X is for Editing

Alphabet of Accountability

Editing is part of writing. Some people edit relentlessly to the point of never finishing while others hardly edit at all and call it done. Somewhere in the middle of those two is the best kind of editing. Some people love to edit more than write. Some people abhor editing.

X is for editing because deleting is one of the most important parts of editing. Imagine if an architect only drew a building based on his ideas, then didn’t bother to go back over the rendition to see if the math worked, the beams were in the right places, the rooms had enough closets, or enough windows! What if the architect forgot to add in a space for elevators for a skyscraper. That building would either collapse or be never used.

Photo by Izuddin Helmi Adnan on Unsplash

I wouldn’t say I love editing more than writing the prose, but I always love the process of revising to the point of seeing sentences and paragraphs deleted that no longer serve the story. Those lines were created as scaffolding to build the rest of the story around them, but they no longer need to be there. Sometimes, the hardest part is when the line is really good, maybe even funny, but it’s got to go. I have to be accountable to the story as a whole. The book needs to be tight so the reader isn’t reading fat, but chewing on the muscle instead. And all that gristle of backstory that I had to write in order to know what my character’s motivation was, time to spit it out.

I like to think that the parts I delete, the parts that I really wanted to keep in but knew they needed to go, those parts are now my little secrets between me and the character. The reader will hear only the whispering, get the vibe, and the essence.

Editing is a big part of being accountable to your story. It’s part of accountability because without it, the story would be full of tangents, unnecessary words, backstory, and commas that slow down the story’s intention. Make your story the best story it can be by putting it on a healthy prose diet.

If you do one thing, do this: do a search for all the “that,” “really,” “so,” and “then” in your story. You probably need about half of those. Delete.

Write, damn it, write. Then, tighten, tighten, tighten. Make your story steamed broccoli, not Twinkies. No, I take that back. Make your story a delicious, mouthwatering meal of your favorite foods. You can eat dessert, but don’t over do it.