How are you editing?

 

I have been talking to a lot of authors lately about their editing and sure enough, many are simply missing the mark when it comes to how they are "fixing" their manuscripts. I do believe that this is part of the reason that so many are also getting the rejections from editors and agents. 

We have to remember that there are different levels of editing. Each step of the editing process serves a different role in making your manuscript better. Unfortunately, many authors are spending their time editing the later stages of the editing process instead of the earlier phases. Let me explain by going backwards.

The last step in editing is really the COPY EDITING step. This is where the your manuscript is really examined for all of those small details. Punctuation in the right place, use of proper pronouns, and all of those great grammar issues. You need to understand that by this point, your story has already been looked at by A LOT of people and the story should be in really good shape.

The step before that is LINE EDITING. This is where you would be doing what we call word smithing. I like to call this "making the story pretty." At this point, you are really looking at paragraphs and scenes. For so many authors, this is really the fun part of editing. You spend the time reading the passages out loud and just enjoying the "sound of the words." 

Line editing is also where you might be looking at accuracy of small details. 

Now, the biggest part of editing, and the one where so many people do not spend enough time on is DEVELOPMENTAL EDITING. This is the MASSIVE EDITING time. This is where you should be looking at the entire story. 

You should be focusing on how the entire story works together. If you have done this properly, you may have caught the fact that you have just piled on too many plot lines, or your characters are just doing too many things. If you have done this right, you would have seen that you have characters just being unnatural.

If all you were doing was line editing, you would have just loved those great smaller scenes but not seen how each of those pieces fit together. 

The key is you have to do it all to make your story work!