WRITER'S WORKSHOP - Editing: An Example

Edit your work, people will tell you. Get a beta-reader. Editing can be as little as reading over what you've just typed to catch spelling and grammar errors. But for most professional authors (among whose ranks I do not, regretfully, count myself), getting the story down is merely the beginning of the writing process.

As an example in practice, every chapter of my Zelda story ELOZE goes through four stages of revision before being published online. Four. Count 'em. I don't believe this is excessive.

1: The Plan

Aims:

To get an idea of what the story should be about
To establish themes, atmosphere and stylistic choices
To produce a list of scenes
To relate the content to content coming before and after (if part of a longer work)

In my case, every ELOZE chapter starts life in one of the many spiral-bound notebooks I go through in a year, sandwiched between work notes, cake recipes, shopping lists and drawings of little blue hedgehogs.

My first step is usually to brainstorm with my lovely editor, or to seek ideas in music. I get a lot of eureka moments in the shower for some reason... Then, things start to get noted down. Sometimes snatches of dialogue or possible opening sentences.

This is the entire written plan for Chapter 55 of ELOZE. I don't always write everything down, if I know it really well.

2: The Draft

Aims:

To get stuff written, in any shape or form

Unfortunately this is where a lot of people stop.

Draft stage is a matter of just getting the story out, however possible. Sometimes I start with dialogue only and do it in script format. Sometimes I'll note down the events in the present tense, without any attempt at description: "Dark enters the stables, sees his horse hasn't been groomed..."

You can see from the filthy page and scribbly writing how quick and dirty this stage is. I'll write something, then scribble it out and write something else, stuff things in above or below lines with little arrows to show where they should go.

As with the plan, scenes might be left unfinished in note form in the first draft if I'm pretty clear what's going to happen. There'll almost always be something though.

3: The First Edit

Aims:

To transfer written text to screen
To fix things up as needed
To look for errors
To start cleaning up the text

I take my messy notebook and type everything out longhand, into HTML, in a text editor. This serves the double purpose of getting it formatted, the first step towards publishing it, and fixing up the raw material of the draft. A lot of changes happen at this stage: words and phrasing altered to read better, poor expressions, repetitions and redundancies filtered out.

Sometimes entire drafted scenes don't make it in, or large chunks of dialogue are cut, or redone. The draft stage and the first edit stage blur into one another for me.

4: The Final Edit

Aims:

To take a second look at the text and how it flows
To discuss the chapter as a whole and in context and to alter/fix up anything awkward
Beta-reader to catch errors that I missed
To give the prose a final polish before uploading to web

Finally I go back online and persuade whoever I can to take a look at the text and see if they spot any problem areas. I am constantly reading the text over and fiddling with it here and there, looking for better/more attractive modes of expression.

This is the point at which I can become incredibly anal and spend hours angsting over the options of two or three possible alternatives for a single word (see WW#03 for an example).

When the document passes my examination, the scrutiny of the editor and the opinions of any beta-readers I can catch, it's considered done.