Day 97

That old enemy – Editing

There’s going to be an analogy – starting with jagged and unwieldy rocks, and after chipping away at those rough edges, what remains is a smooth, enjoyable object.

Ah, if only it were that easy….

I’m sure most of us would like to think that the first time we write the pages, it’s perfect. Why would I need to go over it again?

I might have thought that a long time ago, but back in those days when I thought I could walk on water, a friend of mine picked up a few pages of one of my manuscripts and offered to read it.

I didn;t like the idea, but he insisted.

Well, three pages and about 11 mistakes, punctuation, grammatical issues, sentence structure, and spelling. How could it miss spelling when I had the spell checker on? And what grammatical errors, I ran the grammar checker over it?

I think I realised by then that no man-made assistant tool was going to be 100% perfect, and I would have to read and edit it myself properly. Which I did, over 535 pages, and took nearly a year, and at times a wealth of frustration.

I found plot holes, one place where a character’s name had completely changed halfway through the story, and inconsistencies in the factual parts of the story.

Fact checkers? Where are you?

It caused me to make a summary of each chapter with the plot points, a chart that followed the characters and where they were participating, a timeline to make sure things didn’t happen out of order, and a family tree to get the characters in their correct places in the family hierarchy.

In other words, I should have planned it from the start!

Well, maybe.

I think in the end it was easier just to write the story than do all the planning from what I had. I found that I might not have been able to produce the story I had if I’d tried to think of everything in the beginning.

Now, I follow that, after spending a little time getting the story off the a good start, developing where it might go, and with those ideas in mind, let it run its course. And the characters do end up in their trees and timelines, as I go, so that going back and fixing problems is not so hard.

Of course, as always, I’m open to new ideas, extensions or improvements on tried and tested methodology, and any ideas you might have, I’m always open.