Samhain Publishing Ltd Weblog

All about self-editing

When I got my reminder last week that it was my turn again to post a blog, I couldn’t think of anything other than things that have already been done. Query letters, professionalism, submissions….and I think I was even the one who wrote two of them. Nice, huh? So I got to thinking about it and I decided that I needed to do one on self-editing. And no, doing a Spell Check doesn’t even begin to cover what you need to do to prep your manuscript for submission. Keep in mind that when you submit something, the cleaner and more polished it is, the more it is going to be looked at by the editor in a positive light. Don’t even ask me what we think when we see something full of grammar mistakes, word misusage, punctuation errors… The list goes on. The easiest way to do this is to number them, so, well, that’s what I’m going to do. =-)

1. Commas and names. I’m going to use an oldie but goodey example to show you the most common mistake I see. In conversation, a comma must always come before the proper name of someone. “I ate, Dad.” See? But look what happens without the comma, “I ate Dad.” Now of course, every lacking comma isn’t that glaringly obvious and doesn’t change the meaning of the sentence that strikingly. But it’s a great example to help you remember that those pesky little commas really are needed.

2. Semicolons and colons. Ninety-nine percent of these can go bye-bye. Most of the time semicolons are misused, and only a comma is needed. In cases where you have a lot of semicolons, all properly used, it’s better to add a conjunction and a comma, or to simply split it into two separate sentences. Trust me, you don’t have to jam everything into one sentence. :) Semicolons can really break up the flow of reading, which can be distracting for the reader, and the last thing you want is for your reader to get distracted.

Ninety-nine percent of the colons I see are misused. The rules for when to use colons are clear and concise and rigid. They are only to be used for introducing a list (You will need to get several things to make lasagna: ricotta cheese, pasta, spaghetti sauce, ground beef), introducing an extract or quotation which follows an introductory sentence (As one of my favorite people, Tera K said: “The rules for when to use colons are clear and concise and rigid), the salutation of a formal business letter (Dear Mr. Scott: ), when telling time (4:00), to precede an extended explanation, or to precede the restatement of an idea (The book was awful: it lacked proper grammar and had poor characterization).

3. Thought tags. These are a really simple one to get rid of. I’m sure you all know what these are, too. I wonder if it will rain tomorrow, she thought. Simple fix, just drop the “she thought”. And if you want to take it one step further and knock out a filter word, which I’ll talk about next, you could change the whole thing into “Will it rain tomorrow?” This makes for a much deeper POV. The person reading the book should know who is doing the thinking and having the thoughts. If they don’t, then they’re just not paying attention, which means you didn’t engage them enough, or you just have constructed the scene very well and you’ve left the reader confused. Either way, you have a problem. Which means your potential editor will have a problem.

4. Filter words. This is something that I didn’t even know about until I worked for Samhain. I always knew about telling vs. showing, as anyone who writes or edits should be well –versed in. Imogen Howson sent me a handy dandy list of words and explanation for what filter words are, and I can’t think of a single one of my authors who knew what a filter word was when I started editing them. But they all know now! Right guys? =) Some examples of filter words are: felt, knew, thought, decided, wondered, considered, realized, saw, heard. Those are the most common ones I see. In the majority of cases, these words can be “filtered” out and the sentence rewritten to make it stronger, more engaging, and bring the reader deeper into the character’s POV (Oops, a serial/Oxford comma there. For clarity, of course). Take for instance the sentence “I felt sick.” That’s pretty blah and non-engaging, right? Yeah. Let’s take the word “felt” out and reword it, which will force us to add some pizzazz to it. “Nausea rolled through my body, the bile rising in my throat. The scene was gruesome.” See how much better that is? =) I’ve been reading a lot of Patricia Cornwell lately, can’t you tell? Here are some sample sentences. Post your revisions in the comments!
I saw a flash of light.
I heard a crash.
I wondered if he loved me.
I thought I loved him.
I knew it was time.
I felt sad.

5. Name usage in dialogue. I want you to think back to the last conversation you had, preferably with someone you’re close to, as is the case with most heroes and heroines in books. =) Now that you’re thinking about that conversation, I want you to tell me how many times you said this person’s name. How many? Maybe once? That’s what I thought. When a character calls another character by their name multiple times in a conversation, it feels awkward and unnatural. Especially when it’s between love interests. Example of bad dialogue:
“Hey, Mark, how was your day at work?” (Note my comma before the proper name. :])
“Hey, Susie Q. It was great. Yours?”
“Oh, the same old same old. Work was pretty boring.”
“Oh, Susie, that stinks.”
“I know. So where do you want to go for dinner, Mark?”

I could go on and on like this, but I think you guys get the point I’m trying to make. Proper names in dialogue should be used rarely, and only for clarification or in the proper context. Introducing people, a new scene, people who don’t know each other very well… I know when I talk to my husband, I don’t say, “Hi, Myles, how was your day?” I say “Hey, hun, how was your day?” See the difference, the familiarity? You want your dialogue to be as flowing and natural as possible.

I know all of this is a heck of a lot to take in, that’s why I’m actually shortening it. =) Think of how much we editors have to know and retain! At the bare minimum you should be looking for these things before you submit your manuscript to anyone. You can’t rely on a critique partner to look for this stuff, and it’s not particularly what they’re there for anyway. And don’t forget stuff like double spaces, three periods instead of an ellipses, hard tabs, two hyphens instead of an emdash, etc.