E is for Editing - A to Z Challenge

I have a love/hate relationship with editing. I love editing because it can make or break a book. Bad editing can be so distracting a book becomes difficult to read. Good editing sculpts a rough draft into a well-crafted read.

Even my Sims are writers!

On the other hand, I hate editing because I’m so picky, it’s hard for me to know when to quit. And by the time I finally do finish, I’m sick of the story, the characters, even the Word file staring at me from the computer desktop. I regain my sunny disposition and enthusiasm for the project as soon as I had a few days to decompress, sleep in, and play a few hours of the Sims 3!

I’ve just finished a couple of rounds of edits by myself and turned in the manuscript to my editor. Now, I’ll follow my editor’s advice for about 3 more rounds, and off to the printer the book goes!

We're gonna need another red pen soon!

You’ll find plenty of editing advice out there on the internet, but here are the most useful ones I’ve found:

1. Show not tell. I wrote an earlier post about this here.
2. Cut out extraneous words. Apparently, I like to use “just,” “very,” “that,” and “really” a lot. Autocrit programs are a great way to help you make your manuscript a sleeker read.
3. Use tangible descriptions. Check out this great article to see how specific words stimulate your brain.
4. Search and destroy those passive verbs. Was/were/is, etc. make for a weak sentence. Try to rework it and choose active verbs instead.
5. Keep dialogue tags simple. I’ll tackle this topic in next Monday’s blog. 

These are some of my most common mistakes. What are yours and how do you fix them?