5 Best Pieces of Editing Advice

As a writer, I find the editing process a royal pain in the you-know-what. My wish is to one day write perfect prose in the first draft. No need for spell check or the grammar tool in my Word doc. Just sheer perfection. Every word a gem.

Like that's ever gonna happen.

Actually, I've come to terms with this. After you've been rejected by superagents, editors, magazines, and ezines as many times as I have, you start to take away a few things from the experience. I've discovered a common thread in some rejections and have tried to use them to my advantage. Hopefully, this strengthens my writing. I have to admit I do find myself correcting things that in the past I might not have caught. Editing has become a bigger part of the writing process for me whether I like it or not.

Today, I received a request from an agent to look at a partial for my young adult novel, Bayou Myths. Two years ago, I would have been thrilled, excited, bouncing off the walls. I still feel that way, but I'm a little more contained about it. I know the pitfalls of being too wound up about this. Writing is incredibly subjective. We all know how easy it is for an agent to read a few pages and then pass on it altogether. Pessimistic or realistic--call me what you will. However, as I started to prep the partial request, I tried to remember the best writing advice I'd ever been given in the hopes I've applied it to my manuscript.

1. Economy of Words--less is more. Just say what you need to say. Hmm...sounds like a song or something.

2. Cut your ly words. You probably don't need them.

3. By page 100, the stakes should be clear. This advice came from a super agent, and I really try to abide by it.

4.  Its and It's--yeah, I finally figured this one out. I know, I know.

5. Leave out the back story or find a way to weave it in later. This gets your reader to ask questions, and hopefully stay with the book.

These are the things that really stick out for me.

What's the best piece of editing advice anyone's every given you?

Short Story Structure

This is also posted on Travels With Kaye.

Members of the Short Mystery Fiction list started a discussion recently about the structure of the short story. So much has been said and written about the structure of a novel, even whole books devoted to mystery, thriller, and suspense structure, but I hadn't ever paused to consider the structure of the short story before that.

But I'm sure all short story writers should!

The first posting gave the opinion that short stories have two forms: vignette and mini-novel. The vignette, Graham Powell contended, has its action in the same place and it all happens at the same time. The mini-novel would give room for more character and plot development.

Mark Troy gave his opinion that a vignette is an expanded scene/sequel combination with the sequel being the most important part. He considers them incomplete and not as effective as the other form. Although he says he wouldn't use the term mini-novel, saying any effective story of whatever length should have protagonist/antagonist, setting, theme, 3-act plot, conflict. He said he does something that I think I will start doing: he marks the places where the acts begin and end, and marks the crisis, where the antagonist appears, where the theme is stated. I would imagine I would have to give a story at least two readings to do all that!

Graham answered that he thought his definition of a vignette story might be a 1-act tale and the other a 3-act story.

Fleur Bradley chimed in with the opinion that the vignette are stories that are like a fly-on-the-wall experience for the reader. Almost like an overheard conversation.


Then Jack Hardway/Dan said there IS a conventional short story form that has five parts, although many mystery stories don't contain all five. They are found most often in literary stories. When asked, he gave these two references:
http://www.wvup.edu/mberdine/Shakespeare/ShakDramStruc.htm
http://at-lamp.its.uiowa.edu/virtualwu/images/uploads/Writing_Fiction.pdf
If you click on them, you'll see they both reference a Freytag Pyramid. The first states the five parts as exposition; complication and development; crisis or turning point; falling action; catastrophe. It goes on to talk about other structure points, too.

The second reference says the five parts are exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and denouement.




Wikipedia uses these latter terms for its illustration (I hope it's not illegal to copy wiki illustrations).

Then Chris Rhatigan posted this statement: A creative writing teacher explained another good five-part structuring technique for short stories similar to the one Jack discussed: 1) Action 2) Background 3) Development 4) Climax 5) Ending. One thing I like about it more--especially as a crime fiction writer--is that the reader gets dropped right in the middle of the story, then you get into the history of the characters, setting, etc. So in this case the piece would have two sets of rising and falling action.


I think I like this one best of all, at least for a mystery story. I'd love to hear from other short story writers and readers on this subject! Do you writers think you use any of the above structure devices? Do you readers see them?