Sloppy and wordy construction

Editing the first draft of a story can be a revelation.

The day I discovered I had used "has/have/had" twenty one times on a single page and had my characters "sighing" thirteen times on another page convinced me of the need for editing.

Your problem areas may not be the same as mine, but here are some of the things I look for. They all come under the heading Sloppy and wordy construction.

Top of my list - Participle phrases. You know - things like "was waiting," "running," "crying"
was, were - passive words that should be replaced with active
had, has, have  - passive, dull constructions
it, there, here - vague pronouns, should be replaced with something more dynamic
that, but - overused and lazy conjunctions
preposition  such as:  
for
from
in
inside
into
like
minus
near
of
off
on
See if you can't replace them with one or two better, clearer words.
Unnecessary words such as: together, start, plan, almost, just, then, own, thing, began, reach, rather, instead, even, back, very, good, great, really, suddenly, finally, about, only, totally, eventually, almost, exactly, fairly, so, such.

I use the Find Box to see where the words are hiding and I spend a day going through each and every one. It tells you how many culprits it has found and if it lists only five or six in 75k words, I will let them stand -  as long as the are not close together in the text! 
The last time I did this, I edited out 10,000 words from an 88,000 word document. I've done this after each first draft, and the nice thing is that each successive novel has required much less work than the previous one, which means I am slowly erradicating my bad habits.

Finding the light

Once in a while I come across a post on someone else's blog that I know I will want to re-read at some point. when I was new to blogs I thought I could always go back and re-read the original, but several times I never found what I was seeking, so now I paraphrase and jot down here the important bits I want to remember. I smiled when I read how
 http://madwomanintheforest.com/ goes through eight drafts. Aha, I thought, I like this woman. I felt even better when she said that nobody writes a publishable first draft.

She specifies two types of revision - one for the Logic of the story she is telling, and the other for Polish. Beginning with the Logic, which is so basic, she lists the scenes of each chapter on a big sheet of paper - something I do on a big spiral-bound art paper book. (I gave up water-colour painting when I started writing, so I already had the big book going spare...) Then on the left side of the paper, she lists the date and time of the action. To the right, she places an arrow to indicate if the scene ends on a positive or negative note for the main character.

It takes time, but you end up with an overview of your story. What you do then is look to see if anything is misplaced in time or emotional impact. It goes without saying that if you find any, you rectify the problem.
The next task is to look for scenes you could remove without impacting on your story. As a guide, ask yourself if the scene moves the action forward or adds to the reader's understanding of the character. If it doesn't do either, remove the scene. (If you really hate to do that, try and make changes that will better our understanding of the character or move the action forward.)

Then, draw a line through the scenes you  plan to remove.
This is good advice. Initially I ripped scenes out, yes, actually deleted them, and felt very brave and in control. Some time later I wished I had kept them in a separate file somewhere, as I could have used them, or part of them, elsewhere. It's called learning the hard way.

Now what you do is read through your list. Check for repetition of words, phrases and reiteration of the same emotional point. Check for scenes that drag, take note and later work on smartening the pace. Check that you use location to the best advantage. Would a different location work better? Check for scenes that fall into the talking heads trap and if you find any, give the characters some action.

Plot development

Stephanie Cowell ( http://writinghistoricalnovels.com/2013/07/22/plot-development-when-writing-a-novel-by-stephanie-cowell/) remarks that she cannot follow the plot development of her story when she reads it on computer, but has to print it out and read it that way in order to see the plot pointers properly. I think I'm maybe the same way inclined. There is a miserly side to me that hates to print out a whole novel because of the printing costs - yet I know I'm niggling over nothing. It doesn't matter what it costs - it needs doing, and I'd spend the same amount or more on a bottle of wine or a new blouse without a second thought. Odd how some things cause a hitch in the gallop!

But yes, to get back to the point - I've just had a couple of critiques returned that point out where I had duplicated lines and phrases, even who sentences. This is careless of me, and it has happened because I merged several versions of a chapter into one. I think I mentioned a day or two ago that I had got muddled among my versions - well, that was one result of the merger.

A second  result was that I actually saved the chapter twice into the main ms of my story. For a few minutes I thought I was imagining things, but no, that's what I'd done. This sort of clerical error makes it imperative to print out and read in paper form. But I can still honestly say that I'm enjoying polishing my story. it is so much easier than actually writing, and if you have any inclination to wield the red pen of correction, then go for it!

In direct contrast to the pic above, I took Tim for his first walk in town today. Head constantly swivelling, nose working overtime, all those people to see, cars and buses to watch, pushchairs to avoid. A whole new world for him. He's now fast asleep beneath my desk. Worn out, poor boy.