As we progress through the steps of the Red Pen Editing cycle, we are gathering more and more editing tasks that will need addressing once we reach step 8: 'Time to use the red pen!' We have a way to go yet - and steps 5 and 6 may result is our having to do some major redrafting. So, what are we worrying about at this stage of the Red Pen Editing...
In step 4 of my Red Pen Editing cycle, we 'Study the Content'. The red pen does not make an appearance until step 8; we are still at the thinking / reading / listening / planning stage. Ideally, you ask a friend to read the piece aloud and you listen, pretending to be your target audience, but with your mental checklist in mind: Does it start well? Do I like the title? Does the...
Editing is a systematic process: finding flaws and fixing them. In step 1-3 of my Red Pen Editing cycle, I draw attention to the need to create distance from your writing, and to be in the right frame of mind, before you even think about picking up your red pen to start editing. I also suggest, at step 8 'Time to use the red pen!', that you challenge yourself with the hardest editing...
On 6 April, my blog post Learn Scrivener Fast urged you to take up the offer of free video training, courtesy of Joseph Michael. Joe's second video, Organising Your Writing For Complete Control explains how the Corkboard can give you an overview of your novel. The corkboard: revealing your novel's structure I enjoyed Joe's video, but the benefits of the corkboard feature were not news to me. I blogged about this last Autumn when...
On my new Recommendations page, I recommend - inter alia! - Joan Dempsey and her various courses for writers, having attended her Revise with Confidence course and being mightily impressed with her material and style of delivery. Joan also publishes a free monthly newsletter to which I subscribe. The March issue included an interesting - and new to me - editing tip: use a different font so as to shift your...
A week has flown by and I've been busy 'editing' the Admiral's memoir. Having tackled the structure - and awaiting instruction - I'm now reading for real, fixing punctuation and typos as I pass, and annotating the text with my queries. To provide my Admiral with a taste of how the finished book might appear, I compiled the material that I've worked on so far. There are so many formats to choose from: Kindle I chose the...
I can't remember the last time I edited a book written by someone else. Mostly, I write or mentor writers so that they can edit their own masterpieces. However, I have a friend - let's call him the Admiral - and, the other day, he twisted my arm and persuaded me to help him to complete his memoir; it's the only thing left on his bucket list. I received an electronic copy of the manuscript, saved in Pages, and...
I love learning. I'm addicted to courses and I've just recently signed up for a 'Revise with Confidence' course with Joan Dempsey. I'm enjoying every minute. In my Red Pen Editing cycle, there's a place for drilling down to word level - it's in step 9. But with Joan's method - she recommends a process called translation - and she challenges me to go deeper still. Marvellous! The task is to select one...
There were several occasions during the first 40K of NANO when I invited my main character to 'walk this way'. Instead of populating the outline I had so carefully prepared ahead of time, she was determined to tread her own path. Was I relieved when the name of Ballycombe-by-the-Sea at last crossed her lips? Keeping track of the revised storyline might have been a nightmare in Word - been there before, got the...
I have a new hat, one to keep the Madeira sun off my face. If you want to see it, you'll need to become my friend on Facebook. Right now, I'm toying between putting on my macro editing hat - the one I use to 'see the big picture' - or my micro editing hat - so I can seek out those insects in the grass. And there's yet another hat:...
