Tag: structural editing

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The Stages of Editing

When I tell people that I'm a freelance editor, it's quite common for people to assume that I spend my days just looking at spelling, punctuation, and grammar. I don't get this reaction from just the general public either. Many writers, especially new writers, also make this assumption. However, editing is so much more.

Editing falls into three main categories:

  • developmental, which encompasses the rewriting process and critiques;
  • copyediting, with the line-edits and, of course, the famous punctuation-and-grammar concept;
  • and proofreading, which occurs after a manuscript is typeset for publication, looking for any errors that were either missed or introduced during the typesetting process.

Each stage is necessary for the production of a publishable book.

The initial drafting of a story is a solitary practice. However, during the different editing phases, it's vital for every writer to seek out those extra sets of eyes to provide objective input. The who and the when will depend entirely on what stage your manuscript is at.

The stages of editing described in this post are the same for both traditional and self-publication. It's just the players that change.

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The Traditional 3-Act Structure: Part 1

Most writers have a natural instinct when it comes to story structure and plot. We do so much reading, or we see so many movies, that understanding pacing is just part of our makeup. Even new writers, still learning their craft, have this instinct.

We know that if we have action scene after action scene, eventually we need to have a calm scene that gives us the chance to breathe. We know that there needs to be those moments of reflection, looking at what has happened. But if we spend too much time dwelling on the past, we'll need an explosion to get things going again.

And there will also be those moments when a character decides to risk all and just go for it—damned the consequences.

As writers, we follow a story structure with the instinct of knowing where the rise and fall in the action needs to be. However, when something is off in the pacing of a story, that's when all the discussions come out about one of countless number of story structure models out there and the analytical tools associated with it.

As a developmental editor, it is my job to look at story structure and pacing on the macro and micro levels. If pacing is off, for whatever reason, I delve into the mechanics of a manuscript and tear that structure apart to find out why things don't work. Much of what I do on this particular front is instinct, simply because every story is different. However, there are some commonalities within the beats of a story, which has given rise to models like the traditional 3-act structure.

In today's post, I want to start breaking down what is involved in the traditional 3-act structure. There are three posts involved in this series, with each post focusing on a different act.

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The Traditional 3-Act Structure: Part 2

Much of what a writer does when crafting a story is based on instinct, weaving in the rise and fall of action. But when looking at story structure specifically, one need to recognize that every story is different. There is no strict formula that can be applied.

Tools like the traditional 3-act structure are only diagnostic tools, designed to help us understand why something might not be working.

In the first post of this Traditional 3-Act Structure series, we introduced the importance of this structure as a whole, and began breaking it down. We looked at the first act (The Setup) and the first point of No-Return. Today, let's get into the nitty-gritty of Act 2.

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The Traditional 3-Act Structure: Part 3

There is a natural instinct that exists among most writers about where to put the tension beats in, where things need to change, and when the reader needs a break from all the action. That is because most writers read a lot, or watch a lot of movies, or... Well, we just spend a lot of time in a fictional world somewhere. When we do that, we start to see the patterns, even if we don't understand the formula being applied to those stories.

The traditional 3-act structure is just one of countless number of models out there on story structure. Over the past few posts, we have been breaking down the traditional 3-act structure into the nitty-gritty, getting to the root of why it works the way it does.

In Part 1 of this series, we examined the elements of act 1, including the inciting event and the first transition point, what I called the first point of No-Return. In Part 2, we looked at the first half of act 2, heading into the midpoint, and we discussed what is meant by the A-story and the B-story.

In the final installment of this series, we're going to look at the final transition point for the manuscript and what the working components go into act 3.

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Is my story too short?

Normally, when I have a conversation with someone about story length, it's because the writer has written an opus that needs to be trimmed down. This is often the result of too much backstory or unnecessary word building and character description that only distracts from the story as a whole. Trimming a story down is where I'm the queen. (Okay, I'll admit it... I overwrite my own stories in early drafts. I've developed the skills and techniques needed to trim word counts quickly, bringing a story back in line with where it should be.)

However, occasionally, I find myself having a conversation about how a story is actually too short based on the elements presented. There might be too many named characters. Or the setting plays too big of a role for the word real estate available. Or perhaps, there were too many twists and turns and not all the threads were adequately explored.

This is more often seen in shorter story forms, like short stories and novellas, and trying to explain the minimum word count needed to do a story justice is not an easy concept to fathom.

In episode 12.27 of the podcast Writing Excuses, Mary Robinette Kowal introduced an equation that she uses to work out how long a story should be based on the number of characters, number of locations and the number of MICE elements (and NO, I'm not talking about those little things that go squeak, squeak, or those devices that we click repeatedly when the computer refuses to respond). So, let's get to it and break the mathematics down.

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