WIP Wednesday: The Best Little Editing Book (Ever?)

I'm going through In the Memory House and purging unnecessary language. Not the f-bombs, oh no. Although I've been criticized before, if my characters need to vent, they need to vent.

I'm using suggestions from the late Ken Rand's book, The 10% Solution, to cull unnecessary words from the book.

The ctrl+F (find) feature is a writer's best friend. I've already made an adverb pass (searching for "ly").  I'm currently limiting "of"'s appearances. (I almost wrote "appearances of of"--see how it works?)

What editing tricks do you use to prepare your manuscripts?

Editing Ninja: Passive Voice is for Losers

I’m tired of people mucking up passive voice, so here it is, once and for all:

A passive sentence is one in which the subject receives the action instead of doing it.

Example: The boy was bitten by the dog.

Snooze fest, right? And easy to correct:

The dog bit the boy.

If you are writing a slightly different kind of story: The boy bit the dog.

Easy, right? Passive voice adds extraneous words and weakens a narrative. Do a quick search of your manuscript for the use of “by” (for PCs: CTRL+F to open the search dialogue box and then search for by with one space before it). Try to change your passive sentences to the active voice.

Passive voice makes sense in limited situations. Writing a mystery?

The man was murdered. -- technically a passive sentence, but notice the lack of "by". In a mystery, we wouldn't know who murdered the man.

Some folks tend to say any sentence with a linking verb (forms of be: is, was, were, etc.) is a passive sentence. Not so. I'll address the weakness of linking verbs in the future.

#%*$& You, Semi-Colon! (Writer, Edit Thyself)

;!

Ah, the oft-misunderstood semi-colon.

It really only has three functions in modern punctuation.

1. Joining two independent clauses.* This implies the two clauses are related and/or equal, or perhaps one restates the other.

The boys and I are on our own this weekend; we'll eat too many hotdogs and watch cartoons.

2. Use semi-colons between items in a list that already involve commas.

I have lived in Clay Center, Kansas; Manhattan, Kansas; and Lawrence, Kansas.

3. Making that funny smiley thing I use too often.

;)

That's it.

Make peace with the semi-colon. Please. I hear the rapture is coming this weekend, and I wouldn't want semi-colon hate on my head.

Write Hard!

*independent clause is a fancy way of saying "sentence". An independent clause is a string of words which can stand on its own.

How to Love the Comma, or Writer, Edit Thyself

I would say "How to Use Commas" but that will raise too much debate. Believe me: I've seen a group of English teaching assistants argue about commas for more than an hour. Ugly.

What I do want to convey is the ease with which a writer can learn to love (and use) commas well.

So let's start here (can you read this):


Would you read it in your head? Of course not. Music is intended for the ear. So are words. Reading silently ("in our heads") is a recent invention. Once upon a time, few could read. Books were expensive, difficult to reproduce, and precious things. (Ah, but now we have e-books and POD.) Punctuation symbols, like the comma, were invented to convey a message to the reader. Think of the comma as a rest, just like the rest in music. Where that rest is placed changes the meaning of a phrase, just like a well-placed pause in music can change the dynamic or rhythm of a song.

Take this well-circulated phrase to understand the importance of punctuation (and commas):

Woman without her man is nothing

Notice I didn't punctuate the sentence. How would you do it?

Woman: without her, man is nothing.

or

Woman, without her man, is nothing.

Wow. Big difference, right? We all know the famous "eats shoots and leaves" example.

So how does a writer learn to love commas? I suggest you must, must read your work aloud. I've done so with every story, book, and essay I've written in the last ten years. Commas were invented in an era of reading aloud. Meaning is conveyed through the way they make a sentence sound. You'll notice improper comma use much better through your ear.

For a more "academic" look at the comma, please visit Purdue University's Online Writing Lab (OWL).

Write hard.

WIP Wednesday is Jealous

Oh, Sisyphus, how I feel for thee.

I'm on comment #1138 out of #2677 from an editor's pass on a book. None of the edits were changes to the text...oh no...they were just comments. 2677, people! Thank Zeus for digital files. If I had to do all of this on paper, I'd shoot myself. I just might, anyway, and then come back to haunt the editor in question.

So my WIP is jealous because I'm putting it on hold until I scratch through the rest of this ridiculous pile of comments. Thank goodness I've managed to send out my eighth Write 1/Sub 1 entry.

WIP Wednesday: Polishing the House Eaters

2010 has been all about the edits thus far. I'm steadily working through another revision of Loathesome, Dark, and Deep and just yesterday received the first round of edits on The House Eaters. I'm happy to report no major issues with only a few items which I needed to address.

But yeah. Editing.

Things are pretty tense for our small crew in Loathsome. Halfway up the river, they've lost a boat...and most of their supplies.

“We only have enough food for one more day.” Olson’s white fingers massaged his forehead. “One day, Barlow. Everything else is at the bottom of the river—”

“Because you dropped the wheel, you son-of-a-bitch.” Silas clenched his fist around the stock of his rifle. “You shirked your god-damned duty, Olson, and now the rest of us have to pay for it.”

Olson’s lip trembled. His grey eyes found mine and pleaded for help. “I—I didn’t—”

“Better off if that bullet found your neck instead of poor Hiram’s, at least he wouldn’t have left us out here with no food.” Silas advanced a step toward Olson, leaning forward with his head protruding like a bird of prey. “You make me want to vomit...”

I think they're in love. Fun stuff.