Editing 103: The First Passes

You finished a draft of your novel. Congratulations are in order! Let’s talk about the next steps. Whenever you choose to edit, remember that nobody gets it right the first time—not even the professionals. Just check their thank-you lists; they always include an editor or two!

If you are someone who has already figured out what needs to be changed and created a list the first time through your writing, we aren’t talking to you quite yet. If you think your book has all the elements you want in it, it's time to find out if that's true.

If you’ve seen this site’s discussion on architectural writing, it should come as no surprise that I am also an architectural editor. You can use similar ideas to fill out in reverse what needs doing. Here is how in five easy steps:

1)      Read your book. That’s it. You need to sit down and read the book from front to back. You can have a notebook, a separate tab open to take notes, or however you want to remind yourself of things, but step one is that simple. Just read.

Keep your impressions, but keep them simple.

-          Character ABC does an out-of-character action at moment XYZ.

-          I don’t understand why character ABC did XYZ.

-          ABC wasn’t properly introduced.

-          XYZ seems two-dimensional.

2)      Create a spreadsheet. You are going to need a way to track items in your book, and I recommend something like this:

	Character A	Plot Thread A	Theme A	Character B	Plot Thread B
Chapter 1
Chapter 2
Chapter 3
Subsection A
Chapter 4
Chapter 5

Even if you are not an architectural writer and don’t have these items listed yet, make a list of your characters, plots, themes, and main story arcs. The spreadsheet will let you figure out what is happening to each of these items at a glance.

3)      Read your book again, this time filling out your sheet. Every time a character appears in a chapter, section, or scene, either make a simple tick mark or write a one-sentence blurb about what happens or their role in that part. Do the same for the main plot, each subplot, theme, or secondary character. These can be very basic.

• Character A introduced, meets character B.

• Character B's dislike of spiders made evident.

• Theme of love is strongly proposed through action ABC.

• Plot thread A is started by action B.

4)      Study your sheet for gaps. If you notice that a thread is wrapped up early and never mentioned again by 50%, make sure that’s how you want it to be. If a thread you spent a lot of time on disappears and never gets resolved, note that too!

• Do you have a chapter that does only one thing? Consider bringing another thread into the scene so it serves multiple purposes.

• Do you have a thread that gets dropped for the middle 60% of the book, risking readers forgetting it? Find a place to add a few touchpoints back in.

• Do you have a story-building element that drops for the first time at the 85% mark? It needs to be built up sooner.
  

As you go back through your sheet, with your book fresh in your mind, you will make notes in a different color of all the things that need to be added. In each cell, add a one-sentence answer for what to add. If needed, use yet another color to note what needs to be taken away.

5)      Go into your book and start to add the notes in the locations that you indicated on your spreadsheet. Try to flesh them out lightly. One sentence becomes perhaps 3 or 4. You are essentially reading your book again, finding the right place to drop the new pieces in. While you are at it, highlight or note in a new color, perhaps red, the pieces that need to come out.

You may need to go through and do this process several times. Don’t write the new sections yet. Each pass through, you might add a touch of detail, but this is not the time to start writing again. That comes later. Leave yourself just enough notes to write what needs to happen in each scene—nothing more.

Remember, editing can be a long road, but you have already achieved something very few people do: you wrote a story, and that was hard. Just because editing is a new kind of work doesn’t mean you aren’t up to it. Get writing, and get editing.