Editing

[GoldenCojones]

I always hear that editing should shorten stories. For me it is just the opposite. Editing almost always increases the length of my stories as I read through them and realize I had this thought or that thought and forgot to get it in.

In my last story, that I hope to post Wednesday, the editing process grew the story from around 14,000 words to just over 16,000. I don't believe my stories are wordy compared to other similar stories. I do spend my share of time on descriptions, but prose is supposed to be descriptive. Right?

I'm not looking for a critique on my work. What I'd like to know is: How many of you truly shrink stories during editing and how many are like me and grow them? Do you find thoughts you missed getting in during the first draft? Do you cut non-essential pieces out? Which way do you go?

 

[SamScribble]

As a rule, I tend to write short stories. Five of six thousand words is quite a long story for me.

I usually focus on creating a good beginning – one that will engage the reader – and then I block out the story, covering as many of the ‘what happened next’ points as I can. At that stage, a 5,000-word story will normally be about 3,000 words long.

I then go through and enhance the characters and the narrative. This will normally cull a few words, but it will also add – and so the net effect will usually be to increase the total word count to about 4,000 words.

Finally, I will edit for ‘a rewarding read’, smoothing out the bumps, and leading the reader ‘down the garden path’. At the end of this process, a 5,000-word story will probably contain about 5,000 words. Job done.

 

[Hypoxia]

I blame my history editing techie stuff, where it's usually better to say too much than too little. My story edits focus on orthography (lean) and looking for more to say (fat). More literate editors and readers suggest trims but I rarely heed them; I like the voice I have. And I always fell like I've left-out something.

EDIT: In the camera world is a saying: Painter must pile on paint until they have built the image they want. Photographers must eliminate irrelevant elements until only necessities remains. I see novels (and many of my stories) as being in the pile-it-on school, while literate short stories are more trim-the-excess.

 

[sr71plt]

My stories get longer in review too (editing is something someone else does to the story).

 

[RejectReality]

The cuts usually happen for me before I get to the point of a first draft. I realize a scene is throwing off the pace, or painting me into a corner, etc. and scrap it either before or shortly after I finish it. Sometimes, it happens when I'm just below the asterisks for a scene transition, before I even type a word of it.

By the time something hits first draft status, it's rare for me to cut more than words/lines. I'm far more likely to add details to it -- though usually not much. I think the most a final draft has expanded beyond the first draft is around 1k words.

My cutting room floor is knee-deep in cast-off scraps, but it happens well before where most people define the starting point of the review process.

Some of them get saved for later use, or if they're too specific to a story and I like them enough, may get posted as "Scenes from the cutting room floor" on my website.

 

[A_Dark_Poet]

I tend to self-edit my stories in cycles, a bit similar to SamScribble. First comes fixing typos, grammar issues and formatting, which usually has little impact on story length. Second, plot and character editing, which tends to add between ten and thirty percent to the word count, where I make sure to satisfy all the readers' senses, add all the important information and make the story become alive. Third, the big cleanup where I straighten unnecessarily complex sentence structures, pick better fitting words and get rid of repetitions. This usually takes away half of what the step before added. Then, in the last step, I re-read for pacing and language consistency.

From there it's lather, rinse, repeat until I've managed to work through all the steps without making a major change. Step three, the cleanup, used to be a bit of a chore at first, my impatience to get a story "finished" constantly at war with the desire to polish it into a gem. It can be a lot of fun though to toy with words and structure and see how it affects the whole story. As Hypoxia used a camera analogy: it's like shooting pictures of the same motive again and again, toying with aperture and exposure. Blurring the "background" can make the main subject stand out more or appear shallow, and a "darker" setting can add a mysterious flair or swallow contrast just as too much brightness hurts your eye and washes out the color. Somewhere there's a balance that is perfect for a particular story, and finding that makes the difference between telling a story and creating art.

Over the last few years, I've edited a few hundred stories and written a million words of my own (both not on Lit) and found that step three is something a lot of writers shy away from, yet it is where stories, no matter if they are shorts or novels, tend to improve the most. Often it's just switching an adjective here, changing sentence order there, getting rid of a few consecutive partial gerund clauses and other small things that don't really add to the story and, lastly, focusing the use of heavy stylistic elements on the important parts (adjusting the flash, to stay with the camera analogy).

So, yeah, editing should, in my opinion, involve a dedicated step where the story shrinks, even if that doesn't say anything about word count before and after the whole editing process.

 

[TxRad]

Some stories grow in edit and some shrink. It's all according to which the story needs.

 

[sr71plt]

If I did all of that with my erotica, I think it would suck all of the life out of my stories. It would certainly take the fun out of writing and I have no other need to be writing them. I write, review once (adding between 5 and 10 percent to it), send it to an editor (one can't edit him/herself effectively), clean it up when it comes back, review it again (adding another few percent to it) and then do a last check on the quote marks (as I tend to get sloppy with those).

And, no, I don't think a story has to be cut down after it's written. Some of us write differently from that and do just fine.

 

[GoldenCojones]

If I did all of that with my erotica, I think it would suck all of the life out of my stories. It would certainly take the fun out of writing and I have no other need to be writing them. I write, review once (adding between 5 and 10 percent to it), send it to an editor (one can't edit him/herself effectively), clean it up when it comes back, review it again (adding another few percent to it) and then do a last check on the quote marks (as I tend to get sloppy with those).

And, no, I don't think a story has to be cut down after it's written. Some of us write differently from that and do just fine.

I don't agree that "one can't edit him/herself effectively." I personally like using an "Editor" or "Beta Reader" or whatever you call them, but before I give my story to them I do the same thing to my story that I do when I edit the work of the technical writers I manage.

I check for spelling. I check grammar (but breaking grammar is acceptable in certain situations in prose.) I check consistency (Like names staying the same and being spelled the same way.) I check for word repetition / overuse. I really struggle with this one in my writing. I check for accuracy in facts or background. I check for readability, such as varying sentence structure, length, and cadence. I also check plot and character development, which I don't have to do for my technical writers.

I call that editing and I believe an author can do that to his story effectively. If you believe that editing is something else or something more, I'd really like to hear your definition.

 

[sr71plt]

I don't agree that "one can't edit him/herself effectively."

Then you have little experience with editing.

 

[GoldenCojones]

Then you have little experience with editing.

That simply isn't true. I have more than a decade of experience editing other people's work and a lifetime of experience editing my own.

I believe you and I have differing opinions on what actually constitutes editing. As I said before, I'd really like to hear how you define it.

 

[sr71plt]

Wonderful. Send me 2,000 words of something of yours that only you have gone over and we'll see how well you did (yes, I'm a trained/degreed professional book editor). In this instance, it doesn't really matter how editing is defined. It's how mental processes are defined. You will read right through a lot of your own mistakes because your brain sees what you meant to write, not necessarily what your hand typed. Beyond that, if you have mistakes that are habitual, dollars to donuts you're not going to miraculously not be prone to that habitual mistake in review as well.

I use an editor. If I didn't have an editor, I'd use a fresh pair of eyes anyway. I've learned that over 40 plus years of editing professionally.

I already gave a definition of editing here or on another thread. Editing is what someone other than you do in reviewing your copy (beyond that it can break down into a good edit or an incompetent one). You can only review in the same mind-set that you wrote it to begin with. If you are a trained editor, yes, you will make fewer mistakes. But you will still make mistakes that your brain thought you wrote but your hand didn't type (or the auto correct decided to change on its own). That just goes with being human.

Give it a few more years (apparently) and you'll learn too. Or you won't. *shrug*

 

[NotWise]

Then you have little experience with editing.

It may depend on how self-critical you are, and what tools you use.

If you're in love with your own writing then you will never be able to edit yourself. If you're more self-critical then maybe you can edit yourself. As a younger writer I loved my writing and I couldn't edit myself. That has improved with experience.

If you're writing for money then it could cost less to have someone else look at it than it costs to do it yourself.

As tools go, I've been using the LibreOffice Language Tool. It has saved me cycles. I don't know how many stories I've read with editing problems where I've thought that all they had to do was pay attention to their own word processor and the product would be better.

 

[sr71plt]

This is fiction we're writing here. I find it hard to believe that any mechanical program can adequately deal with the nuances of fiction.

I'll just sort of repeat that my experience tells me that anyone who says they can overcome the natural mental process realities involved in this and can fully edit themselves has a fool for an editor. Which is OK with me as long as they keep it to themselves. A writer is always comforted to see Darwinism in action with the competition.

 

[NotWise]

Catching problems in fiction that go beyond mechanics is more of a problem. Certainly no program is going to fix that. On the other hand, a lot of our volunteer editors might not help much with problems that extend beyond mechanics.

The Language Tool by itself doesn't fix problems. It identifies features that may be problems and so helps you catch your own mistakes.

 

[GoldenCojones]

Wonderful. Send me 2,000 words of something of yours that only you have gone over and we'll see how well you did (yes, I'm a trained/degreed professional book editor). In this instance, it doesn't really matter how editing is defined. It's how mental processes are defined. You will read right through a lot of your own mistakes because your brain sees what you meant to write, not necessarily what your hand typed. Beyond that, if you have mistakes that are habitual, dollars to donuts you're not going to miraculously not be prone to that habitual mistake in review as well.

I use an editor. If I didn't have an editor, I'd use a fresh pair of eyes anyway. I've learned that over 40 plus years of editing professionally.

I already gave a definition of editing here or on another thread. Editing is what someone other than you do in reviewing your copy (beyond that it can break down into a good edit or an incompetent one). You can only review in the same mind-set that you wrote it to begin with. If you are a trained editor, yes, you will make fewer mistakes. But you will still make mistakes that your brain thought you wrote but your hand didn't type (or the auto correct decided to change on its own). That just goes with being human.

Give it a few more years (apparently) and you'll learn too. Or you won't. *shrug*

Okay, I'll give you that by your definition "Editing is what someone other than you do in reviewing your copy" (Emphasis mine) you can't edit your own stuff. Fair enough.

As for letting you edit my stuff. No thanks. Editing for others is a process that requires tact, professionalism, and courtesy. Without those things it quickly devolves into personal attacks and bullying. I don't need that. Perhaps in a few more years you will come to understand that. Or not.

As I said earlier. I prefer to use an editor or "beta reader" and it is for the reason you gave above. Self editing is not perfect. I've found that using other editors is not perfect either. You, yourself, admit to "reviewing" your own writing prior to sending it to an editor. IMHO you are self-editing when you review. I would be willing to bet that you go through the same process or at least a similar process to what the editor does when you do that review.

But you didn't say that self-editing wasn't perfect, you said it wasn't effective. I submit that if, during my self-editing, I correct even 10% of my errors then it had an effect and therefore was effective. If you require perfection to be considered effective then I don't think that using an outside editor is effective by your standard.

If you choose to call self-editing, review, so be it. You can call it what you wish.

As far as the mental processes go, you are correct there are tendencies to read what you think is there instead of what is written. There are also tactics you can employ to minimize this: reading backwards, changing the font, printing the text out, etc. One of the reasons I take as long as I do to post stories is that I always let them sit for a while before I go back and edit them. I have also learned over the years what tendencies I have and I have learned how to watch for them. Highlighting words that appear more than once is a tactic I use. When I find them, off the the thesaurus I go to see if I can replace some of them with other, better, words.

Do I catch everything? Nope, I admit I don't. Do I make the story better. Yes I do. I call that effective. I think every writer should do it and I truly believe that most do. I think you do, even though you call it something different, and I imagine that when you "review" your story it becomes a better story in the process.

So thank you for the kind comments and have a great year.

 

[sr71plt]

Editing for others is a process that requires tact, professionalism, and courtesy. Without those things it quickly devolves into personal attacks and bullying.

You realize that this is a personal attack, don't you? I didn't bother to read further.

 

[GoldenCojones]

You realize that this is a personal attack, don't you? I didn't bother to read further.

You make personal attack after personal attack and then you complain about that comment?

Maybe you should change your name to GoldenCojones cause it takes a brass pair to do that

 

[NOIRTRASH]

Read any book or magazine article for a quick appraisal of the editing art. Its sad.

Plenty of edited stories are as flawed at the end as they were at the beginning.

 

[GforGraham]

I think, and i stress THINK, there is no way in hell I could tell anyone what to do. Finding an editor who is compatible with yourself would be ideal. A second pair if eyes and brain could only be of help. I would say that all stories on the site need to be edited. Certainly proof reading would at least go some way toward easier reading. Don't jump on me, I did not exclude myself from this. Again stress I THINK, this is my OPINION only.

Editing is a process of helping the story more readable and the characters more characterish. Unless you ramble on way too much then i can see editing only adding to the story length as more items require better descriptions. If it is rambling too much a loses the reader then editing should reduce the length.

I would never say any solid rules apply. It is entirely up to the story and how it is written, and up to the editor in how he/she edits. Like writers I would guess there are good and incompatible editors.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

There are hard and fast rules, and there are stylistic preferences, and many editors are clueless of the difference.

John O'Hara complained of clueless editors who required remedial training for awareness of the American language.

 

[le_kitty]

I always hear that editing should shorten stories. For me it is just the opposite. Editing almost always increases the length of my stories as I read through them and realize I had this thought or that thought and forgot to get it in.

In my last story, that I hope to post Wednesday, the editing process grew the story from around 14,000 words to just over 16,000. I don't believe my stories are wordy compared to other similar stories. I do spend my share of time on descriptions, but prose is supposed to be descriptive. Right?

I'm not looking for a critique on my work. What I'd like to know is: How many of you truly shrink stories during editing and how many are like me and grow them? Do you find thoughts you missed getting in during the first draft? Do you cut non-essential pieces out? Which way do you go?

I've read articles where people say to write everything first and then go back and edit. I've tried that and I prefer writing and editing as I go, and continuously editing as I re-read. My final edit is only to catch grammar mistakes and missed words, most of them I hope. Generally I end up shrinking my work because I find more succinct ways to express or say something, although I do occasionally add if I feel that the scene is not complete, but that's different to making my prose more succinct.

So yeah, I guess I go both ways depending on what's needed.

 

[NOIRTRASH]

I've read articles where people say to write everything first and then go back and edit. I've tried that and I prefer writing and editing as I go, and continuously editing as I re-read. My final edit is only to catch grammar mistakes and missed words, most of them I hope. Generally I end up shrinking my work because I find more succinct ways to express or say something, although I do occasionally add if I feel that the scene is not complete, but that's different to making my prose more succinct.

So yeah, I guess I go both ways depending on what's needed.

I'm the chief acolyte of statistics: What the best writers do the same, I copy. I steal from the small-fry, too, but get better, quicker, swimming with the big fish.

As you report, I've been told, a hundred times, to do the first draft then edit. It doesn't work for me until I have no more changes to make to 'the first draft.' When the nifty ideas are all down then I can 'edit.'

 

[ishtat]

Anyone who thinks they can self edit should go back to one of their own stories that they have not read for at least six months. Their initial response will be, "How on earth did I miss that?"

 

[GoldenCojones]

I've read articles where people say to write everything first and then go back and edit. I've tried that and I prefer writing and editing as I go, and continuously editing as I re-read. My final edit is only to catch grammar mistakes and missed words, most of them I hope. Generally I end up shrinking my work because I find more succinct ways to express or say something, although I do occasionally add if I feel that the scene is not complete, but that's different to making my prose more succinct.

So yeah, I guess I go both ways depending on what's needed.

One of the few things that I've read that Hemingway says about writing is to re-read your story when you start writing for the day. I do that and I always correct any errors I find as I do that. For me that is part of the editing process, but only a part. I also look for better ways to say what I'm trying to say, so it sounds like your and my process is not too dissimilar.