Best Line Edit in the World
You’ve probably heard the advice to put your manuscript away after you finish it and don’t touch it again for three months.
Yeah, right. Like that’s going to happen. Most writers I know are doing well not to wake someone else up in the middle of the night and make them read it after they finish a story. We are not a patient people.
Nevertheless, the brutal, unfair, not fun truth is that you need to let a story breathe for a while after you finish it, and then you need to do your own extensive edit before you can call it complete. And since we all know you’re probably not going to let it set in a desk drawer for a few months (especially if you’re working to a deadline), there are a few other ways to “age” a manuscript and give you a better look at it.
First off, do a complete rewrite of the story as soon as you are done with it. This will give it smoother voice and pacing, as well as reinforcing continuity, while it’s all fresh in your mind. Then, you want to get as much distance between yourself and the story as possible. You want to get far enough away from the story that you wanted to tell that you can read the story that you did tell and see if they match.
The best distance is in time. Obviously, the longer you can wait before you go back to the manuscript, the further you will be from the story mentally. Clear your mind out. If you’re working on another project, work on one that is as far away from the one you just finished as possible: different genre, different POV, different style—go as far as you can. Do the same thing with your reading. Read someone else’s book and make sure you pick one that is very different from your own.
When you finally can’t wait anymore, print out a copy of your manuscript. You’re used to seeing it on screen, so now put it on paper. Make it hard to read. Print it out in a font you don’t use and don’t especially like. Make it a strange, different manuscript. Work on it in a different place than you usually work—an unfamiliar document in an unfamiliar place.
Now read it aloud.
This is the part where people usually laugh at me and say something profound like, “As if.”
Listen to me, you have to do this.
“Yeah, well, that might work for a short story, but I wrote a novel.”
So you’re telling me that you can spend a year working on a book but you can’t spend three or four days reading it aloud?
Reading a work aloud is the cheapest, best line edit you can get. You will catch poorly worded sentences, unnatural dialogue, you’ll get a much better insight into how and whether your dialogue tags and physical beats work, distracting alliterations and word repetition—the list goes on, but the key point is that you lose nothing but time (which you would have spent working on the manuscript anyway) and the gains are immense. Record it as you read and you’re halfway to your audiobook as well. Plus, you won’t stumble across these awkward parts later when your book is out and you’re asked to do a reading.
Read it aloud. Absolutely the best editing available.
Yeah, right. Like that’s going to happen. Most writers I know are doing well not to wake someone else up in the middle of the night and make them read it after they finish a story. We are not a patient people.
Nevertheless, the brutal, unfair, not fun truth is that you need to let a story breathe for a while after you finish it, and then you need to do your own extensive edit before you can call it complete. And since we all know you’re probably not going to let it set in a desk drawer for a few months (especially if you’re working to a deadline), there are a few other ways to “age” a manuscript and give you a better look at it.
First off, do a complete rewrite of the story as soon as you are done with it. This will give it smoother voice and pacing, as well as reinforcing continuity, while it’s all fresh in your mind. Then, you want to get as much distance between yourself and the story as possible. You want to get far enough away from the story that you wanted to tell that you can read the story that you did tell and see if they match.
The best distance is in time. Obviously, the longer you can wait before you go back to the manuscript, the further you will be from the story mentally. Clear your mind out. If you’re working on another project, work on one that is as far away from the one you just finished as possible: different genre, different POV, different style—go as far as you can. Do the same thing with your reading. Read someone else’s book and make sure you pick one that is very different from your own.
When you finally can’t wait anymore, print out a copy of your manuscript. You’re used to seeing it on screen, so now put it on paper. Make it hard to read. Print it out in a font you don’t use and don’t especially like. Make it a strange, different manuscript. Work on it in a different place than you usually work—an unfamiliar document in an unfamiliar place.
Now read it aloud.
This is the part where people usually laugh at me and say something profound like, “As if.”
Listen to me, you have to do this.
“Yeah, well, that might work for a short story, but I wrote a novel.”
So you’re telling me that you can spend a year working on a book but you can’t spend three or four days reading it aloud?
Reading a work aloud is the cheapest, best line edit you can get. You will catch poorly worded sentences, unnatural dialogue, you’ll get a much better insight into how and whether your dialogue tags and physical beats work, distracting alliterations and word repetition—the list goes on, but the key point is that you lose nothing but time (which you would have spent working on the manuscript anyway) and the gains are immense. Record it as you read and you’re halfway to your audiobook as well. Plus, you won’t stumble across these awkward parts later when your book is out and you’re asked to do a reading.
Read it aloud. Absolutely the best editing available.
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