Writing Tip weekly- Checklist for Editing Your First Read through

It’s a good idea to have your finished book edited by a professional. Before that, you’ll want to edit, and make improvements, before passing your book on to the next step.

When I worked on The Solstice Conspiracy, I edited the book many times. Oddly enough, a writer doesn’t catch everything in the first read through,- or the second. For me, reading the chapters aloud revealed my story from the perspective of the listener. The following are a few suggestions that I found to be helpful.

Reading your writing out loud will alert you to the rhythm and flow of your piece.

• Short sentences emphasize tension, If it’s action you’re after, short and to the point will kick up the suspense.
•  In the wrong place, a string of short sentences can sound choppy. You can smooth out the flow of your paragraph by varying the length of the sentences.
• When reading aloud you’ll pick up on lengthy explanations. Pare them down or cut them altogether.

Ask yourself these questions:

• Does the first sentence make you want to read more?
• Are your characters strong? Do they act or are they acted upon?
• Will conflict move your characters to a resolution?
•  Are many characters doing a job that can be accomplished by a few?
• If a description, setting, or character is not important to your story, leave it out.

There’s more, of course, to the editing process, but the above will give a good measure to go by for your first read through.

A few weeks ago, I wrote about using active verbs. I forgot to say, and was reminded by a friend, that inactive verbs are okay too. -And why wouldn’t they be? They’re part of our language.

When I first started writing, I struggled to write as instructed from ‘how to write’ books. As useful as the books were, I went overboard attempting to do it right. when I told another writer that I had written two pages without using was. He laughed. “Was is okay,” he said. “Don’t worry, just write.”  I felt much better about writing after that. So use was when appropriate and active verbs to move the story along.