#making effective revisions

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Making effective revisions – avoiding repetition #amwriting

We who are indies know we should have our work edited, and most of us aren’t that good at self-editing. So, we find someone we can work with. But hiring an editor is expensive, so before we send our manuscript off, we should take the time to make it as clean as possible. It will greatly speed up the process if the editor doesn’t have to wade through a mess. One of my favorite authors writes great…

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Three Grammar Rules We Know but Don’t Know We Know #amwriting

Three Grammar Rules We Know but Don’t Know We Know #amwriting

In English, as in other languages, certain rules of speech are learned so early on in life that they are instinctual. No matter the level of our education or the dialect we speak, we use these rules and don’t know we are doing so. Today I am revisiting three wonderful quotes on these rules from linguist Steven Pinker, editor Stan Carey, and Tim Dowling, a journalist for The Guardian. The Jolly…

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Codewords and Mental Shorthand #amwriting

Codewords and Mental Shorthand #amwriting

Many of us are in the revision process, working on the novels we wrote during November’s NaNoWriMo. These novels are disjointed and uneven, but they contain the essence of what can be a great book—with a lot of work. On November 1st, when we began setting the first words on the blank page, our minds formed images, scenes we attempted to describe. In his book, The Language Instinct, Steven…

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The garden-path sentence #amwriting

The garden-path sentence #amwriting

As NaNoWriMo winds down, I am preparing to face a manuscript full of wandering, garbled sentences. These are the products of my fingers not being able to keep up with my brain. I might know what that sentence means, but my editor won’t. My job in December is to be alert and watch for ambiguous phrasings. About garden-path sentences, via Wikipedia, the fount of all knowledge: (The term) garden…

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Successful Self-Editing #amwriting

Books are machines, comprised of many essential components. If one of those elements fail, the book won’t work the way the author envisions it. So, what are these parts? Prose, plot, transitions, pacing, theme, characterization, dialogue, and mechanics (grammar/punctuation). As an editor, I’ve seen every kind of mistake you can imagine and written many travesties myself. This tendency to not see…

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Revisions part 1: Spotting the Code Words and Mental Shorthand #amwriting

Revisions part 1: Spotting the Code Words and Mental Shorthand #amwriting

When we set the first words on a  blank page, our minds begin forming images, scenes we want to describe. In his book, The Language Instinct, Steven Pinker notes that we are not born with language, so we are NOT engineered to think in words alone—we also think in images. It follows that certain words become a kind of mental shorthand, small packets of letters that contain a world of images and…

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Revisions and Plotting the End #amwriting

Revisions and Plotting the End #amwriting

Many authors who finished NaNoWriMo with a complete story are now beginning the revision process. This year, I wrote most of an unplanned novel, one I had no intention of writing, and therefore I had no outline.

In the rush of laying down those ideas, I wrote many scenes that will need to be moved to a more logical place in the story arc or cut altogether. Still other scenes don’t yet exist and…

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Revisions: Transitions #amwriting

When we rewrite something, we are making revisions. I love the word revision.

re + vision = to envision again.

When I’m making revisions, I try to look carefully at my transitions. These are the small connections that are woven into the larger narrative.

When we begin revising our manuscript, we are looking at small passages of our work with new eyes and seeing how they might be changed to better…

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