Tag Archives: Editing

I am sure most writers have stories kicking around that they have either not finished or are not happy with publishing. Something about those stories went a bit wrong – the premise was not exciting enough, the characters didn’t engage the writer, and the story just petered out – or if you struggled to the finish, you thought “hmm – this ain’t right – I’ll do something else”.

I have some stories like that. One short story that I was writing set in my fantasy world of Ladmas, had quite a few words written – over 5,000, so in theory should have been pretty much written, but in reality the first draft was far from complete. So I went back recently to take another look at it to see if I could just get it done, edited and then submitted for publication.

The story in question is called “Helix Intercalculator.” The weird title isn’t relevant to this post, nor is the detail of the story so I won’t explain it here – perhaps one day it will be available for publication!
But I thought it might be helpful for other writers for me to explain how I went about trying to fix the story – in fact I’m only in the early stages of that – so I think this will be part one of two or more posts looking at how that process went.

Here’s what I did

1. I read the story again.

Pretty simple! But how you read a story when editing is quite important. It really depends on what kind of editing you need to do. To start with I wanted to remind myself of what the story was about and try to work out what I needed to do to finish it. To start with I didn’t realise that it was a bit broken as it was.
I started making corrections of word-choice and typos as I read, but I decided that I actually wasn’t engaged in the story – there was something wrong with it. So I left the red pen for making other comments instead rather than replacing words.

2. Thought about the story as a reader

Once I got out of detailed editing mode this was a bit easier. I thought about the story from the point of view of a reader. Did the story make sense – what was missing? Did I engage with the characters? Was it boring or exciting? If so which bits of the story fell into those categories.

3. Making decisions on what’s wrong with the story

This is really all about judgment and I think quite important to getting revision right. Some people will say just write and don’t worry about revision. Others will apply lots of different methods to revising and editing a story – I think as a writer and editor you have to pretty decisive about what you feel does and doesn’t work in your story, and then figure out some simple ways to fix that. Sometimes if the solution is too complicated it might be better just to start again with a new story!

What I decided was wrong with my story

I picked up on a number of issues with my story:

• Slow start – the more exciting scenes were later in the story – perhaps I should start with those.
• Too didactic – the story was trying to make a point – which involved two characters talking over an issue – this in itself was a bit tedious – I decided to show not tell a bit more and make the theme more implicit in the story – although the characters would still have strong points of view on the subject.
• Too much background exposition – again use of show not tell, and also I should cut out irrelevant or long-winded background.
• Foreshadowing would help with background and also removing the need for too much boring discussion – hopefully I could weave this into my story.
• The structure was wrong – again the start was dull and there was too much chatting. I looked back at my notes and I hadn’t really outlined. I quite like writing without a plan as it’s fun, but when I do I tend to have problems finishing stories! Looks like a plan is needed with this one!

So next I am going to go back and look at the structure and try to rewrite the story – I think mostly it will be a radical rewrite, with perhaps some of the description of more exciting scenes left in. Hopefully that will work. I’ll aim to report back in a few weeks time on how I get on.

Writing Tips

Writing 1000 words of Fiction in 30 Minutes – is it Possible?

June 17, 2016 Mark Leave a comment

Bigger, Better, Faster, More! (Photo credit: Wikipedia)

Yes it is! I usually get about 30 minutes a day at the moment only to do writing. Usually that means that I get into the mindset that probably I can only do about 500 words or a bit more if I’m trying – because as we all know a 1000 words takes an hour doesn’t it?

But ideally I’d like to be writing the writer’s goal of 1000 words a day. So what to do about it? Find an extra 30 minutes – possible, but I’d have to sacrifice time spent doing other things, which I don’t want to – I need some time at the moment to do editing and other projects.

So instead the other day I challenged myself to try to do 1000 words in my allotted 30 minute time. And guess what? It happened. I had to change the way I worked a bit, but I don’t think any of it what detrimental to the quality of the writing. Here’s a few tips on how to achieve 1000 words of fiction in 30 minutes:

I found it helpful to know what I was going to write about – I’d already spent time outlining the chapter I was working on. But even if you’re a pantser I think you could still do it.
Instead of pausing to gaze into the distance occasionally before writing the next sentence – commonly known as getting inspiration – just keep thumping the keys – you don’t have time to waste.
Think of it as a deadline – you have to get the story in before the paper goes to press – that kind of thing. It’s amazing how having a set time and a goal motivates you.
Remember that’s its possible. In fact I am sure that its possible to write even more than 1000 words in 30 minutes.
Think about how satisfying it will be to get your 1000 words done so quickly and how that will enable you to do other things – maybe that’s to write 2000 words in an hour or to spend time editing and outlining – things I always find it hard to do if I’ve set myself the goals of 1000 words in a day.

Good luck – and let me know how many words you can write!

Mark Lord’s Writing

Starting the Editing Process for my novel Hell has its Demons

January 11, 2012 Mark 3 Comments

The last few weeks have been spent editing my historical fantasy novel set in the Middle Ages: Hell has its Demons. At present I am half way through reading the first draft. I am not making too many edits at the moment, unless I spot a glaring typo. This is my first time editing a full novel length story, and I wasn’t quite sure how to approach it. But I have found that the most valuable thing to do is to just remind myself of what happens in the novel, what I wrote, and to get an overview of the major things that need fixing. For instance I have realised that there are a number of inconsistencies in the middle of the book – chapters out of order etc. Also there are some characters I introduce early on that die away, so I need to make a decision about whether to keep them in and develop them further in the book, or to get rid of them completely, or at least minimize their importance.

I’m enjoying this phase of the process. It’s nice to read through what I have written again as a holistic exercise rather than just reading bits and pieces here and there to check what I should be writing next. The good thing (or perhaps the dangerous thing) is that I like what I have written so far!

My experiment with writing a novel from different first person perspectives – see the Vulture posts, lead me to realize that it would be a lot of work to do this for Hell has its Demons, and I think not necessary either. My reread so far leads me to believe that the three different third person POVs will work quite well. First person POV writing gives fiction a completely different flavour, especially over an extended piece such as a novel, but I hadn’t appreciated that fully until I started writing the Vulture as an experiment. Who knows maybe I’ll take the experiment further at some point in the future, but I know it definitely has helped inform my writing of Hell has its Demons.