I think my favorite part of editing is seeing all the red marks scattered across the page. I know it means more hard work in the future but I like seeing the results of my intense scrutiny. There's something about the chaos and messiness of all those marks that gives me a sense of accomplishment. It makes me feel creative and when I feel creative sometimes I have some great breakthroughs. Fake it til you make it type of a thing.
The farther I get into the manuscript the more I realize that I'm just beginning. My characters need strengthening, the plot needs tweaking, the dialogue needs expanding, and my villain needs major villianizing... This means that there will always be more to do but I hope that at some point I'll get it to a presentable point and ready for reading.
And your feelings on editing? Any tips or techniques on editing you could share?
2 comments:
I like editing, too :-)
My secret tip is to use the AutoCrit Editing Wizard. It's a huge help at finding all those first-draft problems that need cleaning up.
It finds things like overused and repeated words, slow pacing, cliches, etc. I love it :-)
I am realizing that I use some words entirely too much. And I go through phases, too, where I'll use the same word a lot of times in a matter of pages but then not again for the rest of the story. I can't manage to get away from the cliches, though...
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