Editing

"A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: 1. What am I trying to say? 2. What words will express it? 3. What image or idiom will make it clearer? 4. Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?"~
George Orwell (1903 - 1950), "Politics and the English Language", 1946


I write a lot of short stories, so in general the short stories get a lot of attention while editing, because they are easier to get through from start to finish in a shorter block of time.

What about the novellas, or the novels? I am currently editing a manuscript with approximately 70,000 words. I'm breaking the chapters down to scenes, (Advice given to me by Rebecca Buckley, an author and a publisher) to make each chapter a little shorter and hopefully more interesting and leaving enough of a hook to keep the reader continuing on to the finish. Her advise really helped me take the confusion out of how long a chapter should be. (A whole new subject)

It is a no brainer that the first chapter is the most important, you want to hook your reader and make it so they don't want to put the book down. In short we spend a great amount of time on the first chapter.

Think about this though. Do you ever find as a writer that when you start editing you start from the beginning almost each time? Tweaking, rephrasing, fixing, fine-tuning, etc. We do so much editing and rewriting on the first chapter than we do on any other part of the book. Now, think about this. When you read a book, do you ever find that some of them fall flat as you continue reading each continuing chapter? That could be because the author didn't spend as much time perfecting the rest of the book as they did the first few chapters.

Editing is a very tiring job, but it is a necessary evil if you want to keep your readers coming back for more. Each chapter must be given the same attention as the first. If you have someone to help you, that is great. You will get another persons perspective on what you write. It is easier to break up too. Use the people in your writer's groups. Give out chapters to those who are willing to help and of course if you do this you must be willing to reciprocate. You can then be given appropriate objective feedback that can give you valuable information that can help you through your weakness's you may have in your writing. I know I never try to take any feedback personal. As writers we all have room to grow.