“You write to communicate to the hearts and minds of others what’s burning inside you, and we edit to let the fire show through the smoke.”
Arthur Plotnik
Editing is running dishes through a dishwasher.
This is what I think about when I should be ACTUALLY writing and editing. Yes, the creative mind is a tricky place, but think about it.
Dish washer safe doesn’t mean well thought out, or not annoying. We’ve had dishwashers for a while now. In fact, according to the US Patent Office, “Josephine Garis Cochran invented the first useful dishwasher in Shelbyville, Ill., and received patent # 355,139 on December 28, 1886.”
That means we’ve been using dish washing machines for going on 134 years. So, why hasn’t any engineer taken a moment during the glass, dish, or Tupperware design phase to say “how could we make these so water doesn’t pool in all the nooks and crannies?
I know it’s crazy talk, but my dishwasher has a DRY cycle, is it really too much to expect my dishes to actually be dry when I use it?
In your writing and editing process, you are that engineer. In writing, we have a series of editing processes that go beyond just cleaning up our prose.
Think of your reader when you edit like how the dry cycle on your dish washer should actually work. Your prose has to be clean shiny, whatever that means to your reader, with nothing standing in the way of them and your story.
When your reader cracks your book cover you want that rush of steam and a story that warms their touch. You don’t want excess words spilling out all over the reader, pissing them off, and delaying each page turn while they struggle through your figurative dish load to empty standing water before they can even use a plate or turn a page. So how do we do that?
Editing, like writing, is art and science.
First of all, this post is about what we as writers need to do before we engage an Editor. Good editors are specialists, subject matter experts, and honest brokers. Great editors can help draw the best out of us like jewelers sorting, cutting, and polishing stones until even our flaws are part of a beautiful arrangement. But the better the quality of writing we turn over to an editor, the better the product we’ll get back.
Three easy editing techniques for writers
Editing is expertise. The individual parts aren’t hard to master, but you can’t do what you don’t know. The classic reference is Strunk and White’s elements of style. But in terms of engineering your editing process, here are three easy places to start:
Read what you’ve written aloud. Most of us already have a good ear for what sounds right even if we can’t specifically cite a rule or say why. I can’t diagram a sentence without wishing I was mucking out horse stalls, but I do have a pretty good sense of what rings true. Odds are you do too. Use that to your advantage. After you’ve written a passage, read it aloud. You will likely catch things you didn’t on previous passes. This is particularly important with dialogue. So much action, motivation, and context are driven by dialogue, if it doesn’t sound right when narrated by you, it won’t read true.
Read it backward. This was a technique our Flight Commander taught me when I was a young sergeant writing intelligence summaries and Soviet activity reports that had to be quick-turned and sent to headquarters. This is an example of looking at a problem from a different angle and forcing your brain to focus on what’s on the page rather than what’s in your head. Whether it’s a scene, chapter, or short story, read it from the end to the beginning and you’ll be amazed by what you missed. And finally,
Editing is iterative. I wish writing and editing were one and done, but the reality is, all craftsmanship comes alive through talent and layers of detail. This means multiple passes. I like to disconnect the writing and editing parts so I can better focus on each. You’ll figure out what works for you by writing and editing. In our craft, we learn as we go. I write a scene until it feels right, then move on to the next, and the next until I have a chapter. Before I break for the day I reread what I wrote and tweak it until it flows well (try it and test drive the first two tips). The next day I review what I wrote the previous day, edit until it’s actually clear and flows well, then I write that day’s scenes and repeat. Once I have a draft done, the big editing begins, but that’s a topic for another post.
BONUS. But Bill, what about problem editors? (Asking for a friend)
Yes, there are also bad and difficult editors out there, just like there are, shock, bad and difficult writers. Don’t be that writer, you have to be a professional to work with the best professionals in the publishing industry.
Here are three articles about issues and editors I found interesting and useful:
Don Vaughan’s inkwell article, The Writer’s Field Guide to Editors. You can find it in Writer’s Digest, March 2020.
The 7 Deadly Sins of Novelists (According to Editors)
The 7 Deadly Sins of Editors (According to Novelists).
Leave a comment! I’d love to hear your thoughts and any techniques you’d like to share.