle-aged Asian professor working in Britain. It sounded too American and young so I changed it to arched eyebrows to communicate disbelief. Sometimes no words can be a good thing.



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