Editing...

[SFG75]

I'm realising more and more just how important editing is, but sometimes i end up editing a piece so much, that it ends up worse then how it started. So I was wondering whether anyone had any tips for effective editing......

When it comes to poetry, I don't believe in editing-it takes away from the edginess of it IMHO. I prefer to just let it be, warts and all. When it comes to short stories and longer ones, then yes, editing is a must. Other than simple grammatical mistakes, I do the vast majority of my editing to make the writing less dense.

 

[G4G]

I like to leave it as long as possible before going back and editing something, that way I read it with fresh eyes, so to speak. And talking of speaking, that's when I also read it aloud, which usually helps me spot mistakes. Things often sound right in my head, but when said aloud, the mistakes become apparent.

But if you leave it too long, do you not find that your characters become stale, or ideas fizzle out? I find that if I take too long writing something, the start of the story or whatever is ok, but the rest seems tacked on - kind of dies off.

 

[Shaun]

But if you leave it too long, do you not find that your characters become stale, or ideas fizzle out? I find that if I take too long writing something, the start of the story or whatever is ok, but the rest seems tacked on - kind of dies off.

Quite the opposite. When I go back and read some things that I put away for months at a time, I can't even remember writing them. It makes it easier to spot mistakes, and also to imagine different ideas for the story that didn't arise when I first wrote it. If a character has faults, or isn't very well defined, I can then see this because I'm reading it from new, so to speak.