CornerScribe

Novel Editing

I’m still working on editing the novel I’m working on, and it’s going painfully slowly. I’m finding lately all the things I HAVE to do are taking up most of my time, so that I have very little chance to do what I WANT to do. That sucks, to be blunt. I hope that this situation doesn’t last long — it’s putting me in a real funk.
Enough bitchin’. I thought I’d talk a little about the editing I’m doing, and how I’m doing it. The novel is very rough, and I know that a lot will need to be moved around. For one thing, there are timeline problems. Some scenes need to be completely removed. Others need lots more detail or a new direction.

I’d love to be able to do a one pass revision, as Holly Lisle talks about, but I just don’t think I can do a decent job unless I focus on just a few things at once. I know a lot of people recommend her method, and she has some great material on her sight. I think it’s just a matter of focus (or lack thereof) for me.
This is my first pass, and here’s what I’m doing.

1. Using a calendar to figure out what day it is so that I get the timeline down. Things like wordays vs. weekends, mentions of time, etc. tend to cause problems for me in the first draft. Some scenes will need moved to accommodate this.
2. Decide if scenes should stay or go. I tend to be ruthless. If I’m not sure it contributes, it usually goes. If I like it for some other reason, then it gets a heavy rewrite. For me, scenes have to advance the plot or show some conflict that develops the characters. Period.
3. Make notes about major things that need rewritten. These can be mistakes, or maybe the novel took a turn later that I didn’t expect in the early scenes. I don’t stop to rewrite at this point; if I did I’d write the same fifty pages over and over and never get any further. I make rough notes about what needs fixing, adding, etc. and leave it at that for now.

I tend to edit in short bursts. I find that I can’t concentrate at the level I need to for more than a half hour or so at a time. After that, I tend to get a little foggy, and I start missing things. I’m estimating that I can get a first pass finished in about a month, providing I work on it almost every day.

How do you go about editing? Care to share any tips?