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How do you learn to edit your novels?

1/25/2020

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You don't.  I didn't, anyway, yet I am a ferocious editor of my own work and a brilliant proofreader.  This latter quality has been discovered in my Real World job and everything that is written is brought to me;  I invariably find a hundred obvious mistakes that everyone else has missed.  It all boils down to experience.
When I first started writing (I was twelve), it was by hand.  Nothing got edited!  When my typing speed overtook my handwriting, I didn't do much more than correct mistakes with a bit of Tippex.  My first PC  (it was an Amstrad....ahem) meant I could do a weeny bit more editing, but even then, I didn't do much.  I wasn't a proper writer yet and considered that everything I wrote was perfect first time.
HAH!
I turned into a Real Writer when I began the Fleet Quintet.  Working more professionally, using what is now an ancient version of Word, I was far more willing to rip things apart;  to rewrite and rewrite until it worked;  to throw out what didn't work and begin again.  Nowadays, the REAL writing for me begins when I do the Big Edit.  My writing seems - generally - to follow a particular pattern.
  • The story is created in my head, then in notes.
  • The first draft is an attempt to get the story down and is usually an excruciating process of self-doubt, anxiety, wordlessness, and zero inspiration.
  • This "first draft" will consist of several edits, usually rewriting of earlier bits because something later on doesn't work.  So there's still a lot of plotting going on as well as character changes, even name changes.  Sometimes there are changes from third to first person.  Sometimes I restart the whole damn thing from the beginning.  But this is ALL still part of the "first draft."  I'm still getting it down on paper, as it were (or on a computer screen).
  • The Big Edit comes when the first draft is finished.  I might have a rest period before I start this.  It usually entails reading the whole story in one go (or several if it's a novel) and making notes but NOT changing anything.  That comes later.  Depending on how well the first draft went, the Big Edit could vary in length.  I've been known to abandon a story altogether and then come back to it and finish it with a flourish.  It happens.
  • The Red Edit is when I print out the story and read it VERY closely indeed, armed with a red pen.  This is probably closer to proofreading, though by the time I get to the Red Edit, I've already done a thorough spell and grammar check and would  have proofread it before printing it.
With my current WIP (the Prizewinner), I'm doing a combined Big and Red edit.  Hence Big Red Edit!  When I picked up the novel again a few weeks ago, half of it had already had its "red edit" but with loads of notes.  What I really wanted was to have the notes in red on the page, not on a separate bit of paper.  Instead of redoing that first half (it's a LONG novel), I'm now Red Editing chapter by chapter:
  • Read the chapter through thoroughly, correctly everything on the page with red pen that you would normally do on a computer.
  • Then make these corrections on the computer.  This gives you a SECOND chance to see your corrections which means you really have to think about what you are doing.
So far, this is going quite quickly.  Sometimes a red pen edit doesn't work when you see it on the screen.  Sometimes I see something on the screen that I missed.  
In the end, I'll end up with a novel that has been thoroughly overhauled, which is what I'm aiming for.

Picture
Everything you see on these pages has actually been cut! It's the biggest, scariest cut I've ever made - a three-page scene totally dumped!
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