The Rule of Three

A while back, I wrote about editing your drafts so you can submit your most polished work. But sometimes it's hard to look at your rough draft and make changes. How do you go about making it better?

Making this face doesn't help.

Image courtesy of MorgueFile.

I commit all my sins during my first draft, which includes TV and film references, telling more than showing, and ambiguity. After that, I have to let it sit for a few weeks while I work on other things, and then go back to make my edits. That's if I'm working alone. Sometimes, though, I have friends interested in taking a look and making suggestions and edits. That's when I'm really happy.

But I always like more than one person to look at my work, and have discovered that the magic number is three.

If you have three people interested in reading your work and can trust their feedback, you're in a lot of luck.

The Rule of Three for editing has become really important to me and it's helped me improve my writing. Oh, sure, I still commit all my egregious sins in my rough draft (because why not, it's just a rough draft and my main goal for a rough is to just get the story out of my head an onto the computer), but my final draft is a winner.

When you employ the Rule of Three, try it this way and see if it works for you:

• Send your rough to your three friends/beta readers/editors. Ask them for their honest feedback.
• Wait for their advice.
• If you find something that all three agree on for feedback, change it without question.
• If only one pipes up about something that should be changed, but you really like it, you might be able to keep it. But if two of them are piping up, you may want to seriously consider revising.
• If they disagree on certain changes, go with the one you prefer.
• Don't be sensitive. Take their critique seriously, but not personally.

I've found that taking their advice makes for a better story altogether. 

For example, I had written a passage about a character that was completely irrelevant to the story, but I really liked it and wanted the reader to have the background on his family. All three of my readers told me to take it out, and I refused because I was attached to it. Finally, it went to a publisher who picked it up (the anthology that features the short story is coming out in October), and the editor strongly suggested it be removed. I agreed to the changes.

To be honest, it's really a much better story with improved pacing since I removed it. Now I'm not so stubborn or attached.

Consider using the Rule of Three for your next manuscript. Remember, it's all about making your story better.

Writing Your Weakness

A few months ago, I wrote about endings.

Endings are my weakness. Well, they used to be my weakness, till I started focusing on them. Now they're often much better and stronger than my beginnings. With practice, I've managed to evolve a stronger ending with decent pacing, and that doesn't fall flat (most of the time. No one's perfect.).

The point of this post isn't actually about endings, though. It's about knowing your weaknesses as a writer. Where do you fall short? I know my rough points. I am a teller instead of a shower (which is okay, but can be a weakness at times), and tend towards ambiguity.

In order to defeat these tendencies, I practice, and I ask other people for their opinions.

I like to imagine that this is my reader, right now.

Sometimes, when I write, I try to catch my problems ahead of time, but when it comes to a first draft, it's going to need help anyway--so just writing it is far more important. You can do this, too. It's relatively easy, and even easier if you have a thick skin to critique from another person.

• Step one: Write your first draft. Don't worry about style. Just get it all out on your laptop, computer, tablet, notebook, loose leaf paper, etc. Just write it all out until you can't write any more.
• Step two: If you do have a beta reader or editor, send it off to them and wait for their response. If you don't, find someone. Preferably someone in the industry or someone who just loves to read.
• Step three: Take their critique seriously, but don't take it to heart. That's the key ingredient to feedback. Understand that YOU do not suck. Your work does not suck (maybe it does but ignore that because who cares--suck is a matter of opinion, anyway). Your work needs work. Everyone's does! Even Faulkner's first drafts needed work. So put your ego aside and take it all in as things that will make you better.
• Step four: Identify your weaknesses. This will help you with your next edit, draft, and even your next first draft.
• Step five: Keep practicing, and repeat as needed.

Seriously, that's all there is to it. Your biggest obstacle in this is you. You are the only one who can put aside your feelings and choose to learn. 

To this day, I enjoy it when someone edits my work. All they do is help me identify where I need to grow, and how I can turn the ideas in my head into something that other people will enjoy.

Don your thick skin and send that first draft to someone who can give you unflinching and honest feedback. Use it to enhance your writing and raise your awareness of your weaknesses so you can turn them into strengths.

I'm a writer and kind of foolish. If you enjoy absurdities and the occasional heartfelt post, follow me on Twitter. I'm also on Facebook.

Editing Your First Draft: A Tale of Terror

I once told you to go edit yourself after a break of about six weeks. So, let’s say those six weeks have passed, and you’re ready to start editing your manuscript.

So, there it is — 60, 70, 100, 200,000 words — all sitting there just staring at you, waiting for those first cuts or elaborations and clarifications. Where do you start?

Most read their own manuscripts through about five times, but I like to go through mine six. It’s not actually to be more thorough or a topper or anything. You’ll see why in a moment.

Step One: Read for enjoyment.

Here’s what I like to do when I start editing anything. I read it for its content. Just a read through as if I were picking up the book for enjoyment. This step is where you set aside all your judgments and just enjoy what you’ve written. Now, if you’re overly critical of yourself, you might find things during your reading that you don’t like, or catch a mistake in continuity, spelling, or grammar. If you can’t let it go, make a quick note of it and set it aside. Then, just keep reading. Read it through to the bitter end, or the happy end, or whatever ending you’ve written.

This is a healthy way to just get through and enjoy your work and what you’ve accomplished, and it will set you up to start gearing into editor’s mode in the next five steps.

Step Two: Read for supplementation.

This is where you need to add in what you forgot to in the first place. Did you describe a scene but find it lacking? Add details — sound, smell, sights — and the explanation of how characters got to be where they were wherever you feel it’s important. Yes, many people will tell you it’s not necessary to add anything to your first draft, but I’ve found that to be simply untrue. But don’t worry, you’ll cut it down later.

Step Three: Read for expurgation and condensation.

It’s later now...your third read should be finding all those ugly spots where there’s just too much exposition. If you lose between 20-25% of your manuscript, that’s fine. It’s expected. I’ve deleted entire chapters without hurting the story. Cut back on anything that’s getting preachy. You don’t want to mess too much with your story’s point.

You may also want to cut back things that got to be too much (too overtly sexual, violent, or factual). Use your best judgment. Did you really mean to have the family dog eat your antagonist’s manky bits? You might want to take it out, or not. Depends on what kind of mood your going for (and especially important in that case if you want your antagonist to have children). Of course, this will also depend on your genre. Erotica, slasher, shlock, and other genres may allow more graphic detail.

Tighten up your writing. Make your sentences pop, kill the verbosity when necessary, and get your point across.

Step Four: Read for content.

Hand-in-hand with expurgation and condensation, you need to do another read through for your content. Did one of your characters get stabbed on page 37 and is absolutely fine without reason on page 38? Did Sally J. mysteriously move from apartment #4 to #8? Oops! Now’s the time to fix it.

Make sure your timeline makes sense, and you don’t have characters meeting before they’re introduced (unless you’re going for a wibbly-wobbly timey wimey thing and totally doing that on purpose), and that your point of view isn’t bouncing around from one character to the other constantly (unless you’re going for that, but make sure it’s handled with skill to avoid confusing your readers).

Here is the ideal time to do your fact-checking. If you’re using anything in your story that is based in fact (for example, recently I needed to know some stuff about guns and helicopters), do your research. Google, watch YouTube videos, and ASK people you know to be experts. Get the information down and make sure your story makes SOME sense. No, you don’t have to be 100% accurate and can take license with certain things to fit your plot and drive it forward, but if you don’t even make the effort to be accurate, it will show, and your work will get called out for it.

Conversely, you can also write too much on the facts and lose the story — so go ahead and cut that back if you haven’t already in step three. Remember, it’s all about the story. Whether you’re character driven or plot driven, your main focus needs to be your story, not how many hours of research you’ve done or how many experts you’ve interviewed. Ultimately, it comes down to the story you’re telling.

That having been said, some people just don’t care and do it anyway — they just write whatever comes into their head, and damn the research. Unfortunately, it can ruin the fun for your audience. In this case, I would put a disclaimer in your author’s notes, preemptively asking for forgiveness. It can help massage the audience into a bit of forgiveness. However, I’m all for maintaining a balance between your facts and your fiction.

Step Five: Read for sentence structure and minutiae.

This read is where you do your real spelling and grammar check. Take out your fine-tooth comb and start scouring your pages for the correct usage of ‘too, to, and two’ and all that. Make sure that everything is consistent, too. Your dialog doesn't have to be grammatically correct at all, but it needs to be consistent. You don’t want your Harvard Professor Emeritus sounding like a rural Kansas farmer, right? The same goes for your punctuation. If you’re using the Oxford comma, make sure you’re using it consistently throughout your text.

Check to see if you’re using a single word too often, and take those out. “Quickly, Maynard went to the door and quickly opened it. The girl stood still, soaking wet in the rain. He quickly took her inside and wrapped her up in a towel.” Guess which word needs to go? (Hint: it’s NOT Maynard.)

Do a quick review to make sure you didn’t rename a town by accident, and make sure you spell your place names consistently.

Double check your sentences. Seriously. Make sure you’ve gotten rid of clunky sentences or fixed them in such a way that they’re nice and smooth. Get rid of trite crap.

You’ll also want to ensure that your paragraph transitions are slick and easy. Do this now.

Step Six: Read it to an audience.

When all of this is done, go ahead and find a victim...a willing one, please — and read your manuscript aloud. If you don’t have anyone, record it and play it back to yourself as if you were listening to an audio book. This will help you with your previous five steps. You can catch repetitive and/or awkward sentences here, and that’s a huge help for clarity.

Additionally, you’ll also be able to hear dialog better, and see if you can keep track of who’s speaking.

Finally, it’ll help your pacing, and you can go back and fix spots that drag or slow down anything that’s too rushed.

That’s it!

Congratulations, you’ve gone through your first revision. Now, it’s up to you to do further editing, or allow a second set of eyes to edit your work. This can be in the form of an editor or beta reader. It can give you a different, more detached perspective on your work that can help get your manuscript ready for publishing, and an agent or editor will appreciate it.

Okay...what are you still doing here? Get editing already!

Follow me on Twitter (@Spellvira) where you can read absurdities on an infrequent basis. You can also learn more and read excerpts of my work on my tumblr page.

More About Grammar

During last week's blog post about grammar, I got some great feedback on Twitter from my friend, @flickguy. It was a quote (sent in a couple of tweets to me) from a NaNoWriMo experience he'd had in 2005:

If your spelling and grammar turns readers off right from the start, your thoughts and ideas are worthless because you've failed to communicate them to anyone.

The quote was attributed to Holly Jahangiri, a professional writer and author, and she's absolutely right. Have you ever picked up a book (typically self-published) and, just a few pages in, got rid of it because the language in it wasn't reaching you? Much of the time, it isn't because the writer is using circumlocutory language, but because they never bothered to edit their prose and correct their spelling and grammar mistakes.

Now, there are some really great self-published works out there, actually. Well-written, with excellent spelling and grammar, free of egregious mistakes. I'm not knocking self-publishing. I'm knocking writers who don't get their work copy edited before publishing because they don't want to pay for it and couldn't get their work published traditionally (likely because their query letter was so filled with said egregious errors, but that's for another blog post).

Basically, what I'm saying is this:

GET YOUR WORK EDITED, ESPECIALLY IF YOU'RE NOT GREAT AT SPELLING AND GRAMMAR.

But you can save that for the editing process.

Now, last week, I also said that dialog is a different matter altogether. Because it is. Essentially, don't forget to listen to how people say the things they say. Ever read V.C. Andrews? This sort of Gothic thriller fiction was great for me, especially when I was a teenager, but one of the things I couldn't stand was her dialog. Of course, it was purposefully crafted that way, but it was so stiff...so punctilious, it would get on my nerves.

Unless you're going for that kind of prose and dialog, I would suggest you listen to the way people speak to one another, and work from there. If you have to, read it out loud and hear how it sounds. If it comes across as too stiff, change it up a bit and relax. Unless your speaker is an erudite university professor, you probably want it to come off a tad more unrefined.

Don't let your hard work get pushed to the side by bad spelling, grammar, or overconscientious dialog. Get it edited, check it yourself, and be proud of the manuscript you've built.

Does Grammar Matter?

Okay, so you're writing a novel, book, literary piece, short story, etc. Typically that means you have something to say. Maybe you're not the best speller or grammarian in the world, but you have the right to tell your stories, just like anyone else.

So is the story more important than the spelling and grammar?

Yes, and no.

When you're writing your story, you're weaving a tale that, most likely, you will want read by more than just one or two people. Yes, yes, of course you're writing your story for you, but be honest with yourself: wouldn't you also like for other people to enjoy the story as much as you have?

If so, you're going to need to get a copy edit.

You want to present a polished manuscript to your publisher. It doesn't have to be perfect (no manuscript is), but you do want it to be as good as it can get so that the publisher doesn't take one look at it and say, "this is a mess, forget it."

There is an exception when it comes to spelling and grammar, though, and that's in your dialog. When characters (and people) speak to one another, they don't always follow the rules of grammar (they split infinitives, just as I did here, and they even do more than that) and the spelling may reflect their accents. They say, "I could care less," instead of the correct "I couldn't care less," and they say, "ain't," "carryin'" and "Australopithecus afarensis."

Just wanted to see if you were still paying attention.

So, with the exception of dialog, you want your narrative to be spelled correctly and use relatively proper grammar. Don't make it a mess. Turn on that spell check, and have a couple of people go through and edit your copy once you're finished.

Remember, even editors, when they go through your manuscript and make changes, are capable of spelling and grammar errors. No one is exempt. Always check your work.

Sometimes, it's the difference between having your work read and having it trashed.

Go Edit Yourself

Okay, for the purposes of this post, we're going to pretend that you've finished your manuscript. So, now what? Do you submit it right away for publishing, let someone else take a look at it, or what?

Some of you already have an answer for this. You may have a beta reader or copy editor at the ready. Or, you might know a professional editor for a publishing company who is all too happy to have a look at your work for free and make changes (if so, don't bother reading further, but I have a feeling not all of you have an awesome editor on hand like that). But if you're stuck on what to do or the editing process is getting to you, try my method.

I have an idea that this is a common method among successful authors, and it seems to work for me, too (a semi-successful author...I'm getting there, damn it). You may find this works for you.

Put your manuscript away.

Don't look at it for six weeks to eight weeks. That's right. DO NOT GO NEAR IT. Treat it as if it's carrying a plague. Don't touch, think, or even glance in its direction. Go play. Enjoy your hobbies. Write something else. Work on your other projects. Set a chewing gum record. Anything you can do other than looking at the 50,000+ words you've just written.

You need a cooling off period. Why?

Because this manuscript is your baby. You've written thousands of words getting your story to just exist. To make sure your characters have their say. To wind up a plot that will, hopefully, make the reader feel something -- whether that's fear, laughter, tears, etc. doesn't matter -- you worked hard to create a piece that's as engaging as it is -fill in the blank-. Therefore, you need time away from it.

Even if you don't have a message to tell the world, you have a story to tell, and there are parts of it that might be intensely important to you that just aren't pertinent to the tale you're weaving. That's why you need to give yourself some space.

It will help you be objective for that first cut.

For me, that first revision is the toughest. I used to try to go after it right away, and would almost always find that I didn't want to cut or add anything. I would insist that it was 'just fine' the way it was.

Luckily my partner was able to knock the rose-colored glasses right off my face (metaphorically. She doesn't hit and I don't wear rose-colored glasses anyway.). She suggested the 'cooling off' period to me after something she remembered that a very successful author said (I can't recall who it was now, but am fairly sure it was Stephen King).

Giving a manuscript time to cool off so you aren't as in love with it is important to editing. After I took her suggestion, I found I was far less enamored with certain parts of my work than I was with others, and I found places that needed more details. I was able to cut more out and make better decisions. I had a clearer head.

That doesn't mean it's easy to know what parts to keep and what to lose, but it's certainly easier than just barreling through it all willy-nilly.

Two things to do once your writing is done:

1. Leave it alone for two months...six weeks, minimum.
2. Go edit yourself...after that period of time. Get it ready for another person to read.

After that, grab your copy editor or beta reader and let them have a turn at it. You might find you're much more satisfied with the results.

Dreading The Editing Process? Don't. It'll Make You a Better Writer

I am a sensitive person.

Many writers are sensitive people. Whether they cover up their sensitivity with humor, a tough, tacit exterior, gruffness, mystique, intrigue, or paper towels -- inside, you'll find a sensitive heart. Of course, that just applies to most writers, not all of them. Sweeping generalizations can get a person in trouble (sometimes).

But one of the things that I'm not sensitive about is my editing process, whether it's on my own or with an editor. (I actually love being edited.)

Why?

Because it makes me a better writer.

There are several objections that people have to being edited -- having their words changed on them or critiqued. NOTE that I use the word 'critiqued' and not 'criticized.' There is a world of difference between those two. Critique comes from the sincere desire to help someone improve their work. Criticism comes from the desire to belittle another person's work. So, for the purpose of this post, let's focus on critique and the editing process.

The two main objections I have seen from people over editing are:

• It won't be 'my' work anymore. If some editor comes in and changes whole paragraphs, adding and deleting sentences, then it's not 'mine' any longer.
• My work must not be very good if it needs this much revision. I'm just an untalented hack!

Well, let's tackle that first one. 

• It won't be 'my' work anymore. If some editor comes in and changes whole paragraphs, adding and deleting sentences, then it's not 'mine' any longer.

BULL CRAP. When I was doing my creative writing course in undergrad at the University of Vermont, my professor, Margaret Edwards, addressed this directly, and I'll paraphrase her here:

It is absolutely still your own work. Had you not penned those words to paper, they wouldn't exist for me to edit and revise. All I am doing is massaging the text to make it smooth and to make it stand out. These words are yours, not mine.

Let me put it this way. You give me a vase to examine. I put a flower in it and hand it back to you. It's still your vase, kiddo. Now it's just got a nice, bright flower in it to make people notice it even more than before.

The work is yours. It wouldn't exist if you hadn't written it in the first place. All editing is, essentially, is window dressing to make people stop in and ooh and ah at what a talented writer you are.

Okay? Okay. Next!

• My work must not be very good if it needs this much revision. I'm just an untalented hack!

HA HA HA! Okay, seriously, stop feeling sorry for yourself RIGHT NOW. This is what we call a 'cognitive distortion.' Emotional reasoning, all-or-nothing thinking, and labeling, specifically. Stop it.

The fact of the matter is, even the very best writers on earth who have lived and are alive now have needed serious revisions to their work. Sometimes they have to cut out entire chapters, and sometimes they have to add descriptions. They have to change phrasing, rewrite entire blocks of prose, and take a machete to their work. But they're still fantastic writers. They're top-notch. They'll even revise three or four times before submitting it for editing, and then the editors will do a number on the manuscript.

So stop thinking you don't have talent. If an editor is looking at your work and caring enough about it to make major changes, then you, my friend, are a good writer. You've got the craft and the art of writing. Shut up and revise that manuscript, and be glad that you've got what it takes to get the attention of an editor who sees tons of manuscripts every week.

Editing, essentially, is simply a process you need to make your work stand out and get the attention it deserves. Instead of looking at it negatively, look at it as an opportunity to grow as a writer. It's good for you, and, of course, the best flowers do grow after a combination of water and crap (yes, fertilizer. I sort of made a poop joke there. Enjoy.).

Now, get writing!

This post is dedicated to the incredible editor extraordinaire at Random House, Mister Benjamin Dreyer. You can follow his funny, sarcastic, witty, and insightful tweets @BCDreyer. While you're there, follow me, too, @Spellvira -- I am almost hilarious at times.