The Craft of Writing Subgroup – Story Workshop
Editing
On Editing
"When you write a book, you spend day after day scanning and identifying the trees. When you're done, you have to step back and look at the forest." – Stephen King
"Easy reading is damn hard writing." – Nathaniel Hawthorne
Editing is all about communication. Any piece of writing that you edit, including your stories, should clearly communicate an idea, mood, feeling, or image to your readers. You can edit for a specific focus, such as tone, content, or format, but the ultimate goal of your editing process should be to clean up your writing so that it says exactly what you need it to say in that way that you want to say it.
Your editing process should result in:
· Precise use of language throughout your piece
· Straightforward communication of one idea at a time
· Technically correct English or English that sounds correct
· An ordering of your story that best suits the plot and character arcs
Proofreading
"I have been correcting the proofs of my poems. In the morning, after hard work, I took a comma out of one sentence…. In the afternoon I put it back again." – Oscar Wilde
Proofreading Tips and Tricks
· Print out your story to proof it
· Read your story aloud, particularly the dialogue
· Read from the point of view of the intended audience without making notes, and when you are finished make general notes or consider specific language use questions
· Edit with a visible, coloured pen or with quick reference notations on a printed copy
o Review sentence structure and word choice
o Check your grammar
Sentences and Word Choice
"Every word that is unnecessary only pours over the side of a brimming mind." – Cicero
"Don't use words too big for the subject. Don't say 'infinitely' when you mean 'very' otherwise you'll have no word left when you want to talk about something really infinite." – C.S. Lewis
Words and sentences are the building blocks of any piece of writing. They lay down the foundation for communication. Scene, chapter, and theme are only as sturdy as the words and sentences of which they are constructed.
Word choice is partly a matter of taste, partly a matter of content, and largely a matter of effective communication. While word choice should certainly make sense with the content of your story and the tone, mood, or style you've affected, the words you use should mean exactly what you intend to say regardless of voice, character, or point of view. If your narrator embellishes, then your word choice should deliberately adorn the simple realities of the scene. If your character is a prideful academic, then your word choice for his dialogue should be pedantic and scornful. If your narrator is establishing authority, then your word choice should include technical language or jargon for elaboration.
Sentence structure and organization work like a fork-to-mouth delivery system. They portion your story into ingestible bites and select those parts of the story with complementary flavours. Sentence structure is largely grammatical in essence, but also has musicality (rhythm and meter). A single sentence should seek to communicate only one (or very few) ideas at a time.
Sentence organization draws on association. Placing one sentence next to another sentence infers a relationship. When editing, you can use this relationship to move a reader linearly through your story, introduce absurdity (e.g., non sequiturs, funny "randomness"), or create emotional links between subjects and objects in your story, among other techniques.
Grammar
"Forcing modern speakers of English to not – whoops, not to split an infinitive because it isn't done in Latin makes about as much sense as forcing modern residents of England to wear laurels and togas."
– Steven Pinker
"Grammar is a piano I play by ear. All I know about grammar is its power." – Joan Didion
Good grammar can be learned through books on style, such as Strunk and White's The Elements of Style or Pinker's The Sense of Style: The Thinking Person's Guide to Writing in the 21st Century. Books on style discuss technically correct use of written language and explain approaches for using conventional language forms appropriately (e.g., passive voice, ending a sentence with a preposition, beginning a sentence with a conjunction). It's valuable for any writer to read through one or two of these books to wrap their head around grammar, but developing this skill is ultimately a matter of practice.
When proofreading your story, start by running your text through a spelling and grammar checker (Word will do, but there are more sophisticated options online). Use the checker to give you an idea of what you might need to look for in your writing, but don't blindly accept the changes. You should be the one who decides whether or not to add a comma, take out a word, or change how a word is spelled, not your grammar checker.
The following list includes grammatical elements that should be reviewed in your writing when you edit your draft (note that stylistic choice and artistic freedom allow you to disregard any stylistic formality):
· Typos - e.g., misspelled words, incorrect word choice, incorrect character names, extra words
· Missing words - e.g., definite, indefinite, or negative articles, pronouns, prepositions
· Comma use - review your work for comma splices and missing commas
· Run-on sentences - try to communicate only one idea in each sentence by breaking up long, complicated sentences into multiple sentences or removing unnecessary words
· Sentence fragments - ensure that your sentences are complete
· Passive voice - revise excessive or unnecessary use of the passive voice
· Verb tenses - ensure that your verb tense is consistent
· Subject - verb agreement - singular subject to singular verb, plural subject to plural verb
Condensing
“So the writer who breeds more words than he needs is making a chore for the reader who reads.”
– Dr. Seuss
"The letter I have written today is longer than usual because I lacked the time to make it shorter."
– Blaise Pascal
Shrink your story. Cut out superfluous detail. Pare down overgrown sentences. Exorcise adverbs and adjectives. Quell clever phrasing. Get rid of all the pretty writing that doesn't serve your story. Likely, examining your story for word choice and sentence structure will help you reduce your story, but you should also review your story for illogical and irrelevant content.
A content review entails critically reading your story to find details that are missing, out of place, or inconsistent. You might look for time gaps in your narrative, tertiary characters who serve little or no purpose, or background information that would only be of interest to the nerdiest historian existing within the world that you created. The particulars of your content review will be specific to the needs of your story. Ensure that your content is in a logical order and that your transitions from scene to scene are clear. Engaging in scene diagramming, plot analysis, or character development activities may help you better understand the needs of your story so that you can give it a content review.
Refinement
"Good prose should be transparent, like a window pane." – George Orwell
"The chief virtue that language can have is clarity." – Hippocrates
"The main thing I try to do is write as clearly as I can. I rewrite a good deal to make it clear." – E.B. White
A refined story results from really understanding what your story is about. All that should be left after proofreading and condensing your story is exactly what needs to be there to tell your story. The reader's mind should be able to flow along with the words, envisioning each moment, without a thought as to all the work you did to make sure they didn't have to look up a word, re-read a lengthy sentence, or grapple with a sticky metaphor.
Exercises
1. (Sentence Structure) Number a piece of paper from one to thirty. Free write twenty to thirty sentences. Try to make them varied in length and about completely different subjects.
i. Put sentences five and sixteen together. Use this combination to free write a story of 500 to 2,000 words.
ii. Choose your three favourite sentences. Rewrite these sentences as one sentence expressing only one idea.
iii. Write a poem using sentences eight, nine, and thirteen.
2. (Word Choice) Free write about a common noun (e.g., horse, onion, watch) without using any of the obvious words that are associated with the noun (e.g., pasture, strong, time). Do this for five different nouns, and write about 500 words for each noun.
3. (Sentence Structure) Diagram run-on sentences or sentence fragments in your story to better understand how to edit them to say what you mean to say.
4. (Proofreading) Download and complete editing worksheets or take online grammar and editing skill tests to help you hone your skills.
5. (Content Review) Create theme, plot, chapter, character arc, or scene diagrams to better understand your story's underlying structure.
Resources
· Editing vs. Proofreading Infographic: https://www.scribendi.com/advice/editing_and_proofreading_infographic.en.html
· Online spelling and grammar checker that looks at contextual spell checking, advanced style checking, and intelligent grammar checking:http://www.polishmywriting.com/
· Lifehacker post on how to edit your own writing: http://lifehacker.com/5968996/how-to-edit-your-own-writing
· Four Marks of Good Writing:http://www.writersdigest.com/editor-blogs/there-are-no-rules/4-marks-of-good-writing
· Step by step editing process: http://www.junkfoodmonkey.pwp.blueyonder.co.uk/Fics/Articles/EditingRecipe.html
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