Self-Edit Your Novel

By David H Fears

In today’s publishing world many writers can neither find nor afford a professional editor. The only editing such writers benefit from is self-editing. Fears, a recognized Twain scholar, argues against the common notion that an independent novelist must hire an editor to turn out a good novel and proposes writers learn the skill set of an editor. He points out the advantages a novelist has with his own work and how to avoid the “snow blindness” that often afflicts self-editing. He covers micro-level changes of editing at the word/phrase/sentence level, and macro-level revision of larger elements, such as characters, pacing, plot, and dialogue. Fears offers several practices and processes that teach a writer editor skills.

There’s no promise here of making riches, or becoming a top-notch editor without effort. You’ll have to work at it, just like you did to learn the craft of writing fiction. If you’re neither a beginner nor a best-selling novelist, this book is for you.

• Language: English
• Publisher: David H Fears
• Release date: Sep 26, 2014
• ISBN: 9781311687944

David H Fears

David was known by the handle “professor” as a boy (no doubt the thick black spectacles, Buddy Holly style), and has had a lifetime interest in Mark Twain. He has also written nearly one hundred short stories with about sixteen published, and is working on the 14th Mike Angel PI Mystery novel.Fears is a pretty handy name for horror stories, but he also has written mainstream nostalgic, literary, some fantasy/magical realism, as well as the PI novels. For the past decade he has devoted his full time to producing Mark Twain Day By Day, a four-volume annotated chronology in the life of Samuel L. Clemens. Two volumes are now available, and have been called, “The Ultimate Mark Twain Reference” by top Twain scholars. His aim for these books is “to provide a reference and starting-off place for the Twain scholar, as well as a readable book for the masses,” one that provides many “tastes” of Twain and perspective into his complex and fascinating life. He understands this is a work that will never be “finished” — in fact, he claims that no piece of writing is ever finished, only abandoned after a time. As a historian, David enjoys mixing historical aspects in his fiction.David recently taught literature and writing at DeVry University in Portland, his third college stint. His former lives enjoyed some success in real estate and computer business, sandwiched between undergraduate studies in the early 70s and his masters degree in education and composition, awarded in 2004.He was born and raised in Portland, Oregon, and has lived in New England, Southern California and Nevada. David is youthful looking and is the father of three girls, the grandfather of four and the great-grandfather of two; he’s written, “It all shows what you can do if you fool around when you’re very young.” David’s a card. How many of us think humor has a place in mystery tales or history tomes? He claims his calico cat Sophie helps him edit his stories while lying across his arm when he is composing, and sinking her claws in with any poorly drawn sentence. As a writer, a humorist, a cat lover and father of girls, he relates well to Clemens. Writing hardboiled PI novels is his way of saying "NUTS!" to politically correct fiction.UPDATE: Beloved Calico Sophie died on Apr 24, 2016 at 13 & 1/2 years. She is sorely missed.

Book preview

Self-Editing Your Novel

By David H Fears

Copyright 2014

Horizon Micro Publishing, LLC

FIRST EDITION

ISBN:

Discover other titles by David H Fears:

Dark Quarry, Dark Lake, Dark Blonde, Dark Poison, Dark Idol, Dark Moon,

Dark Fantasy, Dark Conspiracy, Dark Red, Dark Eyes

And for the history buff who can heft 8lb. volumes:

Mark Twain Day By Day in 4 volumes (print only)

This work is dedicated to the memory

of the best self-editor

of all time:

Samuel Langhorne Clemens

Aka

Mark Twain

"Books are the liberated spirits of men."

(Mark Twain - Feb. 1894 letter to the Millicent Library in Mass.)

Note: this book was self-edited. No money was paid to any editor, nor was any editor injured or killed.

Contents

Introduction

Terms Used in This Book

I - Arguments About Editors

Twain on Editors

Myths and Fallacies About Using a Professional Editor

Benefits of Self-Editing

II - Editing is micro-level - Techniques

Early Process Techniques

Get in the Proper Mind Set to Edit

Fix Flabby Writing - Later Passes

More Empty Words & Verbs

Strong Verbs and Weak Verbs

Modifiers and Style

Using by to find some passive constructions

How many passes do you have to make?

Miscellaneous Tricks of Self-Editing

How to spot choppy writing in your manuscript

Mixing up sentence length and type

Printing tips

Paragraphing

E-reader Considerations

Dialogue

III - Revising is macro-level - Techniques

Why revise?

Gardner’s Fictive Dream Metaphor

Burroway’s Revision Questions

How many drafts? What is the proper length of a novel?

The 10 Percent Solution

Purpose of a Chapter

Style Considerations

Voice

Pesky passages and small changes

Sound and music: word order

Reading aloud limitations

Killing your darlings

Cliches

Stage Directions

Filters

Characters

Plot

Pacing

Rewrite from memory

The Hardest Part of Revising - When to Stop

IV - Appendix - Examples

297 + 3 Flabby Words and Phrases

Icing on the Cake, a short story of clichés

Works Cited

Introduction

The drive to improve, evolve, take the next step in any activity, to build on what we know, to increase understanding, is basic to human nature. You might say it’s innate. Humans self-correct from infancy to old age, and self-correcting the fiction one writes isn’t much different from learning how to walk, to talk. We make countless mistakes when we first learn to walk. We make countless mistakes when we first learn to write fiction. We might ape other writers, just as we aped walking adults when we were toddlers. Nothing wrong with copying; it’s a basic way of learning. And, as we learn we grow an internal Critic that helps us avoid future mistakes and keeps the internal Creator in line. Good drafting involves turning the internal Creator loose and keeping the internal Critic out of the room. Editing and Revising let the Critic back in the room to work with the Creator. Writers have a drive to write and market the best fiction possible. Which brings me to today’s marketplace.

We are deep into the sea change to publishing that began in earnest back in 2009 or so. Amazon’s entry into the market with Kindles and a 70% royalty rate for authors changed the landscape. Traditional publishing with all the attendant abuses to writers is today on the wane, while Indie publishing of e-books and on-demand paperbacks is ascending. Companies like Smashwords have extended a writer’s exposure into many venues.

With all of this change many writers no longer submit query letters seeking agents ad nauseam; no longer trust agents to find a publisher; no longer wait months or years to see their books on the shelves only to see returns yank them away after a few months; no longer suffer with 10-15% royalties; no longer are at the mercy of publishers picking awful covers and non-existent marketing. Today, writers can exert nearly total control over the writing, editing, cover design, and marketing of their books, benefiting with higher royalties over many marketplaces.

Note I said editing. When a writer edits his own work, it’s called self-editing. When the writer pays someone else to edit it’s called professional editing. Pro editing isn’t necessarily top-notch, or even beneficial. But it does mean the writer has let loose of a few bucks, sometimes thousands for a short series of novels. Even if our dear writer finds a pretty good editor, and that isn’t assured, there’s no guarantee the novel will come out much better. Editing, after all, isn’t magic—it’s the application of a set of skills to a piece of writing to clarify the writer’s intent.

Who This Book is Written For

This book aims at the practiced or intermediate novelist who wishes to learn tips, tricks, processes, which comprise editing skills in order to improve his fiction. Perhaps writers who have been disappointed at the quality or cost of pro editors and who wish to become their own editor. There’s no promise here of making riches, or becoming a top-notch editor without effort. You’ll have to work at it, just like you did to learn the craft of writing fiction. If you’re neither a beginner nor a best-selling novelist, this book is for you. If you feel you are sadly lacking as a novelist, please know this book cannot fill all of your gaps. Learn the craft first, then use this book.

This book is not for the non-fiction writer, or the beginning writer (although a few beginners might benefit from this book). Nor do I aim at teaching storytelling, general craft elements, or offering a primer on grammar or punctuation—there are many such works already available. And, while the focus is on novels or novellas, the short story writer may also glean some useful techniques.

How I’m Qualified to Speak to Self-Editing

I’m an Independent novelist with ten novels published in e-book and paperback. I’ve had to teach myself how to edit my novels, since the search for the right professional editor is like the holy grail, with prohibitive cost. As I continue to write I continue to learn the craft of writing fiction and continue to learn editing skills. My word isn’t the last word on self-editing, by any means. I do believe, however, the editing skills I’ve learned have improved my writing, and I wish to share many aspects of what I’ve learned.

My history includes a few years teaching English composition, both basic and advanced, and some English literature. During those years I edited, red-penciled, screamed at, and found a few jewels in hundreds of student papers. I used quite a few excerpts of fiction even teaching composition. But when it came to writing and editing and publishing my own novels (twelve mystery novels to date), I had to learn how to be an Indie, just like many other writers have. In the beginning I floundered around trying to see what was on the page. It took me months but I found a pace, a process, a system that works for me. I will offer much of that in this book, hoping you can use the parts you value and discard the rest, just as you would any in-depth critique of your work. How can you accept some elements of a crit and dump others? Because you know your work, know your characters, know your story, know your intent—much more than any other person alive. More than any editor, no matter how practiced.

Some indies are making fabulous amounts of money. I broke into fiction writing in the late 90’s with Joe who often posted story scraps on a Usenet site with me. He preached to the various and motley crew on that site that any story must have conflict, that a protagonist must want something, even a glass of water, and if there was no such desire there is no conflict; no conflict, no story. Joe taught me a few things, and now is one of the top experts on Indie writing and marketing. (Thanks, Joe Konrath, even though you don’t answer my emails these days and didn’t acknowledge the books I sent you. Don’t worry, Joe, I wasn’t asking for a loan.)

I also took part in Zoetrope back in the late 90’s, Francis Ford Coppola’s site that features short story, flash story and other dramatic wings. We had private offices in those days, but the most valuable thing I got there was a circle of reviewers, critiquers who offered their time and energy to help others. I bounced from there to a few other sites doing similar things. I wrote over 100 short stories, some 15 or 16 of them published in print or ezine. One tale was printed on a coffee can, with the balance inside. One on a coffee cup. And one magic tale was purchased for $100 by a literary magazine. All of these were rather obscure but they began my fiction career.

I stitched several short stories about private eyes into a novel, and worked to find an agent. Finally I threw it in a drawer and wrote a couple more from scratch. These became the Mike Angel Mystery Series, hardboiled in the vein of Chandler, Spillane, and Hammett, if I can take the liberty of using their names to compare as many of my readers do.

When Kindle came along I had four novels ready to go. But were they really ready? That first one had been in the drawer for several years. Every time I picked it up I could see many things that needed improvement. Why hadn’t I seen these on the umpteenth pass of revision? Why doesn’t any writer see them such errors? And how does the writer see them later? I didn’t know at that time.

My only experience with a pro editor wasn’t wholly satisfactory, but luckily it involved my first short story collection, which I had published after hiring her and a graphic designer and finding a printer for a 500 copy run. I sold many in my business