Checklists for Story Editing

The following advice was written for Short Story and novel editing, but the principles will also work for editing an Oratory or Dramatic Monologue script.


Checklists for Story Editing
By Diane Brown

Editing requires a lot of thinking. It is hard work. But necessary. Remember the principle of crowding and leaping. Crowd everything you possibly can into the first draft, then in subsequent drafts edit out all trivia and everything that doesn’t fit, leaping to only the words that add to the story.

After you have completed your first draft, do not start editing your 2nd-4th drafts until you have given the story/novel a breather. At least two weeks for a short story and six weeks for a novel. The reason is because you have been labouring over the writing for some time and this makes it difficult to judge it clearly. You need to distance yourself from the story, because unfamiliarity makes it much easier to pick up the red pen and start polishing or cutting your words. Do not be tempted to read your draft before the waiting time is up. Work on something else while you are waiting.

STRUCTURAL EDITING – SECOND DRAFT

Write a brief chapter-by-chapter synopsis of the book. Then ask these questions:

1. What is the story about? You should be able to describe the story in a couple of sentences. Eg: Man loves girl, man loses girl, man marries someone else.
2. Is the story logical? Could ordinary people believe it?
3. Is the beginning compelling? First sentence / first paragraph / first chapter?
4. Do you really need the first chapter? Does it have too much backstory and not enough action?
5. Is there a satisfying shape to the story? Is it going somewhere? Is there forward movement?
6. Does the pace vary?
7. Is there tension that rises and falls? Are tension points evenly spaced?
8. Is there a point in the middle when it feels flat?
9. What are the obstacles your characters must overcome?
10. Are there superfluous subplots which confuse the story rather than enhance it?
11. Is there a chapter where nothing happens? So why keep it?
12. Is the outcome dramatically satisfying?
13. Are all the loose ends tied off? Have you left a character dangling from a bridge without rescue?

Having answered these questions, set about rewriting, step by step. Make sure you are not just changing details but are really thinking about the important components: structure, theme, focus, characterization, point of view, resolution.

Your characters hold the story together.

1. Are the characters psychologically and emotionally believable?
2. Are the actions of characters credible? Would the recalcitrant character really jump into the river just because a stranger told him to?
3. Is each character’s voice authentic?
4. Do you need all the characters? Consider dropping one or merging a couple of thin characters together into one strong character.
5. Do you need to add a character? Is one character doing too much work in the story?
6. Is the main character being upstaged by a lesser character?
7. Are your characters sufficiently differentiated? Do they speak and act like individuals?
8. Are their names right for them? Spend time thinking about alternatives. Do not accept the first name you think of. Names go in and out of fashion. They also indicate the likely age of someone. Do you know a Hilda under 30? Or a Damian over 35?

Point of View and Voice

1. Is the point of view consistent and clear? Does the reader know whose head he is in at every stage?
2. Can the character possibly know what you say they can? If you are currently in a particular head, make sure you only describe what that character can know. For instance, if you are in the head of a teenager currently in his upstairs bedroom, he can’t know what his mother is doing in the room below (unless he can hear her vacuuming or on the telephone, etc). Even then he can’t know what she is thinking or feeling.
3. Have you considered using other points of view? Experiment a bit. I once read a novel told from the point of view of an unborn baby. All very well and at times it was convincing so I was ready to suspend disbelief. But when that baby was able to wander from his mother’s womb to see what was happening in the paddock next door it lost all credibility for me.
4. Does the story convey the mood you want to?
5. Is the mood appropriate to the characters?
6. Does the mood suit the voice of the narrator? For instance, if your characters are ‘poor white trash’ then a high literary style will seem out of place.

Tense

1. Does it convey the effect you want?
2. Would the present tense make the story more immediate?
3. Would a past tense make the telling easier and smoother?

Language – Dialogue and Narrative

1. Are you showing not telling?
2. Have you got excess words? Is every word doing new work? Can any thought be expressed with more economy? Is there anything pompous or pretentious or faddish? Are you hanging onto something useless just because you think it’s beautiful? Simplify. Simplify.
3. Have you got a good balance of dialogue and narrative?
4. Does the dialogue move the story forward?
5. Are you imparting excessive information in the dialogue? Don’t!
6. Does the dialogue sound natural?
7. Have you got speech attributions that interfere with the dialogue? Speech attributions include words like he responded, remarked, announced, etc.
8. If the lively dialogue dispenses with the he said, she said attributions, make sure it is clear who is speaking. The reader should not have to guess or count back to the previous attribution.

Seven Rules of Dialogue
1. Dialogue should be brief.
2. Dialogue should add to the reader’s present knowledge.
3. Dialogue should eliminate the routine exchanges of ordinary conversation.
4. Dialogue should convey a sense of spontaneity but eliminate the repetitiveness of real talk. (Remember, go for verisimilitude rather than truth.)
5. Dialogue should keep the story moving forward.
6. Dialogue should be revelatory to the speaker’s character, both directly and indirectly.
7. Dialogue should show the relationships among people.

THIRD DRAFT
Style

1. Never use a metaphor, simile, or other figure of speech which you are used to seeing in print.
2. Never use a long word when a short one will do.
3. If it is possible to cut a word out, always cut it out.
4. Never use the passive where you can use the active.
5. Never use a foreign phrase, a scientific word, or a jargon word if you can think of an everyday British equivalent.
6. Break any of these rules sooner than say anything outright barbaric.
7. Experiment with your syntax, cutting up long sentences or making short ones longer. Avoid monotony.
8. Watch out for repetition of words and ideas. There is nothing wrong with repetition done deliberately for effect. But beware of using the same word in consecutive sentences without being aware.
9. Avoid passive verbs.
10. Use active verbs.
11. Be parsimonious (sparing, stingy) with adjectives and adverbs.
12. Use concrete nouns, not abstract. (Not beautiful, but chocolate-brown eyes.)
13. Be specific in detail. (Not a tree, but a wind-swept pohutukawa.)
14. Read your work aloud and listen to the rhythm of the words.

FOURTH DRAFT
Copy Editing

Copy editing looks more at details mentioned, such as names of places, people, dates, grammar and spelling, etc.

1. Construct a time line of all events to make sure your story is consistent. If you start in summer then three months on it will be autumn, not spring. A man born in 1940 would not have been a soldier in the Second World War.
2. Flora and fauna should be appropriate to the area. You can’t have tropical plants growing outdoors in Dunedin, for instance.
3. Check character and setting details. Blondes should stay blonde. The town doesn’t grow twice the size overnight. When characters change, it should be a result of what happens to them, not through the writer’s laziness.
4. Your plots and subplots must be consistent. Check who is related to whom. Don’t have a brother and sister marrying, for instance.
5. Check chronology. Know what was happening in the world at the time you set your novel. People don’t live in a vacuum. They are affected by major events in the world. Know the popular books, films, songs, sports heroes of the day.
6. Check spelling and grammar several times, as errors can creep in at the editing stage. Spelling mistakes, typos, mistakes in idiom, unfashionable usages, all these characterize you as a writer controlled by language rather than controlling it. You present yourself as still in rompers. It is not a question of being clear. These revelations of self don’t usually obscure ideas, they obscure you. They reveal that you have not paid attention to your own writing and invite the reader to respond in kind. Check that the dictionary you have used (British or American) is applicable to the country in which you wish to get published.
7. Make detailed notes on where you need to make revisions.

Cut the Beginning

Anton Chekhov recommended throwing out the first three pages of a short story in any revision. I often ditch the first two stanzas of my poems. It seems to work like this: first you have to find the way into the story or poem. Once you are in, the writing comes easily. Later, you can afford to cut the beginning which may have been useful to you but is unnecessary to the reader.