How I Edit

I’ve spent the week editing Assignment Day. Like I said previously, the manuscript was in better shape than I thought.

That doesn’t mean it’s anywhere near perfect, though. When I finished the story last year, I created a new document where I put a list of bullet-pointed notes about things I needed to fix. Some of them are small, while others require a little more work and even moving sections or scenes around.

One big example was the ending. I wasn’t happy with the how the original climax of the story worked out, feeling I’d missed the mark by quite a bit. I fixed that in the previous edit so that this time around I was able to see what was still not quite right. Hopefully I plugged the holes and it will come off better to the reader.

Here are some examples of other things I listed:

• More examples of how deeply people are addicted to X

• Introduce the Y concept earlier in the story

• A helping out B after being mad at him needs to be better explained

• What about Z?

That last one came to me yesterday when I was out for a run. I realized I hadn’t explained what happened with one of the secondary characters who disappears mysteriously halfway through the book. There’s another plug for how exercise helps my writing.

I still have more bullet points to address and get the manuscript in the shape I want it. I expect a few more days of this before moving on to the next step: reading it out loud to myself.