Do ever get jealous of non-sentient creatures? I do. I rather like my idea for this Friday’s comic, so make sure you drop by again to see it!
I got a fair bit of time to edit my novel this weekend, so I’m over 60% through it now. Yay! I recently read an excellent book called Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, Second Edition: How to Edit Yourself Into Print by Renni Browne and Dave King (available from Amazon, if you fancy using the links below). It had some great tips about editing in there, and now I’m wondering if I should go through my novel again once I’ve done this edit… I’ll get to the end, re-read the first chapter and see what I think. It’s always so hard to tell with your own writing. Other people’s work usually has mistakes that jump out at me (such as the repetition in the Harry Potter books mentioned last week), but it takes a lot more concentration to see my own.
Anyway, ‘hope you had a good weekend. See you Friday!
I can totally agree with you on this one, but we don’t want a sad Mata, we want a slighty weird/happy one…… Cheer up!!
I can’t be sad when I see ducks on the way to work every morning. They’re so cute! I always quack back at them if they say anything. Fortunately, there is rarely anyone else around at that time.
“Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, Second Edition: How to Edit Yourself Into Print” is quite a wordy title… are you sure they know what they’re on about? heehee
Sometimes the repitition may work, a literal leitmotif or two can be fun if you do it right. Will time away from the script once done like you did on the first edit will be useful again? Trouble is knowing when enough editing is enough?… or is it?
The hope is that each edit gets closer to saying precisely what you want to convey with every line of text. I think that there are still a few basic things that need smoothing over in my text.
For example, I do have a habit of sometimes describing how a character feels, or popping in a little bit of motive clarification into the writing. These are important things to cover, but it should be done through either dialogue, dialogue beats, or action. I’m writing in a close third-person perspective, so I can slip into first-person view occasionally, but writing ‘He felt worried about what he had heard’ isn’t as effective as ‘He sat down slowly as he listened to the news , a distant expression on his face’. They both tell the reader the same thing, but the second one conveys it far more powerfully.