Edit five is really pretty quick, because by this time I’m deep into another project and have no interest in finishing.
In the fifth edit I’m doing a broad over-view to make sure things fit. Are the issues creating a problem with flow? Does a particular scene work? Why did I put that description there, and would it be better in another place? Did I use the same description more than once? (Which I have done, oops) Are there any sections where I get bored, and want to go do something else?
This is the place where I work on fight scenes, to make sure they read quickly so that the readers don’t get bogged down in details. It’s basically a read-through, stopping at anything that catches my attention.
Then I send the book out to the beta readers again, if I want to overwhelm them. Then on to edit six.
I usually have this process going for a couple books at a time, so one (or five!) might be in Traige stage while another is in stage five and two are in the emotion-description edit stages. I try not to have more than one in each of those two categories, because otherwise nothing else gets accomplished.
October 21st, 2013 at 10:25 am
This is great! I just discovered your series on editing and am off to read “Edit 1 (Triage).” Thanks!
November 1st, 2013 at 8:19 pm
Thanks, Jess!
November 1st, 2013 at 8:22 am
This is such a cool series. I’m bookmarking this! Thanks Lauren!
November 1st, 2013 at 8:20 pm
Bookmarks are almost as good as chocolate. 🙂