Editing and Revising Your Manuscript

It is probably safe to say that every manuscript needs to be edited before it can be a book. It is nearly impossible to write concisely, precisely, and correctly over the expanse of many thousands of words without error. Consider that the book, unlike a painting, cannot be taken in, even superficially, with a moments glance.

It is linear. It may take many hours of reading to traverse the landscape of your story: certainly it took hundreds of hours to write. Not only is it easy to misplace a character or alter physical characteristics. One’s grammar, word choice, details, etc. are often marred in the white heat of getting your story down on paper. If you have finished your book, now you must “knock off what you don’t want.””

There are hundreds of “rules” to follow or break.  One way or another they all boil down to this: do nothing that breaks the fictive dream.  Every work of art – songs, movies, symphonies, books, plays – establishes a bond of trust between you and the work. This is also called the willing suspension of disbelief. The dream and bond had been broken: he could no longer willingly suspend his disbelief.

The author’s job is to never break that dream: to never let the reader stumble, to never let the reader wonder what he just read.

Although the principles listed in this section should be part of your basic writing skills, writing the best book you can is what this article is all about. You’ve finished your book, now you have to edit and revise it:

•     Print out your book and read it from paper. Studies show that most people read with better comprehension from paper than from a monitor.

• Read your book; read it again and again. Each time try to place yourself in your reader’s position, as if for the first time. Ask yourself, “Am I compelled to keep reading? Do I care about the characters? Do I care about the conflict and its resolution? Do I care about the style?” 
• Read the manuscript out loud: not only will you hear mistakes, but if you have trouble reading it in places, take that as a cue and try rewriting the sentences that made you stumble.
• Listen to your manuscript being read. Your ear will catch things that your eye won’t. Word and Acrobat have speech tools that include software that will read your work in your choice of monotones (called “text to speech”). It’s painful but remarkably helpful. James Earl Jones could read the phone book and it would sound exciting. The monotone is bland and flat, so if it’s still interesting, you are ahead of the game 

Use Clear and Correct Language

Your characters may say whatever is appropriate for them; but the author must write well: precision, clarity, spelling, grammar, punctuation.

You Know and See Ten Times More than the Reader

It is easy to gloss over an awkward sentence because you know what you mean. In most fiction you know everything about your story and your characters; your reader knows nothing. It is easy to assume the reader will see what you see, and understand what you understand. So you must consider your reader.

This is also about seeing more than your reader. Don’t ignore the five senses; touch, sight, smell, taste, and sound. Obviously you don’t want to write like a catalog, listing all five at every instance. But you need to give your reader enough that the scene comes alive. Remember smell and taste. Smell for example is especially evocative—have you ever visited a place and said, “I remember that smell, it was how the cabin smelled when I was five and we were on vacation.” The problem is to give enough but not so much that your reader gives up on you: for most people, showing too little is the problem.

Pacing

I don’t know how to state this as a rule, but pacing is the heart of storytelling, playing music, even visual art. You don’t just play the notes, or read out loud in a monotone, you give it life—inflection, dynamics, pauses, accelerations, syncopation.

But how do you do that for the eye with the written word? Vary the length, construction, and form of your sentences. Create suspense by breaking up the action with description, narrative, thoughts, and reminiscences. Find the right language for your narrator and your characters.

Next time you read an exciting thriller, notice that sometimes between the aiming of a gun and shooting it, there might be a page or more of something in between. That something has to be your best writing. Then “bang.” 

Do Nothing to Give the Reader the Chance to Give Up on Your Book

By the time your book is ready, you could have spent ten hours on each page. Don’t give the reader reason to close the book and walk away. Any time a reader stumbles over:

• Poor grammar
• Inconsistencies and continuity problems
• Redundant or unnecessary words
• Unclear dialogue attributions
• Irrelevant material,

you give the reader a reason to stop. If the reader can skip a word and not miss anything, he can skip a phrase, perhaps a sentence, a paragraph, and then whole pages.

The Rule of Unraveling  

Readers can forgive a lot: a few typos, perhaps two male characters named Tom. But there is a subjective limit beyond which the reader will look for and find every mistake, inconsistency, and ambiguity. This person will not buy your second book! The fewer the mistakes, the less likely your book will unravel

Don't Cheat the Reader  

One assumption only: don’t invent something especially at the end of a story to save the hero (deus ex machina).

• Don’t make a point of something that the reader expects to be answered later but you don’t.
• Get rid of first draft errors: If you don’t know you have favorite colors, numbers, names, or words, you will when you start revising your book.

When you are editing and revising, don’t say “no one will catch this”