Editing tips are often given as a list of ten, with the usual suspects: eliminate adverbs, eliminate passive voice, etc. Writers refer to Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style to use for editing. Not sure how that’s helpful; it’s for non-fiction.

Non-fiction is a different animal than non-fiction. That’s like feeding a dog people food. You won’t get the result you expect, will miss problem areas, and may create other problems.

First, here’s a definition of editing. Trimming words to:

  • Meet a word count requirement
  • Make the story clearer for the reader
  • Use it to hide other things from the reader in plain sight
  • Make the story better
  • Improve your writing for the next book

The Rules

What follows are not black and white rules to follow. Everything is at the writer’s prerogative. You may want to leave extra words to slow the pacing. Or an excited character may blurt out run-on sentences. Or taking out the words changes the meaning of the sentence.

Decide about every single change. AI concerns me because some people let the tool decide. AI does not know what you intended.

Onward!

Things readers can figure out

This comes from J. Scott Savage. I took an online class from him and was surprised how much I learned. I immediately went to my story after the class and found places to edit for this.

We tend to add more detail than the story needs. Some may come from not adding enough detail. Another writer comments on the lack of detail, so we add more. Then we have sentences that don’t add value.

Example:

The commander turned to the three men. “Man the North Fort post. Move out.”

The three men saluted. “Yes, sir.”

Light flashed as they ducked out of the tent flap.

The commander scowled in thought. “We’ll also have to…”

The middle two sentences are probably unnecessary. The commander told them to leave in dialogue, and then the exposition told the reader a second time. If you took out the two sentences, you might have to add another to transition. But the two sentences are 15 words. If you’re cutting for word count, that’s a good chunk that doesn’t involve taking out scenes.

The first time I looked for these, I was surprised at how many there were. Most were single sentences where I’d gone a step too far. I also found that some changes made me clarify what I’d written.

Most notably, AI can’t flag this editing problem. You have to read for content and figure out what the scene needs.

Things you left out

Right along with the above, look for places where you didn’t finish the follow-through. We’re writing and our thoughts are jumping ahead—and then we skip something. We think we put it in there and it’s not.

Example: You have three characters in a scene. One of them vanishes, like Chuck Cunningham on Happy Days. He’s in the scene in the beginning and disappears by the end without leaving the room.

Some will be easy to fix; add an extra sentence, reword an existing sentence, or take out something out. Others are more challenging, like figuring if you needed that character in the scene, or all. If you’re not sure what you need to do, mark it and move on. Give yourself time to think about it.

Tautologies

I first saw this word in Writer’s Digest many years ago. It’s a form or repetition, caused by using two words that mean the same thing. Examples:

  • Free gift. It’s not hard to find this one. Shows up in every commercial, seems like. When I typed the phrase, ProWritingAid flagged it as redundant.
  • Old and decrepit. From a young adult book I read. PWA flagged this.
  • Three a.m. in the morning. A.M means “before noon,” so it’s morning. PWA didn’t flag this.
  • The crowd gathered close together. The entire sentence states the same thing twice. PWA didn’t flag this one either.

Tautology is a literary device used in poetry with intent. No one addresses it much for fiction, though. TK Publishing has a good discussion along with more example. A good tool to learn because the repetitions are often common use, making them hard to spot.

Repetitions of Information

Repetition is a huge topic, so I’m breaking it down into the biggest one first. I’ve seen a lot of the more common ones, like repeating phrases, repeating words, and repeating pronouns. (I intentionally used a literary device there.) But nothing on information.

Information is anything directly related to the story that you put in more than you should. You might be writing along and realize you need to plant a knife in a scene. So you have your character take it out of the desk. A few paragraphs later, you forget you did that, and you have the character take it out of the desk again. Or it could happen again later in the book.

For these, you look at both repetitions. Is one better for the story than the other? Or do you need to do something different?

When I worked with a cowriter, he flagged an information sentence, stating that something wasn’t right with it. Then he typed another sentence after it that said the same thing, albeit differently. I deleted the old sentence, and he objected because he liked that one, too. That’s a sign that maybe neither is doing the job and more thinking is required.

Information repetition can also show up in descriptions. This issue can be created by tags, which are shortcuts for readers. Like when you read J.D. Robb’s In Death series. Eve Dallas is always described as having a cap of deer hair and cop eyes. That’s a series shortcut for the character, but it doesn’t get repeated later in the story. If you find one of those in your story, it’s an easy cut, though you should revisit the first one and see if it should be updated.

Repetitions of “looked” and other character actions

This type of repetition is pervasive. Characters look at each other, nod (or nod their heads, which is extra words), or shrug (or shrug their shoulders, also extra words).

One time I used Microsoft Word to search to replace look with a highlighted look and was horrified. I had eight on one page! Two instances occurred in the same paragraph.

This is how you run a highlighted search and replace:

  1. On the Home tab, select the highlighter icon, then pick your color. Then click the icon to turn it off.
  2. On the Home tab, click on Editing and select Replace.
  3. Type your word in both the Find and Replace fields.
  4. Make sure you click in the Replace field.
  5. Click the Format button and then Highlight. You should see “Highlight” on the replace field.
  6. Then run the search.

A handy feature is that Word tells you how many it replaced when it finishes. You might be horrified.

In one book I read, the author was evidently told she used smiled too much. So replaced smiled with smirked. Uh, not the same thing. So not the same thing.

Why do writers have characters looking, nodding, and shrugging?

This shows up because of setting issues:

  • You haven’t done enough with the setting, so the character has nothing to interact with. The nods and looks show up when you’re trying to avoid talking heads or using dialogue tags.
  • The setting you picked is too generic.  5 Editors Tackle the 12 Fatal Flaws of Fiction Writing noted that a lot of writers used Starbucks for a setting. Starbucks is not an active setting. A couple of small tables and the coffee. So what? Your characters can’t do much more than look and nod.

In The Secrets of Story, Matt Bird suggests picking settings that provide your characters with more opportunities to be active. Like a kitchen.

This part of editing is likely to leave you with more words, but they’ll be better than looking, nodding, shrugging, turning, smiling, etc.

Hopefully this has been of help. I’ll have more in the next installment.