Writers tend to get into the mindset of get idea- develop plot – write 85,000 words – rinse and repeat.
The mere suggestion that your novel is not perfect causes most writers to assume a fetal position and commence thumb sucking. The more experienced finally understand, although secretly we often think arrogantly to ourselves our rough draft is better than most people’s final draft.
So, we begin to go through our novels, chipping away. “yeah, ugly sentence. Let me fix that. Okay, now my book is perfect.”
Once we FINALLY understand editing, it’s a reluctant, “okay, let me do this” thing. Then we finally see the results of our labor, and we know – you’ve got to edit and rewrite.
So, how much editing is too much? How do you know when you’re done?
Well, it’s almost never done.
When the story starts to suffer, you’ve done too much. The first thing you have to understand is that there’s a target word count for every genre. You have to stay within that word count.
Then you have to understand structure, and I’ll be writing about that soon.
Then you have to understand conflict.
I know these are WRITING issues, but in truth, rewriting is still writing! As you edit, you’ll often replace words, reshape sentences. I know that since I’ve got a background with some Yiddish, So, sometimes I’m having to move my sentences around to a grammatically correct structure.
You’ll do a rewrite for structure. Often, simple dragging of scenes around, then cutting a scene here, adding a scene there.
You’ll do a rewrite for characterization. You’ll do one for verbs – no kidding, a complete edit for verbs.
You may find that as you’re doing one edit, you’re automatically doing another. The final point is, when you think you can’t do another edit, it’s time to do one more.
