Support for Indie Authors discussion

Hey guys,

I found a fun technique for editing that seems to be working well for me and I thought I'd share it.* My work in progress has 140 chapters, more or less. This round through it, I've scrambled the chapters up and given them generic names so I do not know what chapter I'm about to work next. It's got me darting all over the book and it's been a blast.

The benefit? I'm seeing each chapter individually instead of as a piece of a greater puzzle. It's helping me focus on making sure each chapter has a strong beginning and ending and also helps me see if the chapter is necessary or if it's truly just fluff.

*I now await a flood of comments stating that this is not a new idea, everyone is already doing it and I must be a schmuck and a novice for thinking this is worth sharing.

I have to agree with Alex on this one. I don't think it is laziness as much as loosing the flow and real idea of the book. I parch out the book to friends and ask them to read it and get back to me. This way they don't have to spend too much time reading and entire book, I get good feedback and there is no spoiler for the ending .

Alex wrote: "I don't like the idea of the time it will take to chop the book up and rearrange the chapters. "

It takes almost no time at all, if you've highlighted your chapter titles you'll see a list of them off to the left (on Word Starter 2010, anyway - I'm guessing other programs work similar). All you need to do is move the chapter titles up and down the menu and it will scramble them in your document.

S.T. wrote: "I don't think it is laziness as much as losing the flow and real idea of the book."

This isn't my last round of edits. It's the ninth of a planned twelve(+). So, on the next round when the book is reassembled, I'll be looking at the overall flow again.

I have not heard of this technique, but it makes some sense. Anything that brings fresh eyes to a project can help you see it better, and make better choices. Looking at chapters as independent units seems like a good thing to verify, in addition to the million other angles. In that respect, it's not too different from reading out loud, reading backward, and other similar "let's shake this up" methods.

140 chapters, though? Is this book really large? Or are the chapters really short?

A question for you, Dwayne. Will it cause your chapters to become disjointed?

Pamela wrote: "A question for you, Dwayne. Will it cause your chapters to become disjointed?"

I will make at least two more passes and will likely have some betas read it over again before publishing. That should ensure that everything still makes sense once I put it all together. I'm not making any grand changes to the major plot lines, I'm only looking at the subplots and smaller scenes that may or may be too distracting in the book.

Aaron wrote: "140 chapters, though? Is this book really large? Or are the chapters really short? "

Yes. And yes. The book is a bit over 300K right now. Some of the chapters are less than half a page, some stretch to about ten pages.

India wrote: "I'm going to add this as an edit pass on my next project :) Thanks, Dwayne. I can see how this would tighten up the A to Bs within the A to Z (if that makes sense)."

Yes! That actually puts it better than I did. I fear that as long as this book is, if chapters are not strong at the beginning or fizzle at the end, readers will give up. I want each chapter to pulse at both ends with no deep valleys in the middle of them.

Sounds like fun, good technique, and madness all in one :) Enjoy yourself!

Another hint I was given by an editor was to start at the back of the book and edit paragraphs going back to the front. It takes you out of the story so you see the mistakes easier. If you can't mix up the chapters that might help.

That sounds fun! I might actually try that when editing becomes too tedious.

Well, bless your heart and I'm glad you found a way to make editing fun. I couldn't do that for two reasons, one I'd need to know which chapter I was working on because if it ties into other chapters I need to make sure I could add or build off it(assuming I'm beta reading & editing) and two I just like to know what chapter I'm editing lol.

I really like this idea Dwayne.

My very last read through of an edit I read the chapters in reverse.

I already know that the story flows by that point, so I am only trying to catch errors. Also, you get tired while editing and the later the chapter, the more it can suffer.

C.B. wrote: "Also, you get tired while editing and the later the chapter, the more it can suffer."

I'm not sure this is true of me. I will say I go through something similar. I know that as I go through the book in order, the further into I get, the more anxious I am to be finished with that pass and get to the next.

I'm nearly halfway done with this pass and as it turns out about two-thirds of the chapters I've done have been ones that appear later in the book. It also turns out those are the ones I'm finding in the worst shape and need the most tuning. So, I can definitely see a benefit to your backward method.

I like this idea and am definitely going to try it. I find that I'll start trying to edit only for mechanics, but as I go along I find myself more focused on tweaking little plot snippets (since I'm following along with the story and I know where it's going), so I end up glossing over the omitted period or the improperly capitalized word.

Hi BA,

I do that, too. Once I think the book is ready to go, then I edit again and start at the back of the book. At this point, I am only looking for spelling and punctuation errors and not the flow. This really works because I find there are things that I and my editor missed.

I've not heard of this before, but I'm now trying something similar for (what I hope will be) my final round of edits. I know the flow, but this technique disrupts that and forces you to look closely at that chunk in isolation.

Couple of differences, I am reading a scene at a time, not a chapter. Rather than physically reordering the document I'm working my way through a summary list of scenes that I already had. I am starting from the back and rolling a die (I found a D20 from my D&D days) to step back a random number of scenes. Look at that one, then roll the die again and skip backwards that number of scenes. When I get to the top I start counting again from the bottom. Rinse and repeat until done.

Dwayne wrote: "Hey guys,

I found a fun technique for editing that seems to be working well for me and I thought I'd share it.* My work in progress has 140 chapters, more or less. This round through it, I've scra..."

Hey, Dwayne.

Don't let the comments get to you. I think what you shared is great. I have been doing this for the past 9 years in combinations with the following:
1. Do plain edit.
2. Use spell checkers like grammarly and ginger in addition to ms office word.
3. Have my text read as I edit and convert it into an audio book. This is great for pick up mistakes that could easily be missed.
4. Auto Crit is great for showing you over used word and stuff as it helps you tighten up your writing.
5. Editing your book by doing it back to front. Skipping chapters like for example doing 1, 11, 21 etc. will also help.
6. Converting your book to ebook form and then reading it like an ebook will also help.
7. Don't underestimate the power beta readers. They pick up things that are not working or just wrong from the get go. But please make sure that they read the gender you are writing in.
8. Having a live editing session is fantastic.
9. Print your pages out and edit them using both visual and audio methods.
10. After a book editing session. Take a break for at least a week. Do something else. Have fun. Then get back to editing again.

Hope this helps my fellow writers edit better and remember when someone writes something that has been done before, keep the ugly logged away and share something that you can bring to the table that is uplifting and help full.

1. Always!
2. I try not to rely too heavily on spell checkers, but I do at least a couple of brushings with them.
3. Have not really gotten into doing audio books, yet.
4. Heh. I'm already super sensitive about this one.
5. Yep. More or less what I'm doing with this round.
6. I kind of do something like that. Every time I start a new edit, I change the font. It really helps me see mistakes when the whole thing looks "different".
7. I hope you mean "genre". *grin* That's tough 'cause I am not a genre writer. For this work, though, almost all the betas were folks who had read some of my previous works and enjoyed them.
8. Never heard of such a thing.
10. Breaks always ruin my momentum and often cause me to abandon projects. I can't do that with this book. I need to get it done.

For number 8. What I do is sit down with a beta reader and then we discuss the chapters as we work through them. It is a fun way to edit your work. It is very productive and I find that I get a heck of a lot done in a short while.

Thanks for sharing this. I'm currently in the process of proofing and I'll give it a try, thanks :)

I agree with what some others have said - taking a break always 'resets' my head. I come back and all of a sudden I'm thinking WHAT was I WRITING?! :)

So, that round of editing ended a couple of days ago and seemed a success. The first few chapters feel tighter, now.

For those wondering - putting it all back in order has not been an issue!

And for this round of edits, I hunt down all those pesky words that are sometimes overused or plain useless - that, just, and, very, then...

Inevitably, I find things that slipped through on every edit. I've been a professional editor, so I do most (not all) of my editing. One thing I do that I have not noticed in this thread is--I print hard copy of a chapter and submit it to a writers group to which I belong. I invite any and all criticism. This seems to be particularly useful for the first four chapters of a book.

Can I just add [another] positive note here:
I can't think of the last book I read that DIDN'T have something that was missed. I'm counting everything from a work by Charles Dickens (heavens, those have been edited a lot...) to the latest NYT bestseller.

I, too, see mistakes in everything from books to magazines. lol

Just to add more positive notes, I completed my last round of editing last week inspired by this technique. As I mentioned in my earlier post I didn't reorder the document but I did randomize the order I read it in, and I felt it was of great benefit to focus just on each scene in isolation, ignoring its fit in the overall flow.

Dwayne wrote: "Hey guys,

I found a fun technique for editing that seems to be working well for me and I thought I'd share it.* My work in progress has 140 chapters, more or less. This round through it, I've scra..."
I do that as well and for the same reason: you have to see what is REALLY there not what you KNOW is there

Ian wrote: "I felt it was of great benefit to focus just on each scene in isolation, ignoring its fit in the overall flow. "

Exactly. This project of mine is so huge it's kind of hard to see the scenes as individuals when read from start to finish as it all kinda runs together, in a sense. This way I was able to focus on smaller parts of the novel and it really helped me see places where dialogue went on a little too long (or - even worse - was completely pointless), things were over-explained, etc.

W. wrote: "I do that as well and for the same reason: you have to see what is REALLY there not what you KNOW is there "

Yes. When read in order, I know what's coming up in each chapter and my mind flows right along with the story. Mixing things up forced me to focus and say, "Okay, where am I? What's happening?" and helped me see where the story was weak and needed some tweaking.

It's a good idea. My mind is having trouble processing it though