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Larry Brooks on When Not To Edit
Oct. 21st, 2011 09:50 amLarry Books over at storyfix.com has been posting a series on novel planning for NaNoWriteMo (or however those letters get assorted; I get them wrong half the time) and offers some interesting thoughts on editing-as-you-write:
There are two flavors of editing.
The advice to avoid one of them as you write during November is absolutely spot-on accurate, with a couple of caveats. The other… will send you spiraling into that pile of rocks like a chorus of sirens.
The first type of editing, the one you should probably avoid, is copy editing. Literally correcting typos. Fixing grammar mistakes. Polishing your words. Trying to make your prose perfect.
The advice to avoid doing this is solid. Unless you are fast – which you might just be if you’ve planned your novel well, and completely… in which case you will have the time to fix all this copy-level stuff in the last few days of November. Or, if you get ahead of pace (1700 words per day), at the end of each writing day.
The other level of editing — the one you absolutely shouldn’t ignore – is story-level editing.
That is, seizing the opportunity to optimize story physics (dramatic tension, character empathy, vicarious reader experience) through tinkering with your scenes as you go (again, this only becomes valid advice if you’ve planned your story and are ahead of pace)… and, to make story-level course corrections
There are two flavors of editing.
The advice to avoid one of them as you write during November is absolutely spot-on accurate, with a couple of caveats. The other… will send you spiraling into that pile of rocks like a chorus of sirens.
The first type of editing, the one you should probably avoid, is copy editing. Literally correcting typos. Fixing grammar mistakes. Polishing your words. Trying to make your prose perfect.
The advice to avoid doing this is solid. Unless you are fast – which you might just be if you’ve planned your novel well, and completely… in which case you will have the time to fix all this copy-level stuff in the last few days of November. Or, if you get ahead of pace (1700 words per day), at the end of each writing day.
The other level of editing — the one you absolutely shouldn’t ignore – is story-level editing.
That is, seizing the opportunity to optimize story physics (dramatic tension, character empathy, vicarious reader experience) through tinkering with your scenes as you go (again, this only becomes valid advice if you’ve planned your story and are ahead of pace)… and, to make story-level course corrections
