Put Them Through the Maze: The Secrets of How to Write the Ultimate Novel by T. D. McMichael

Author:T. D. McMichael [Desconocido]
Language: eng
Format: epub, mobi, azw3
Publisher: Magnus Corner Books
Published: 2013-12-11T05:00:00+00:00

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CHAPTER EIGHT – EDITING

If writing is messy, Editing is cleaning it up. This is where all the weres that were wases get to become weres again, and vice-versa. This is also where your computer malfunctions and grammar and spellchecks go haywire. Turn that blankety blank blank off; you’re smarter than a robot.

With editing comes the danger of overediting. Screenwriters will oftentimes include little typos in their scripts. This is done deliberately so that people within the Studio, with a mind to, can point something out, and feel justified in their existences. A little harsh, but it’s true.

While they’re checking your spelling, that racy plot element you were nervous about has slipped past them. This also happens with casting. One prospective cast member has been egregiously miscast so that discriminating eyes hone in on her, while the movie star with the drug problem the director wanted in is allowed to stay.

Depending on what type of writer you are – or what type of project you’ve been working on – you may or may not have been editing as you went along, in Comp. You may not even edit; somebody else may do that for you, in which case, chillax.

One of the surest ways to have a fast write is to know your material back to front, and to break it into doable chunks; writing then becomes a piecemeal factory-like process, where you achieve the chunks. You don’t have to look back constantly.

Other times the material is tricky, and to keep it all in your head you’re forced to constantly refer back to what you wrote previously.

Some times a nanowrimo is possible, other times it is not. Sometimes you can out-wrimo wrimo and word counts are an unnecessary limitation hindering you from your full potential.

The fact is, if the work has been hard, chances are you’ve become very familiar with it, and edited it a bunch of times. And it still needs to be edited some more.

Other times you’ve gone like a complete maniac and the writing’s a mess, but it’s done.

Every writing project is unique. I don’t care how many times you’ve done it. Some are easy, some are hard, some are downright impossible, but you always have to edit.

Such was the creative frenzy in which you had to unplug your inhibitions, and go, go, go, remember?

Writers have been known to stick their compositions away when they’re finished, because they can’t look at them objectively for a while. They’re too close. They need distance before they can edit. This is so they can get fresh eyes.

Sometimes you have a deadline and you can’t afford these artistic considerations.

If you can, have someone whose opinion you trust read your book at this point.

The hard work is done, after all; if they trash it, so be it.

I had a dyslexic friend who was a great screenwriter, but couldn’t spell worth a lick. I had to run a human spellcheck on his work.

If you can, step away from your book for a while. Get re-acclimated to the world again.

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