How To Edit The Buzz Dixon Way

This is descriptive, not prescriptive.  This is how I do it, I’m not telling you to do it this way.  Take from it anything you find useful.

There are two types of editing:  Copyediting and Story Editing.

Let’s start with the former.

Copyediting is focused on fixing spelling / grammatical / typographical errors; it is not significantly altering the underlying material.

MSWord and programs like Grammarly tag potential errors but often miss a lot of them, too.  For longer manuscripts I print out the document in full then start at the very end and work my way forward, looking for errors.

Physically going through a document backwards makes errors pop out more readily to the human eye. 

One I finish my preliminary copyedit, I then begin story editing.  I do this in red pen on the same printout I just copyedited, then when entering the changes in the file, again start at the end and work forward.

This keeps the page count from being screwed up; start at the front and even a small change can alter the page count after it, making it harder to locate passages you’re looking for.

There’s a bit of advice that says never start editing until you finish the first draft.

This is one of those aphorisms that’s meant with good intent but soon falls short in practicality.

When this advice is short for “Don’t endlessly rewrite your opening but get the story down so you can work on it in toto,” that’s valid. 

But many is the time I’m 2/3 of the way through a story when I realize the scene I’m working on would be better if Suzy owned a hamster so I go back and find a couple of places where I can lay track by referencing Suzy owns a hamster even if I don’t make it a major story point.

Conversely, I might recognize I have two characters who could easily be melded into one.  In that case I simply start writing the combined character from that point forward and make a note to go back and meld them in their earlier scenes.

It’s a matter of degree and complexity balanced against work discipline.  In 50-plus years of writing, I developed the discipline to go back and make adjustments on an unfished manuscript then resume telling the story where I left off.  If you’re easily sidetracked, you may want to wait until you’re finished to start editing.

I tend to write shaggy and loose, others write very sparse first drafts.  They need to go back and add and embellish, I need to whack away deadwood.

It’s been said one needs to write a story three times:  First to tell it to yourself, then to figure out what you’re trying to say, and finally to figure out how to say it to readers.

I over explain and put in way too much detail in my first drafts.  For my personal understanding of the story, I need to completely understand its world.

Sidebar:  Many think “world building” only applies to sci-fi and fantasy stories (and truth be told, it’s lots of fun coming up with exotic imaginary environments) but contemporary stories need it just as much if not more.

From research I’ve done for stories I’ve written, I have detailed knowledge of how live TV studios operated, what the social order of Wild West mining towns was like, and why the movie industry came to Southern California (only partially for good sunny weather, mostly to get as far away from Thomas Edison as possible).

All of this grounds me in the environment of my story, making it real to me – but not necessarily vital for my readers to now.

Case in point, this passage from a story set in a 1950s TV station:

Before the early evening news, Kline showed her the technical aspects of the job.

“We’ve got two big maps of Winnemac and the Midwest you’ll stand in front of,” he said.  “Both are painted on a thin sheet of steel.  We use magnetized symbols to show where the weather is coming from.  Miss Perkins will set up the maps with pressure fronts and storm warnings and whatnot before you go on the air.  You just point to them as you read your cue card and leave the rest to us.”

“Tell her about the Technamation,” Miss Perkins said.

“The what?” Mary asked.

“It’s a filter system we put on the studio lights,” said Kline.  “The magnetized symbols use polarized designs.  When we turn the filters on the lights, it makes them pulsate or look like rain is falling and stuff like that.”

“It’s a cheap way of adding effects to an otherwise static map,” Perkins said.

“I thought people just drew on weather maps,” Mary said.

Kline snorted derisively and Miss Perkins smiled.  “Connor tried that back in the late forties when we first started using weather maps.  He’d draw on them with a heavy black grease pencil.”

“The problem is that Connor is no artist,” said Kline.  “He’d try to draw the weather fronts the way they appeared on the maps we got from the weather bureau, but they always ended up looking like…well, you were married, you can guess what they looked like.”

Mary looked puzzled then she realized what Kline meant and blushed deeply.

Miss Perkins laughed.  “That’s why I do the maps now,” said Miss Perkins.  “Snow didn’t want that segment to be known as the wiener report.”

This technology was ubiquitous on black and white TV in the 1950s and early 1960s, abandoned only when color broadcasting proved incompatible with this system.  It’s an authentic detail for TV shows of the era, particularly weather reports.

But it doesn’t advance the story!

As a result, it’s gone.

Later, when the station switches to color and the accompanying chroma key matte system, I do mention that because that detail does figure into the plot.

My first draft prose tends tp be a tad too formal and academic.  I look for every place where I can change bland passive verbs into vivid active ones (viz. “I was on the deck” to “I stood on the deck”; even though “stood” isn’t dynamic it conjures up an image), I trim lengthy clauses (viz. “I started tp edit the text” to “I edited the text.”)

“I also trim my dialog.”

“What do you mean?”

“I’ll take two or more lines and condense and meld them together.”

“Is that all?”

“No, I’ll also eliminate some back and forth between characters.”

becomes

“I trim dialog, condensing and melding lines together and eliminating some back and forth.”

Seriously, there is no such thing as realistic dialog.  Read some court or interrogation transcripts and see how awkward and cumbersome real speech is.  What passes for naturalistic dialog in fiction is stylized in a very special manner.  Take a look at the plays of Harold Pinter; nobody does a better job than him when it comes to creating what sounds like natural dialog but really conveys an enormous amount of multi-level information.

My first drafts typically come in at around 120K, which I ideally hope to trim down to 80K but more typically land around 90K, which is a reduction of about 25% to 33%.

This ain’t easy.  It frequently requires not merely trimming dialog or removing short scenes, but whacking out entire subplots.

Some of these subplots aren’t fully developed.  For my story set in a 1950s TV studio, I laid track for a subplot involving a list of fan club members that I originally intended to be part of my story’s conclusion.

But as I got closer to the end, I found the fan club subplot extraneous, enabling me to not only cut references to it earlier in the story but related subplots about characters involved in the club.

Entire families and their associated subplots went out the window with it, but all scattered throughout the novel, not in one big easy to remove lump.

Part of my challenge in story editing is that I do not write linear stories ala most adventure or mystery stories but rather a web of interconnected plots where seeming unrelated characters put things in motion.

In a purely linear story I can simply drop enter chapters, linking things together with a simple “After fighting their way through the Swamp of Spiders, Thundarr and his companions…”

Interlocking subplots, however, require rerouting certain plot threads through other characters and events to make sure the story winds up where I intend it.

Using geographic terms, I know which city I want my stories to end in, which neighborhood, and frequently which block.

But the exact address, floor number, room, and chair where the climax finally plops down usually isn’t determined until I’m almost at my destination.

As I said, this is all carved in Jello, not stone.  Use whatever you can.

© Buzz Dixon