The Complete Guide to
Editing Your Fiction

Introduction
There are as many reasons not to edit and revise as there are reasons not to write. But one of the things that separates the professional writer from the amateur and hopeful is the pro’s willingness to take the time to read, revise and edit her manuscript before sending it off to an agent or publisher.

There’s really nothing to it, beyond giving priority to the job once you’ve typed "The End" when you finish your first draft. And when you think about it, you’re editing and revising many things in your life constantly.

Have a favorite daydream? How many times have you changed it, tweaked it, brought new characters or items into it? That’s revision.

Have you ever decided it was time to talk to your boss about a raise, to talk to a friend about a needed change in a relationship? You sat down, began with a basic script and then said, "No, that doesn’t work, sounds too threatening." So, you took out the phrase, replaced it with another and then rehearsed it again. Sounds okay? Well, maybe if you beg a little here…that’s revision.

How about this scene: You’ve asked for the job, the raise, the hand in marriage. Now you’re home and, "If only I’d said…." That’s editing: a change made in a scene already finished.

See, you do it all the time. You do it watching television and movies: Remember how you groaned when the ingenue went down into the cellar? If you’d written the scene, you’d have had her go into the backyard, instead, and then…well, and then something else would have happened, maybe something more credible, maybe something that would have increased suspense, something that would have allowed you to create a surprise, rather than offer the trite and true. How many times have you been comfortably reading a book or a story and then something happens that jars you out of the narrative and back into the room? Maybe it was a word that didn’t resonate correctly, that sounded wrong; maybe it was an action that wasn’t motivated, that ran counter to the character as he’d been presented to you for the last 150 pages, but that the author placed there because if it didn’t happen the story couldn’t continue. No matter what it was, how many times have you reacted to it by saying, "I can do it better, if I only had the chance." This is your chance.

ooo

Why are you going to do all this work? Well, for one thing, you don’t want some other hungry, young writer to look at your finished book and say, "I can do it better…." If she can, you could lose your place in line.

For another, you want your manuscript to be the best one on the editor’s or agent’s desk; it is the best one that is going to be acquired.

Not too long ago, I received a manuscript from a gentleman who was a long way from ready. It was clear that the novel in my hands was, at best, a first draft. It had been run through spell checking and grammar checking programs, but that was the extent of the work the writer had done. When I sent the material back to him, I point out some of the problems, told him he had more work to do, gave him a few pointers. His response was a nasty letter making it clear that it was my job to fix the manuscript. That’s right and wrong.

I know you’ve been hearing the nonsense about editors no longer editing. There may not be as many of us, and we may have more work to do, but we still edit. Because of the time constraints, however, we’re editing less because we’re looking for manuscripts that don’t need quite as much work. We still want to help you write the best book of which you’re capable at this moment, but too many of us too often are looking for manuscripts that are closer to finished. So, we do still edit and revise; some still do a little rewriting (or, generally, suggesting where the rewrites might be necessary). The manuscript will still be put through the copyediting process so that any glitches you and I missed (and we’ll both miss something) might be fixed. But we won’t do your work for you, and your job, right now, is to present the manuscript in the best possible form.

You do that by rereading the manuscript, in type, not on the computer’s video display, after you’ve given it a chance to cool down a little, and making notes on the typescript of changes that have to be made. Then you go back to the keyboard and start making the fixes. If you’re really interested in writing a good book, one that is going to impress an editor, you’ll rekey the entire work. I know, outrageous; that’s why you bought your computer, so you wouldn’t have to do that. Well, the reality is this: As you retype, as you, literally, rewrite, you find other places to make changes, new word choices occur to you—the work benefits. If you only do a search and replace, you’re cheating yourself and your characters.

Also important is that you do whatever work you’re going to do with some distance between yourself and the creative process. This is a good time to sharpen your editing skills by practicing with a pencil what you’ve been doing in your head all your life. Pick up a book, any book, from your shelves and edit it! Right. It doesn’t matter that it’s already been rewritten, revised and edited; do it anyway. Remember, you decided you could do a better job, so fix the book that inspired that thought.

Look for those places where a point-of-view shift was too abrupt, for the word that struck you the wrong way, for the hole in the plot or the character acting out of character. Make notes in the margins about how you would fix the problems.

Then, take your manuscript and do the same thing. Do it ruthlessly, do it painstakingly, do it thoroughly.

Then, and only then, send the manuscript into the world. We’ll know if you don’t care enough to send the very best….

Michael Seidman
New York, New York
July 1999

For more information contact: mseidman@mseidman.com