Creating a story is only the first part of the process. Editing your story takes skill, knowledge, and patience. In this section of edit your story part two, we cover where I learned editing.
From Holly Lisle, I learned editing is not just about punctuation and grammar. It’s about the story you wanted to write compared to the story you wrote. The inspiration of the story and the themes of the story play into it. It’s about how you felt when you understood the original idea and purpose of the story and how you feel when you read the story your wrote. The book you want to write isn’t always the same as the first draft.
How to Edit Your Story Part Two
I would always recommend Holly’s How To Revise Your Novel first because it is what helped me so much. For shorter works, you can work off of these simple principles:
- Write down your theme or what idea inspired your story.
- What is missing from your story now.
- How to fix that.
- Organize any unorganized or out of place scenes or paragraphs.
- Remove what doesn’t fit.
- Add what it needs.
- Reread. Repeat the process.
Any of Holly’s classes are helpful but the How To Revise Your Novel is excellent and worth the price for novels. I’m still using it!
My link above is an affiliate link. If you use it and purchase anything on her site, I will get a small amount.
