Susan's Tags I love to share!
Line Editing Tips: My Step-by-Step Process
Developmental Editing versus Line-Editing
I think of developmental editing as working on the macro structure of your novel and making sure the spine or the character arcs and obligatory genre scenes are fleshed out. I also worked on the structure of my scenes during the developmental edit and will continue to hone my scene structures during the line editing phase. After I finish with my initial developmental editing pass with my manuscript I send it to critique partners for feedback and ask them just to focus on the developmental issues. I discuss how to incorporate their feedback in 15 Tips for Organizing and Implementing Feedback for Revisions. Micro changes at the paragraph and sentence level are line-editing as in going line by line through your manuscript to revise them.
5 Ways to Improve Sentence Variety
As I line edit my novel, I am writing blog posts to focus on aspects of writing I need to work on. For example, this filter word article : https://susanshiney.com/fumbling-around-with-filter-words/ .
In my last feedback session with critique partners, they mentioned my repetitive sentence structures. So true. My go to is complex sentences that start with a pronoun, in first person pov it tends to be I went...I walked...for every sentence, for 85,000 words, and that is a problem.
Five Things I Learned from Reading Alice Munro
An Analysis of the Short Story: Dance of the Happy Shades
Alice Munro is a Canadian short story writer that won the Nobel Prize in Literature in 2013. I remember hearing bits and pieces about what a gifted writer she was, but I never made the time to actually read her until my writing group decided to start analyzing short stories this year. Alice Munro is the first author we have been studying.
Fumbling Around with Filter Words
My name is Susan, and I am a filter word fanatic. At least in the initial drafts for getting the story out, I naturally insert them everywhere. Could you have this problem as well? Let's see...
First of all, what is a filter word?
I saw a man dancing in the street as the clock struck midnight.
Saw is the filter word, this kind of sentence has an easy fix of cutting the beginning and making it a more direct experience for your reader.
A man was dancing in the street as the clock struck midnight.
