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Thirteen Things Final Line Edits (FLEs) Taught Me About Writing
Samhain writers, get out your rotten tomatoes and let them fly. I am the person at Samhain you most love to hate. I am the fussy, picky, pedantic, acid-tongued Final Line Editor Angie James inflicted on you in a moment of unadulterated sadism. (She’s proud of it too. Look at her buffing her nails as I type that.) I will question your spelling, your punctuation and word choices. I will point out the plot thread you dropped in chapter six and never picked up again. I will tell you when your hero crawled into bed wearing the heroine’s Jimmy Choos and the dog’s socks. I know what the weather was like in London in February 1815, and I’ll be delighted to show you the contemporary sources to prove it. I am all your editorial nightmares rolled into one.
But the interesting thing is how much doing FLEs has taught me…as a writer. It’s always easier to spot the flaws in somebody else’s work. Then, if you’re very lucky, the next time you open your current writing project, you’ll realize you make the very same mistakes. With that in mind, and because the judge said I need to make reparations to my vics—er, because I believe in sharing the good stuff, here’s a Thursday Thirteen of writing lessons learned in the FLE trenches:
1. Don’t judge your FLE by their emails. Nobody can edit themselves, especially when they’re writing in a rush.
2. Burn your thesaurus. The more exotic and obscure the word, the more likely you are to use it wrong—and piss off your readers in the process.
3. Homonyms kill. Every time you use “meat” when you want your characters to meet, a librarian loses his or her wings. Librarians hate that. To prevent it from ever happening again, they will remember your name and warn all their friends not to buy your books.
4. Kissing cousins are just as bad. “Allusive” is not the same as “elusive”, and neither word bears any relationship to “illusion”—except as they apply to your delusions of literary grandeur.
5. Read your book aloud. Often. At the very least it will keep you from writing dialogue nobody can wrap their mouth around. Some combinations of consonants and vowels look good on the page but are literally impossible to say. Frequent readings should also tip you off to skipped words, missing clauses and run-on sentences.
6. Read each character’s dialogue by itself. This helps you keep your characters’ speech consistent throughout the book. You don’t want your frantic-with-brains professor hero suddenly sounding like he flunked second grade unless there’s a good narrative reason for it and you’ve prepped your readers for the shift.
7. Too many commas spoil the prose. They’re like trees growing in the reader’s path. One is a landmark. Too many and you lose the trail. Check all sentences with more than three commas. Chances are they would work better broken into two or more sentences.
8. The reverse is also true. Too little punctuation deprives readers of the tools needed to make sense of your words. Reading aloud helps here too. Where do you pause for breath or sense? Punctuate. Rinse. Repeat.
9. Parents love their homely children as much as the pretty ones. Writers are the same. It’s hard to admit your “baby” has any kind of problem, even one that’s an easy fix. When some kind soul points up your fictional child needs a bath, don’t argue the kid has the literary equivalent of sensitive skin. Find the right soap.
10. Readers, writers and editors all look for different things in a book. All measures are equally valid—unless they prevent you from writing your next one.
11. Familiarity breeds reader comfort. For example, the very same elements that drive New York published vampire writers insane about the TV series Moonlight (the Rick Springfield lookalike star, the Forever Knight tropes, the sentimental plots) are the same things the fans seem to want.
12. Some story elements are so ingrained in reader psyches they will always find an audience: secret babies, high school sweethearts, serial killers, dragons, vampires, shapeshifters, ménage.
13. Writing a book is hard. Finishing one, even harder. Celebrate your achievement, but don’t be afraid of making it better. No matter how many changes your editors ask you to make, it will always be your book.
(Tossing out the rotten tomato)
Thanx for the advice, Jean Marie.
These are thirteen very valid and noteworthy points. Especially the part about finding different soap.
But, please, don’t make me remove all those commas. I, love, them, so.
Jess
(carefully swiping tomato from forehead and wondering if it’s too late to set up a pot of red sauce)
I would never make anyone remove their commas. I couldn’t. Angie would kill me. I just say, quite honestly, that I’m confused. Or note the sentence seems to go on…and on…and on… What happens after that is between the writer and his or her editor. Accepting crit without trying to justify myself was a hard lesson to learn. Sometimes I still sieze up if a comment seems particularly wrong-headed or unfair. Not all critical comments are valid, but even the bad ones can be a tip-off to reader issues.
And sometimes I just don’t get what the critiquer is driving at. For all the standardized tests we took over the years, no two people speak the same language, even when they think they do.
But that’s part of what makes writing so interesting. At least for me. :-)
Cheers and best wishes,
Jean Marie
Oh, nothing drives me crazier than missplaced words. I can kind of understand misspellings, because your eye sometimes sees the word correctly, especially if you’ve read and read and RE-read your manuscript a hundred times. But ‘loose’ is something not tight, and ‘lose’ is the opposite of ‘find’.
Weight, wait, affect, effect, sell, sale, its and it’s, to, too and two. Reach out from the page and smack me across the face when they’re used improperly. Especially over and over.
So I won’t throw a tomato, because I’m right (write!) there with ya.
No tomato from this tomato. All stages of the revision/editing process only go to make an author’s book stronger…and less likely to de-wing a librarian.
I’m a strong proponent of reading each book aloud for all the reasons mentioned above, and my editor tells me dialogue is one of my strengths. Plotting—now that’s another problem all together, but with the proper editorial direction and massive revisions, even those issues can be resolved.
I particularly like number #13, Jean Marie. I remember this one every time I start a new book, every time I have to edit one and most especially during FLEs.
Love the whole list. Thanks.
What nice comments! Thanks, Jess, Christine, Marie-Nicole and Isabo.
Christine, there’s a wonderful document in the FLE group files called “Humbling Homonyms and Confusables”. I think it would be a good thing to share with the AuthorChat group. (Note to self: ask Angie about that soonest.)
Don’t have a cure for plot holes, Marie-Nicole, but I do have a trick to check continuity. Read the book twice in quick succession. The first one can be a slow read, in bits and pieces if needed. But the second one should be done in as close to a single sitting as possible. Something about the combination of slow and fast makes continuity errors stand out like beacons. Who knows, it might help for plots too.
Glad the list rang true, Isabo. I wish more writers could spend time behind the editor’s desk. Not because I think they need to become editors, but to alleviate some of their fears about what’s happening to their baby. We all in this together—and that’s a good thing.
Cheers and smiles,
Jean Marie
I learn something new with each edit I go through. I even catch some things in my new writing that maybe won’t come up in edits next time lol.
Thank you for that wonderful TT. As someone with a book currently undergoing FLE, I don’t know if I’m hoping you have it or that you don’t. Either way – I look forward to getting it back with the FLE’s comments. I always learn something from them.
Actually, you sound like the perfect FLE.
Thank you for putting one in our ears.
Thank for the comments, Natasha, Denise and Bernita. Whenever I blog at Samhain, I’m always a little nervous no one’s going to show. The old “What if you gave a party and nobody came” syndrome. :-)
Natasha, I keep hoping I’ll make fewer writing mistakes after repeated edits, but a NY-pubbed friend says writers shouldn’t beat themselves up about it. After fifty books, she still has to check herself for mistakes she made in her first ones.
At least she knows to check!
Don’t worry about being afflicted—er getting me in the FLE draw, Denise. If I’m your FLE you’ll know it. Not because my style is any different or any better, but because I always write a thank you to the writer. I do it for two reasons: 1) they deserve it, and 2) it holds me accountable for every comment.
Bernita, I’m sooooo far from perfect as an FLE. But I cherish the fact you thought I might be.
Cheers and smiles,
Jean Marie
what an insightful and amusing list! I’m off to burn my thesaurus. :)
Thanks, Rebecca! Cheers and smiles, Jean Marie
If there’s an mistake in my book, I’d much rather have a FLE see it —and give me a chance to correct it—than have my readers see it. I love having a FLE, AND a terrific editor like Linda.
Besides, by the time the book get’s to the FLE, I’ve read the darn thing maybe twenty times, during the writing and preliminary editing….and my eyes are refusing to focus on a single sentence!
I’m with you on all points, Jan Alyce. I can’t FLE my own stuff at all, because I’ve read (and written) it too many times. I so need someone else’s eyes!
Cheers and best wishes,
Jean Marie