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Editing – Where Do You Start?
You’ve finished writing your story and if you are anything like me, you feel like doing a few fist pumps in the air, and taking a victory lap. Walking on air, you’re bursting with pride. You finished. What an accomplishment!
Then, the reality starts to set in. The creative process is finished, but the race is not yet run. Looming in your future is the arduous task of editing your masterpiece or as I call it at this point, my monstrosity. Where do you start? What can you look for?
The Counting Game
Writers tend to think about the lengths of things they are doing in the number of words. For a journalist, this is something that is often dictated to them by their editor based on the space that needs to be filled. “I need a hundred word piece” or “Put 500 words on paper about. . .” and within that scope the journalist knows whether they are being asked to do a feature length, filler, or somewhere in between.
The Birth of a Character
When you are writing a story, one of the most important elements of the story is the characters it contains. Without interesting characters to help drive your story forward, the reader will lose interest and stop reading. Henry James, one of the founders and leaders in the realism school of fiction, went as far as to say, “Character is plot.” Since character is so important to writing a story, how do we make the characters in the story come alive on the page for the reader?
In the Words of Mark Twain
Author Mark Twain, while best known for Adventures of Huckleberry Finn and The Adventures of Tom Sawyer, is also known for being a literary critic. During a period of time in his life when he needed to help make ends meet financially, he started writing reviews of other author’s works for newspapers. In 1865, he famously wrote a review titled Fenimore Cooper’s Literary Offenses. Twain maintained that there were 19 rules governing literary art in fiction and that Cooper had violated 18 of them.
Editing for Continuity
One of the things that you have to watch for when you are working on a story that is a continuation from a previous work is continuity, or even within the same story continuity errors can crop up. What do I mean by continuity? If you give your character blue eyes in one book, then you can’t give that same character brown eyes in the next book, unless you are deliberately having the character wear eye changing contacts for a reason integral to the plot. As you are reading this, I know that you’re thinking to yourself, but I would never make that sort of mistake. Believe me, it is much easier than you think to make those sorts of errors. In the world of TV and Films, there are people whose job it is to ensure that all of those details are attended to, and mistakes will still creep in. I’m sure you noticed things when watching one of your favorite TV series.
The First Page
Your goal when writing a story is to get the reader to turn the first page. If they don’t want to turn that first page, then they won’t read your story. You have approximately three paragraphs to get the reader involved and to make them want to turn that page. So, how do you get your reader hooked in those first few paragraphs?
Storytelling Methods
So far, I have been able to share with you what I would call an overview of writing. How to set up your environment, some tips on how to get the ideas flowing, and things of that nature. Now we need to start discussing some of the nuts and bolts of writing. This is where we get to break down what we’re writing and identify what it is that we’re doing and then we’ll be able to make some decisions as to whether it is effective or not.
Tips for Creating Your Masterpiece
You don’t have to write the WHOLE thing all in one sitting. Even if working on a short story, it is a good idea to take some rest breaks, even when your ideas are flowing well. A regular break from your story will allow your brain to take a breather and keep you energized and refreshed, which ultimately allows you to write even better.
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Battling the Blank Page
You’ve made sure that your writing environment is comfortable, you have done some brainstorming and come up with an idea that you want to make into a story, you have written the synopsis, made character sketches and drafted your outline. You are ready to actually get down to the business of writing the story.
Preparing to Write
Before you start writing your story there are things that you need to do to prepare to write it. These are things that will help keep your writing focused and on track and that will help you have a better understanding of the story that you will ultimately write.