You write. The plot is AMAZING; came to you in one big flash at three in the morning. The characters are STUNNING, quirky, clever, amusing. PERFECT! Nothing can be done to improve this.

You write. Hour after hour on hyperdrive. Addictive. And flowing. Ideas spinning almost too fast for you to keep up. Plot twists catch even you by surprise; the reader won’t stand a chance. That writer’s block you once suffered from: completely forgotten.

You write. Eighty thousand words later, you come up for air: the plot completely resolved. Every conflict (and there were just the right number of them) ended in just the right way: three exciting swordfights, one quarrel healed with a kiss… Oh, and off go the lead characters into that beautiful, incredibly well described sunset.

Yes, you rote. But who wastes time editing, let alone having someone who knows how to edit take a look? This was your story, and it was the one you was ready to spend time on, wasn’t it?

You see, the thing is, in those eighty thousand words, you made a whole lot of errors. Your mind wanted to tell the story as quickly and efficiently as possible; the plot mattered, the characters mattered, but the full stops, the placing of the comas and the pacing of the scenes perhaps seemed a little less important.

You have your weaknesses; every author does. And your blind spots, beloved phrases, and in most cases, a lack of knowledge. Punctuation is vital; full stops, commas and all the rest are the gatekeepers controlling the flow of would-be unruly words.

There are several different levels of editing, and you should take the first step yourself. I do not believe any author can edit their own work to the standard of a professional, but this does not mean it’s a waste of time trying. But it does mean, given how close the writer is to the writing, a great deal will inevitably be missed at that early stage.

Working with a good editor is a revelation. It will not change a single aspect of your plot. But do listen and learn. Even more so than the most conscientious beta reader, the editor notices what you do not, and also unlike most beta readers, who don’t want to hurt your feelings, is not frightened to tell you!

You will have made typos: missed commas, semicolons and the like. All these little mistakes catch the reader’s eye, make the text uneven, and misplaced punctuation can change the meaning of the sentence, even confuse the reader. Much better to get it right.

You will have repeat words too. In a manuscript of just over eighty thousand words, I used ‘was’ more than twelve hundred times and ‘had’ over eight hundred. My editor suggested I looked at every one to see if better language might be available. (And in the case of ‘had’, did I need it at all?) The change in the readability of the text turned out to be dramatic.

Then there are aspects such as emotion, drama and pace. You think you’ve nailed them all. Until your editor points out that your lead character might not be quite so sanguine in the face of life-threatening danger as to simply say, ‘Oh dear, what shall I do now?’

‘Show me how scared he is. Let me see his fear!’ is in no way a change of plot but certainly a deepening of the character. In fact, it’s what you thought you’d done. But didn’t.

The same is true of pace. There are pinch points in every story: the big fight, the flight, the rescue. Again, you might not be aware the event would benefit from more (or less) description. You might have forgotten to use shorter sentences for tension, longer ones for more relaxed scenes: the danger is over, the storm has passed. Does the reader feel your protagonist’s relief?

Sometimes an editor will spot missed opportunity in a scene. In my case, it’s usually the comic potential. Sue, my own editor, does not write it for me but suggests I look more closely and think about the characters and how those people would interact. ‘What could possibly go wrong?’

Editors are also good at spotting the right place to start: the book, a chapter, a paragraph even. Again, it’s all about pace. And the very beginning of the story is the hook to catch your reader; it’s got to be one of the strongest sentences you are capable of producing. Typically, the first page is the most rewritten. Every word counts. And you might well be encouraged to push yourself until the limit is reached, until the words and organisation of those words are worthy of the plot.

An editor is a second pair of eyes and brings a different perspective to the work, being not so wrapped up in the inner world of the backstories you don’t tell but know all about. She deals with the plot on the page, not the nebulous world inside the writer’s head, of which this tale may only be a fragment. So, she can see what you miss out because you don’t realise it needs to be told: the questions you don’t think you need to answer. But you do.

She will notice how many paragraphs on that page started with ‘you’ (can it really be five on page one?), how many times ‘you’ is used in the whole piece (thirty-five!) and may well suggest it might be an idea to use an alternative word occasionally. She won’t dictate which one, because in the end, you are the writer.

This is your diamond, but she will help cut and polish it. And make a great difference to how brightly it sparkles.

(Image by Steve Buissinne from Pixabay)