After I finish a first draft, I start into my edits right away. And boy, is there usually a lot of editing to do!
Looking at the manuscript as a messy whole is sometimes overwhelming.
To get me started on the right track and help myself feel a little more enthusiastic about the chore in front of me, I usually start out with some easy edits that make a big difference.
The first thing I do is a find {ctrl F} for my favorite words. I’ll find a lot of ‘justs’ and ‘sighs.’ This takes only minutes to do, but makes me feel a little more cheerful.
Not sure what your favorite words are? Some folks use Wordle, which highlights the most common words in a manuscript.
The next thing I look for are weak words and words to investigate…because I might need to make the sentence stronger: That, seem, there, might, something, ‘to be’ verbs (like was ____ing), had, very, so, little, almost. This takes a bit longer, but is still really easy. Terry Odell has a nice post on using Word to eliminate problem words.
I have some new words to look for, too. There was a great post on Write it Sideways last week about filter words. Quoting the post, filter words are “those that unnecessarily filter the reader’s experience through a character’s point of view.”
Those words are (again, quoting directly from the blog):
- to see
- to hear
- to think
- to touch
- to wonder
- to realize
- to watch
- to look
- to seem
- to feel (or feel like)
- can
- to decide
- to sound (or sound like)
So, to give a quick example, a sentence using the filter word ‘heard’ might look like this:
John heard the siren.
Without the filter word, you could have this:
The siren blared.
Basically, you’re putting the reader in John’s shoes and deeper into the story.
Of course, you wouldn’t want to eliminate all of these words. And there are plenty of situations where you need them—where the wording would be too awkward otherwise.
But it’s a great place to start with editing, I think. It’s nothing if not easy. You can search for the words and just take a quick look at the sentence and see if it can be stronger or worded better.
When I knock out these easy fixes, it just helps me feel more confident about knocking out the rest of the mess. :)
Are there particular words that you look for? What words do you commonly use as fillers?
Interesting to see how you do it >:)
Cold As Heaven
My word is “just”.
This is fantastic advice. I will use it.
Elizabeth – Thanks for sharing your approach to editing. I’ve got favourite words, too. For some reason, I use the word “scoop” a lot. But I do always end up going back and editing for that one.
As far as fillers? I often have characters think for a moment, or for a long moment. Too often. There are other ways to share with the reader that someone’s trying to decide what to do without using that phrase so often…
Thanks for the tip on Wordle. I never heard of it before.
Morgan Mandel
http://morganmandel.blogspot.com
This is the part of editing I like least. I think because it’s so repetitive. If I’d learn to omit the words from the get-go I wouldn’t need to do it. Fat chance of that happening. I usually do this chapter by chapter, but I like the idea of getting them all at one time. I’ll try that. Thanks.
Thanks for the mention, Elizabeth. Sometimes I think those crutch words are like pirate sites — you get rid of one and two more take its place. I write deep POV, and try to make sure I keep the reader in the character’s head at all time. Too much filtering can create distance.
And then there’s the dialogue editing. Making sure the characters sound like who they are. I especially have to go cut tons of excess verbiage from my males.
Terry
Terry’s Place
Romance with a Twist–of Mystery
I’m editing my first manuscript and I looked for ‘that’ when I first started. Apparently I truly LOVE this word and don’t even notice when I’m using it, even now. I have yet to finish taking out the 770-odd ‘thats.’ Those are actually more overwhelming to me than any of my other filter words! After finding the first 200 or so, I decided to find them as I go along, then do another wide search for them. Thanks for the tips on some other words I hadn’t noticed!
That last tip is a good one. I need to look for more of those.
I try to avoid my favorite but they seek in anyway. It’s always a shock when I filter.
Another very helpful post, Elizabeth. Thanks.
Great post! My favorites are “that”, “just”, “gently” and “slightly”.
My other issue is head nodding/shaking. In the early drafts, my characters walk around like an army of bobble head dolls!
Oh, that filter word bit is good! (it’s all good, but that is the one that had never occurred to me). I DO look for my hedging words (I have a bad habit of ‘slightly’ or ‘very’ or ‘a little’) and I always give a look to the common linking verbs… (try to keep my ‘ings’ to a minimum). I will have to try this filter bit though. (i STILL will probably start with the BIG stuff, because otherwise this other would need to be done twice, but this is very helpful!)
Another very useful post I’ve bookmarked as a save. Thanks.
Great post! Thanks for helping make things a tad easier.
Lisa ~ YA Literature Lover
It’s interesting that you start wtih these ‘easy’ edits – I often leave them until the end, mainly because I am quite a sparse writer and my word count is never enough the first time, so it really goes against the grain to get rid of anything!
My characters are very fond of ‘wondering’ and it’s a struggle to stop them doing it!
Hi Elizabeth .. thanks for these pointers and the back reference to Terry’s site ..
I put my latest post into Wordle & it was such fun to see what it came up with ..
That was fun – cheered my day up – thank you!! Hilary
I have a bad habit of over using the words “laugh” and “smile”.
I need to look harder for overused words, although I do keep my Thesaurus handy when writing.
Cold As Heaven–I think for me, it’s just a matter of my tricking myself to feel more enthusiastic about editing!
sylestehwriter–You’re very welcome. :) ‘That’ is so easy to stick in and not something that really sticks out in the edits until we look for it.
Alex–Good luck with it!
Mary–Thanks!
Dawn–Ha! I’ve got bobble head stuff myself. :)
Teresa–I LOVE ‘just!’
Margot–Lots of thinking going on! Oh well, they have to figure that killer out!
Morgan–It’s pretty fun, and you end up with something that looks like art almost!
Hart–Sometimes I do have to do it more than once. And then sometimes I have to run through *another* search, which is my publisher’s style sheet of the way they like things written (in regards to numbers, a.m/p.m., etc.) It’s all pretty easy to knock out, though…and fairly thoughtless.
Carol–It’s a good way to knock it out. And it’s fairly mindless, so you *could* (if you wanted to multi task), actually do something else at the same time (books on tape come to mind.)
Linda–Thanks!
Terry–Ha! You’ve got a chatty group of males, it sounds like. :) Good point about dialogue editing.
Lisa–Hope it helps!
Sheila–Ha! Well, I have to add things in later, too. It’s sort of a psychological thing for me, I think, making me feel like I’m making big strides by getting these chores out of the way. Much of the 2nd part of my revision is adding stuff–I don’t put in description until the end, or much setting, etc. I add that all during revisions.
Hilary–It’s fun, isn’t it? Of course, the protagonists’ names always loom large in them, but past that, the results can be surprising.
Leanne–I do, too. :) Maybe we’re just happy people!
Diane–I love the thesaurus. I have an online version that I keep open.
Great post! These are so helpful. Thank you.
Oh, I have a few… ‘so’ ‘very’ and a slew of qualifiers – especially ‘seems’ – wouldn’t want anyone to be sure about anything!
You and I are sharing advice today. It ‘seems’ we are ‘so’ ‘very’ alike in this, perhaps, maybe, almost!
Definitely “just”. “Quite”… “still”. Those are all good words!
I’m guilty of using ‘Just’ and ‘So’ a lot.But it’s amazing how much nicer the story is without them.
What a great post. I am bookmarking this one. I am ashamed to say that I did not know about ctrl f and wordle (if I did I forgot) and will now use them as my editing companion.
I am preparing to edit my YA novel so your post came at a great time.
Thanks,
Maribeth
Thanks for the helpful post! I love “and”, consequently ending up with sentences that run too long with unnecessary details. I’m going to give Wordle a try to find out what my other favorite words are.
A big one for me is using the “I could” over and over, instead of direct action, such as I could hear, instead of I heard. And even that could be replaced with something more active!
Clarissa–Thanks so much!
Jan–I LoVE ‘seems!’ :) One of my favorites and it might be a hold-over from my enjoyment of Golden Age mysteries…which ‘seemed’ to use a lot of them.
Patricia–It does read better, doesn’t it?
Maribeth–Good luck with your edits! These are all things I didn’t know about until others mentioned them, so no worries. :) Hope they’ll help with your YA novel.
Tina–Good luck with it! You know, you could consider alternating between your favorite, long, “and” sentences and shorter ones. That would give your book an interesting sentence structure.
Elena–You’re right, it’s good to pull the reader into the story more and eliminate those barrier words. We all have them! I think it’s almost a crutch that helps us write the book…but then it reads so much better to take the crutches out.
I’ve compiled a list of words writers should rarely use, then I do the Control F thing. I was surprised I used the word QUICKLY well over a hundred times in Breakthrough. I took out all but three or four and didn’t loose anything from the story.
Kristen–I love those words! When I take them out, it does read better. But I LOVE writing them into a first draft. :)
Stephen–Some fast-moving characters in your book! Ha!