Autumn Blog

September – October 2024

Editing Part 2

Last month we looked at the WHEN and BIG PICTURE of editing. This month, I’m looking at some of the best ways to read your writing, what you should be looking for and where to go for help.

HOW

It’s all too easy when reading our own writing to read what we think we wrote. So here are some suggestions to get over that:

  1. ALWAYS read your work out loud. It’s so much easier to hear mistakes such as unintentional repetition of certain words and phrases, badly constructed sentences, too many adverbs, no change of pace. By reading it out loud, you will also notice typos and misspellings.

2. If you’d like someone else to read your writing out loud, you’ll need a very understanding writer friend! Or you can use the Read Aloud facility on your computer (you may need to have a word processing package subscription to use this).

I’ve set up a new page Computer Tips where you’ll find how to do this with MS Word. Computer voices have improved a lot over the years, and I’ve just had a very nice woman read this all back to me!

3. If you can, print out your work before reading it out loud and editing it. A change of medium often helps as it will come over as a “new” piece of writing. I use a red pen to mark any mistakes which are then easily identifiable when correcting back on the screen.

4. If you are editing on the screen, then highlight the whole piece of writing and change the font.

Don’t be tempted to try one of the more outlandish fonts that Microsoft Words offers, like Algerian or Broadway. They are fun to experiment with if, say, you are designing a poster. But for any length of writing, they are difficult to read.

I usually change from Times New Roman to Ariel and then back again when I’ve finished editing and I’m going to send it off. Times New Roman is an industry standard, so it actually makes sense to set your word processing package to using that font all the time (the default font).

Have a look on YouTube – I’ve found a couple of videos that explain it. And you’ll find my guide on How to change your default font on the new Computer Tips page.

5. Alternatively, changing the colour of the font can have a similar effect, making you read your writing more carefully.

WHAT TO LOOK FOR

Mostly, you’ll be looking for consistency, such as the spelling of names, place and proper nouns.
Dialogue tagging – have you stuck to he said, she said, rather than use a lot of fancy alternative.
Grammar – reading out loud should help you pick up errors.
Punctuation.
Unintentional repetition of words or phrases.  
Exceptionally long sentences.

WHO CAN HELP

You can, of course, do all this editing yourself. But it’s all too easy to read what you think you’ve written. If you have writing buddies who are willing, then my suggestion would be to ask them to do specific editing eg are they engaged by the characters? Another friend might like to read your writing as a reader – does it grab them and make them want to read to the end? Another friend might be good at spotting typos, grammar and punctuation mistakes.

Another option is to use editing packages – free and paid-for..

You will have to look at each one to see what it offers. Some are free but then offer more features if you pay.

Grammarly
Prowritingaid
Hemingway editor
Autocrit

The one I have used several times is Authors AI. You can have your whole novel analysed for free, and for $45, you get a more detailed report – mine was 30+ pages long! Their web address is authors.ai

You can always pay for a full editing check of your writing – costs vary enormously. You can be charged by the word, the page, by the hour or a flat fee.

The Chartered Institute of Editing and Proofreading charge £25+ per hour for proofreading and £34 per hour for developmental editing.

The Literary Consultancy charge £1000+ for up to 60,000 words.

The Oxford Editors charge £820 for 100,000 words.

Some professional companies also offer Zoom meetings, express delivery, mentorship etc – all at extra costs.

Have confidence

As with all outside editors (whether free, friends or professionals), it is totally up to you what you do with the feedback. My advice? Read what they say but have confidence in your own writing.

Once you are happy with your editing, you might want your mother/auntie/boyfriend to have another read. I can guarantee they won’t spot the edited adjectives and adverbs, the change from passive to active verbs, the shortened (or lengthened) sentences. But they might just say “That reads really well now! I didn’t notice any difference.”

Only YOU will know the work that has gone into making your writing that much better.

Happy writing!

Linda

August/September blog

I’ve written it – now what?

A guide to Editing – part 1

Whether you are a Pantser or a Plotter, whether you write every day or only when the Muse strikes, everyone’s writing will need EDITING.

There may be some writers out there who write perfect prose as soon as they put pen to paper or keyboard to screen. I have not yet come across them and I firmly believe everyone’s writing can benefit from editing. I have been told, on more than a few occasions, “But my mother/auntie/boyfriend has read it and they think it’s fine!”

Yes, lovely feedback! But are they writers? Do they understand about structure, characters and plot; punctuation and grammar; passive verbs, repetition, cliches. You do! And you are the person to do the first edit, before you even think about letting others see your writing.

So I’ve divided the subject of Editing into sections, two of which are addressed in this blog, with the rest to follow next month – yes, there’s a lot to editing!

  1. WHEN

It is ALWAYS a good idea to have a break after you finish your first draft. I can offer suggestions as to how long the break should be, but only you can decide what works for your writing. A short story, for example, could be left for a couple of days, or a week, before you read it again with a critical eye. A novel: much longer. Zadie Smith is said to recommend two years. That may or may not suit your lifestyle or your writing ambitions!

The idea of a break is to give you distance from your work, so that when you return, you can read it like a reader, not the writer. That way you are more likely to identify errors. So, take a break and you’ll see your writing with clearer eyes in order to edit.

    2. THE BIG PICTURE

    This is what’s called Developmental Editing, where you take a look at your whole piece of writing, whether short story, article, novel or play, and just read it through. You should be seeing if the whole thing hangs together, makes sense and is entertaining. Here are some questions you need to ask, mostly for fiction but many apply to other forms of writing too.

    Does the beginning grab you?
    Do you want to read on?
    Is it obvious who your main character – the protagonist – is?
    Does the reader know what your protagonist wants, what their goal is?
    Can your reader empathise with your protagonist?
    Does your story start actively? No long set-up, back story or descriptions.
    Do you have too many characters? Are they all necessary?
    Do your scenes and chapters flow easily? Are one or more out of order?
    Are your verb tenses consistent? You may be writing in the present tense and then include a flashback – make sure your readers know where they are!
    Do you have chunks of description? Are these descriptions seen through the eyes of your protagonist, or have you slipped into narrator mode?
    Are your characters doing something in every scene?
    Is there enough/too much conflict?
    Have you gone off on a tangent that has nothing to do with the main or sub-plots?
    Are you guilty of repetition? This can happen if you have more than one point-of-view character.
    Is your protagonist in charge of the action, particularly the action that resolves everything. Your protagonist must not be a passive character.
    Has your protagonist changed and grown by the end of the story?
    Is your ending satisfactory? It doesn’t have to be the clichéd “happy ending”.
    Are all the conflicts and sub-plots resolved?
    Hanging endings, where the writer leaves the reader to decide what happens, are perfectly acceptable. But they still have to be logical and satisfactory.

    Next month I’ll look at How to read your work when editing; the nitty-gritty of editing; and where to go for help.

    If you have any comments, please do send me feedback (click the button on the bottom left), plus suggestions for future posts.

    And please subscribe to receive regular posts – it’s free!

    Happy writing!

    Linda

    Linda’s back!

    July 2024 Blog

    Welcome to my new look website for the second half of 2024. Not sure where the first half went! I think I was a little too ambitious before and life always gets in the way! My aim is to bring you a blog at least once a month, with additional articles when I can.

    I would really like the new-look website to be more inter-active. So please do send in your comments about my blogs or suggest any topics that you’d like to read about.

    For this month, I thought I’d have a go at explaining AI – Artificial Intelligence.

    AI: what is it and should writers be using it?

    AI – Artificial Intelligence – is the system by which computers are doing things that have been and are being done by humans. AI has been compared to the Industrial Revolution when machines took over traditional roles such as weaving.

    You are probably reading most days about the latest AI applications: smart systems in our homes, enhanced diagnoses in healthcare, face recognition, driverless cars – the list will undoubtedly continue growing. And already, such well-known products as Google, Siri and Alexa are all examples of AI.

    AI works by having access to all the digital information that is out there in the world – an almost inconceivable amount of data. But it means that AI is dependent on what has gone before, whether it is true or not. (A bit like Wikipedia whose entries can be written by anyone and are not necessarily factchecked.)

    Schools and Universities

    There has been a lot of debate over the use of AI in schools and universities. One of the major concerns is that students are using AI to write their essays and dissertations. It follows that we, as creative writers, could well use AI to write our short stories, articles and novels!

    In fact, at one of my writers’ get-togethers, one member did offer a short story which, after feedback, he confessed had been written by AI. It wasn’t bad and I even remember complimenting the “writer” on his use of a tri-colon! Even so, his self-written story was definitely better.

    So, should writers use AI?

    The Pros and Cons:

    Pros

    • An AI application, such as ChatGPT, given a few guidelines, can write a story, a poem or an article in mere seconds.
    • The application can be used to suggest titles, ideas, plot outlines and character profiles.
    • AI can be a very thorough script editor – picking up typos, spelling and grammar mistakes; and producing a detailed analysis of such things as sentence length and frequency of certain words.
    • Because it has access to millions of novels, poems etc, AI can suggest trends and patterns in writing, and audience preferences.
    • Research can be done so much quicker and more comprehensively using AI.

    Cons

    • You cannot rely on the veracity of AI “facts”.
    • You are not using your own research techniques and filtering out what you do and don’t need.
    • Information overload.
    • It is not YOUR writing.

    My verdict

    AI can be used very effectively in checking a piece of writing for errors. But when it comes to creative writing, let’s make sure it is we human beings who are being creative, not the machines.

    If you have any comments, please do send me feedback on the form below, plus suggestions for future posts.

    And please subscribe to receive regular posts – it’s free!

    Happy writing!

    Linda

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