Editing Your Novel: High level story edits

Joanna Penn from http://www.TheCreativePenn,com talks about editing her first novel.

Here are some of the main areas to improve on:
* Weaving back story in to make the characters more believable and make the reader care. I had created back story but not incorporated it well enough so in reading it, I realised that I hadn't actually told the reader about why this was important.
* Consistency of language e.g. I use the word pendant and stone interchangeably but it needs to be clearer. Also consistency of timeline.
* Points of view. I am using multiple points of view but sometimes I have merged them in the same paragraph which is a little confusing.
* Scenes and fast-paced plot. I have gone back through the manuscript and redone all the chapters into scenes which sometimes have several to a chapter. Fast pace also means short chapters so I have gone for scenes in order to rewrite coherently and then I will put back into chapters later.
* Locations. The book is set across multiple locations including Oxford, England; Santiago de Compostela, Spain; Jerusalem, Israel; Tucson, Arizona, USA; Tabriz, Iran and some other very cool places. I have done some good descriptions interspersed with action and some very bad ones! The contrast makes this very clear so I definitely have rewrites for those areas.

That's just the high level areas! I am basically going to do the rewrites at this level first and then tackle the more detailed rewriting once the coherent story hangs together in the way I want.

I can see how outlining is critical for professional authors who write a number of books per year. In re-outlining my scenes, I know I could have written faster with the outline I have now.

Category:

Education

Tags:

• how to edit a novel
• edit novel
• editing
• editing fiction
• how to write a novel

[thecreativepenn]

Hi, Tabriz is a city in Iran which I am using for a scene in my novel. I've never been but it looks beautiful! Thank for watching.

[MrNorthcold]

Hi Beautifull lady,

I am really interested to know about a city name " Tabriz" which is one of your videos tags.