Thread: Editing-->reader

Has anyone else started editing their story, and then realize during the good part that you fell into reading the scene rather then editing it?


"Ah, man I just read two pages that I didn't edit."

Hey, I like the writer and I connect with him. It's erie how he gets inside my brain...

You have to understand the differ ence between editing and revising.

My revising is going over the story and seeing if anything needs work, and changing it.

When I edit I work on line edits, and correct the prose or dialogue.

I always read the entire thing before I edit. Then I read it again and mark things. Then I actually go back into the computer, and edit what I've marked. Then I print it out, and read it again. If I see multiple things that are wrong, I repeat the process depending where they are.

Then I shudder as I give the "completed" work to someone to read.

Yes I have done this. It sounds to me like you are editing the story rather than the text. Perhaps the good bit is good enough and needs no change? I have often been going through my story and enjoyed reading the good bits. I suppose you must judge if you have not made changes because you like it and it captivated you, or because you are proud of what you wrote and resisted any changes...

It sounds encouraging, and I would allow someone else to read the 'good bits' and get their opinion.

One problem I have is that comma after dialog, rather then the period.
"Hi." he says instead of:
"Hi," he says.
So most of the time I have to go back and watch for that.

So the change needs to be made even in the interesting parts.

I try to make changes as I notice them, so I change wording and punctuation, edit out the MS added color underlines that I hadn't fixed the first time, ignore all the name spelling alerts.
Imagine Adzeline is not in the English dictionary?

Originally Posted by SeverinR

One problem I have is that comma after dialog, rather then the period.
"Hi." he says instead of:
"Hi," he says.
So most of the time I have to go back and watch for that.

So the change needs to be made even in the interesting parts.

I try to make changes as I notice them, so I change wording and punctuation, edit out the MS added color underlines that I hadn't fixed the first time, ignore all the name spelling alerts.
Imagine Adzeline is not in the English dictionary?

If you know that (or any) consistent error in your work, you can simplify the search for them by using a [Find and Replace/Go to next] command. eg, [Find] ." [Replace with] ," - this way, your focus is on the target rather than on the text or the story; you will need to check every instance, but you can check (and correct) hundreds in a relatively short time.

Much harder to find will be the misspellings that a Spell Checker can't pick up (like then when you mean than).

You can also add names or your own words to the internal dictionary at the first instance of each to eliminate those warning flags throughout the rest of the ms.

When reading back over my first draft I can find loads of things that I'm not happy with, even the parts that I thought were pretty good at the time of writing. It's not until about second or third edit that I can read through large sections and think 'this is actually pretty good'.
I rarely leave spelling or grammatical errors, though, since I'm a fairly slow writer and tend to pick them up as I go along.
Maybe there will come a day where I don't need to do so many edits. I look forward to that day.

Originally Posted by Cran

Much harder to find will be the misspellings that a Spell Checker can't pick up (like then when you mean than).

My opinion, fwiw, is that a great many people don't know they mean than.

I have done that before. That is why I enjoy posting my work on Scribophile, the online writing group for serious writers where members critique other's work so that they can post their own work. I currently have three chapters on there and none of them have gotten any bad comments. One of them was even incredibly helpful with revising and editing and pointed out a couple of dumb mistakes where I had paused during my writing. The really cool thing is Scribophile allows critiquers to do inline comments if they want to.

Hi

To edit you should read your text aloud. I cheat and use a text-to speech generator.
Reading while listening helps find all manner of errors.
QDOS