Post #205 March 2 2020

“Editing Your Own Work…It’s Like Flossing Your Teeth”

Recently I finished the first draft of Forbidden City, the third episode in my new series Quantum Troopers Return.  Now it’s time to review and edit my own work…something akin to flossing your teeth.

The story came in at about 65 pages.  That surprised me a bit, from the outline.  I thought it might be closer to 45-50 pages.  I’m trying to run these episodes at about 40-60 pages, averaging about 50.

First order of business in editing your own work: take off the rose-colored glasses.  You have to learn to read the story like a first time reader and be ruthless with your precious words and delicious turns of phrase.

Ask yourself this:

1. Does the story flow?  Does it move along?  Why or why not?  Maybe you linger too long describing some place or scene.  Cut out useless descriptions and get the story going again.  What happens next?  In all my stories in QTR, I wanted to have a lot of action.
2. Are you interested in knowing more about the main character(s) and finding out what happens to them?  If so, great.  Keep going.  If not, why not?  Maybe the reader needs to know a little more background about these people…a brief flashback.  Why do they act this way?  Was it a drunken father who abandoned the family?  Was it the death of a brother?  A sadistic math teacher?  Lay this on thinly but it might give your character more to hook readers.
3. Do the twists and turns of the plot surprise you?  As the author, real surprise in the story may be hard to achieve.  But take a reader’s point of view, if you can.  Surprises and unexpected plot twists can really grab a reader if done right.
    
   Of course, it stands to reason that you’ll always be correcting misspelling, awkward phrases, etc as you read.  And please do Spellcheck at the end, because you’ll never catch everything.  Sometimes, when doing Spellcheck, I find myself intentionally leaving a misspelled word for a reason and that’s okay.  Just make sure you have a story-telling reason to do that. 
    
   One of the challenges of writing and editing this series is the fact that it is a series.  I’m somewhat constrained by what has gone before.  I’m trying to make sure the story stands on its own as a story, but I don’t want to explain or recapitulate everything done in the previous two episodes (Quantum Troopers Return is a continuation of the original series Quantum Troopers).  It’s a juggling act.
    
   Another challenge to authoring a series is making sure to wrap up all the loose ends of the plot in the final tale.  To do that, you sort of have to keep score.  In my final story in Tales of the Quantum Corps, I had additional challenges in that my main character, Johnny Winger, had actually changed physical form and is not a normal human being like you and me, but rather a swarm of nanoscale robots configured to resemble a human being…or anything else he wants.  It’s been fun and hard work to imagine what life would be like living this way.  Somehow, in this final story, I had to convey what life is like as an angel (my term for a para-human swarm entity), advance the story of what happens with this as a key fact, and close out the story of what happens to him in the end. 
    
   In my review and editing, I’m trying to be as critical as possible as to whether I have achieved these ends.  I’m finding that I may need to add more to the story to bring this character, who has been a continuing character, to life in all of his predicaments.   I want the end to be a satisfying conclusion to all the adventures Johnny Winger has gone through before and perhaps even to show some change or growth in Winger as a result.
    
   The Muse.com has some good tips on editing your own work.  Here are five (from Caroline McMillan):
    

1. Print out your work (this helps simulate a fresh or ‘outsider’ perspective, which should help you edit)
2. Take a break (put some emotional distance between creating words and editing them)
3. Read it out loud (this is a really good idea)
4. Pretend you’re the audience (already covered above)
5. Be ruthless (ditto)
    
   On first read of Forbidden City: Episode 3, I have a little more work to do.  That’s normal.  That’s why we edit. 
    
   With any luck, I’ll be done by the end of February and you can look for this story to be uploaded to Smashwords.com and other fine ebook retailers in April 2020.
    
   The next post to The Word Shed comes on March 9.

      Phil B.