Thing 10: two stages of my editing
so when I get a fic (or original story manuscript) back from a beta reader/editor I go through and make revisions in two stages.
The first stage I deal with all of the spelling/grammar/"this is not the word you wanted"/"this sentence makes no sense" stuff. This is the hardest part of editing for me because it highlights my weakness. Even though I know every writing has these kinds of issues with their stories and this is one part of what an editor does, it always leaves me in a bad place. So I usually just bite the bullet and go through all of those changes in one big sweep.
After that I have to set the document aside, sometimes for a couple days, and forget it exists. I do other things, other writing and generally recover.
The second part is much easier in some ways and definitely more fun for me. That's the part where I go through the comments about characterization or scene or flow. That's were I rewrite whole sections or try and make the character's motivations more clear. That's when I deal with the fact that my character sighs close to thirty times in one story, or that I know exactly what the cottage in the mountains looks like in my mind but never actually described it anywhere in the story. That part of editing is like a challenge for me, where I get to figure out how to work within the parameters I've already set for myself. When I do that kind of editing I can see the story get better, tighter, more fun to read.
So yes those are my two phases of editing.
The first stage I deal with all of the spelling/grammar/"this is not the word you wanted"/"this sentence makes no sense" stuff. This is the hardest part of editing for me because it highlights my weakness. Even though I know every writing has these kinds of issues with their stories and this is one part of what an editor does, it always leaves me in a bad place. So I usually just bite the bullet and go through all of those changes in one big sweep.
After that I have to set the document aside, sometimes for a couple days, and forget it exists. I do other things, other writing and generally recover.
The second part is much easier in some ways and definitely more fun for me. That's the part where I go through the comments about characterization or scene or flow. That's were I rewrite whole sections or try and make the character's motivations more clear. That's when I deal with the fact that my character sighs close to thirty times in one story, or that I know exactly what the cottage in the mountains looks like in my mind but never actually described it anywhere in the story. That part of editing is like a challenge for me, where I get to figure out how to work within the parameters I've already set for myself. When I do that kind of editing I can see the story get better, tighter, more fun to read.
So yes those are my two phases of editing.