Hello, everyone! I come to you asking for some advice.

I finished the sort-of first draft of my manuscript (twice before I stopped in the middle of a draft and started over, so this is more like the third draft) a few weeks ago. Now that the giddiness has started to ebb and I’ve let the thing cool, it’s time to get down to work.

I have an editing notebook filled with various notes, and there’s a lot to be done. So much, in fact, that it’s a little overwhelming. I know to start with the biggest fixes first, but there’s much to be done there, too.

So, does anyone have any advice for beginning the editing process, or their own stories they’d like to share? Any help you can give me would be enormously appreciated.

Thanks bunches!

You’re not having others edit it?

However, if you’re having a large job that threatens to overwhelm, the answer is always the same: pick 1 point and concentrate on it. You know… pick out just one chapter, or decide that you’re ONLY going to edit grammar, not content and go through just checking grammar, etc etc.

Well, if you’ve got other people’s notes, that’s actually what I’d do first.

Go through and put in what they said without question (unless it violates some core tenant of the book like “does it really need that white whale?”). As you go through (and afterward when you re-review it) you’ll start seeing more to edit.

But just doing what they said will alleviate the stress and pressure of it, because for a moment, it’s not you editing, it’s them. (note: all advice only applies at a max of 80%)

First thing: forget that the story was ever yours. Approach it as though it’s something you’ve never seen before, written by someone you neither know nor care about. I think this is the most important bit because otherwise you’ll end up with Paolini’s version of ‘editing’, who probably removed one scene for every six, IF that, and did nothing about the horrible prose that should have been pulled out by the roots by a competent writer-editor viewing the piece objectively.

Also, try reading the dialogue aloud to see how it sounds. Read it deadpan, wituh no accent. If it’s still good then, at its most boring, then you know you’ve got a winner.

I am getting nearer to the editing mark as well, so this is a pretty relevant thread for me. A suggestion that I’ve been considering: read through the entire thing once, and jot down initial things you thought, i.e. what you liked, didn’t like, need to change in general, and so on. Then, if you want to change events, add/remove characters, maintain continuity, take care of that before moving on to more finetune editing.

For the biggies, I like someone (Nate’s?) idea of going through one thing at a time on your list of things to fix. I would also recommend saving each subsequent draft separately on your computer. Then, if you decide that you really didn’t want to remove that one character after all, you’re not totally screwed.