There’s a limit to what you can learn about writing from reading about it. Yes, articles can explain techniques you can use or point out traps you might fall into. They can help you see some aspects of your writing more clearly.
But when you try to put all this advice into play, you find that everything is connected to everything else. Changing one character’s voice can affect how other characters react to him or her, which could change the direction of your plot. Describing a setting in more detail might color the mood of the scene, so that the dialogue no longer seems to fit quite so well. Even a mechanical change like how often you paragraph can increase your pace and affect the amount of detail you need to include.
Which is why we’re kicking off a new feature here at Writer Unboxed — the Editor’s Clinic. We’re asking brave volunteers to submit a few pages from their work in progress. (This initial example is from a client, used with his permission.) Then I or one of the WU editorial stable will work our magic and post the results here. And this gives you a chance to see how editors apply writing advice in its natural habitat. It gives us a chance to get away from the theoretical and get real.
If you’d like to give it a go, you can send a sample of your work (no more than five pages) to dave@davekingedits.com. Feel free to include any questions you might have about the passage, and we’ll try to get them answered. And please feel free to join in the discussion — they’re often the best part of the article.
We’re still feeling our way with this, so we’re not sure yet how often the clinic will appear or who the editorial stable will include. But I’ve done similar things in the past, and they’ve been a lot of fun.
So watch this space.
And here’s the opening sample. The narrator, April, is being stalked by Josh, someone she used to know. Richard is the current boyfriend. The notes appear at the end.
The next morning, she called Jim Langford, one of the lawyers she’d been close to during her brief legal career. “Does Josh Elsmere still work there?”
she asked.“Hardly
,.”hHe laughed[1]. “He hasn’t been here since 2001, when his wife raisedsucha big fuss about his sleeping with some woman in the office.”“His . . . wife?”
“Yeah. She wrote the lead partner a letter and called him on the phone. She even came into the office and raised a big fuss in the lobby. Started shouting how we could pretend to be such an upright firm when one of our lawyers was running around on a wife with a baby at home.” He laughed again. “Took the big boys about five minutes to cut Josh loose. They didn’t like him much to begin with, and they really don’t like that kind of controversy.
”
“[2]Never did find out who that woman was,.”April realized she’d stopped breathing and took a slow, deliberate breath. She knew the anger would come, but now was the time for shock. [3]
Then when there was only silence at the other end of the phone,“April? You still there?”“Yes,” she said in a quiet voice. “Jim, I am so ashamed. I never knew he was
married—““You? It was you?
were that woman!”[4]“
Yes, but pPlease don’t tell anyone.I am so angry and ashamed.[5] That slimy creep told me he was divorced!”then louder and angrier,The shock was wearing off now. Saying it out loud helped. “We never had anfreakin’ affair, Jim. Just a couple of lunches and a one-night stand, which I never meant to happen and have regretted ever since. That Bastard!” [6]“Slow down,” Jim said. “Why are you asking about him, anyway?”[7]
“I stopped seeing him right after that night. He got really angry about that. I guess he still is,” and sShe told him how Josh had been following her.“
He really is aThat’s a whole new level of creepiness,” Jim said. “I think there’s law that might help you. I’ll check it out and get back to you….DAnd don’t worry, April. I won’t tell anyone about any of thisof your involvement.”An hour later he called. There was an anti-stalking statute on the books. The penalty was jail time, a fine of up to $10,000, or both.
“I’d love to put that jackass in jail,” she told Richard when she got home. “But I don’t want to file a complaint until I’ve confronted him face to face
![8]. I want to watch him squirm.”
NOTES:
1. You can’t laugh a word.
2. No reason this can’t be a single paragraph. In fact, readers know April is going to react, and the longer paragraph can create a little tension by holding off that reaction for a moment.
3. Then you need to show her reaction through interior monologue. She’s just learned something critical. Let readers into her head while she does.
4. Note that you can make your dialogue sound more authentic by leaving bits out. She doesn’t have to answer his question. Simply have her jump ahead to the possible consequences.
5. You don’t have to tell us this. Her dialogue, and the added interior monologue, make it clear.
6. Show the dialogue escalating.
7. Jim needed to react. And his reaction shows just how intense April has become.
8. I tend to save exclamation points until the character is physically shouting.
About Dave King
Dave King is the co-author of Self-Editing for Fiction Writers, a best-seller among writing books. An independent editor since 1987, he is also a former contributing editor at Writer's Digest. Many of his magazine pieces on the art of writing have been anthologized in The Complete Handbook of Novel Writing and in The Writer's Digest Writing Clinic. You can check out several of his articles and get other writing tips on his website.
For an agent like me, what you’ve done right there is the difference between “perhaps with work” and polished/ready to go.
I note that your editing has not only tightened up the passage, it has also elevated tension and brought us a bit deeper inside the POV character’s emotional experience. Before, the passage was about discovering what previously happened. Post editing, it is about what is happening right now to this woman and her sense of herself.
Thanks, Dave. Get ready for the deluge.
Well, thank you, Don.
Editing my work is tougher than initially writing it. I’m really looking forward these clinics.
This is so instructive, Dave. Thank you. I have your book on self-editing and it’s one book I use often and lend to my friends, who want their own copy. I also have another book that I find very useful, especially for children’s lit: Sandy Asher’s Writing It Right and she shows you HOW to revise just like you do here. And more since it’s a book.
As Don said, get ready for the deluge :) Happy Thanksgiving to you.
Whenever I first start working with a client, I always like to include a short sample of line-editing on their work. It’s hard to imagine the difference it can make until you see it on the page.
Thanks, Dave. Very dense learning there.
A thought struck me: imagine combining your efforts with Ray Rhamey’s “Flog a Pro” feature. Could be fun. :)
I’ve signed up to take part in the Editor’s Clinic so, in a sense, Dave has done just that. I’m looking forward to it. And thanks for thinking of me. I love helping a narrative be what it needs to be.
How many people clutched their hearts and slammed the lid of their laptops when they read this opportunity? How could I call myself a writer if I didn’t bare my neck? I opened it back up and packed off the first five. Thanks, Dave.
And I’ve got it. Thanks for taking the plunge, Deb.
Dave, as always, you are the Editing Genius, the Guru! Thank you so much for this excellent article. Hmmm…..those red marks look so familiar!!!
Editing has never been my strong suit. Even after being edited by three different independent editors I still struggle with the process. What were they thinking? What did they see? How did I miss that?
I have so much to learn.
Yes, there will be a deluge. The Donald is spot-on, as he usually is. I sit here wondering if I will have the courage to be part of it. Just one question, Dave. Would you like that sample in the body of the email?
Well, the deluge does seem to be happening. Eight submissions so far.
One of the reasons I’m excited about this feature is that it gives readers a chance to see different editors’ takes. Editing is more art than science, so different editors may spot different weaknesses and will certainly handle them in different ways. This is why I always tell clients to only pay attention to the editing that inspires them.
can’t wait to see this as a regular feature. I learn so much more from seeing actual edits than from hearing things talked about hypothetically.
Dave–What could be better than a best-in-show editor demonstrating what he does with an actual manuscript? As far as I’m concerned, nothing whatever could be better for writers.
One question: would you leave smaller matters to a proofreader, rather than editing them yourself? I’m talking about paragraph four in the ms.
Yeah, good question. I’m not a very good proofreader — it requires an instinctive sense of correct usage that would screw up my ear for dialogue. But when I spot a problem at the proofreading level, I generally correct it just because, why not?
This is exciting! I am currently revising and editing my first draft of my first novel. Just the points you have shared here have already helped me. Thank you for adding the Editor’s Clinic.
God bless,
Sherry
I’m sorry for the radio silence, but we had a power outage here for a couple hours this morning. And the loss of electricity also took down my internet connection — so, literal radio silence.
Anyway, if you’d like to submit a sample, it’s probably best to attach it to an email. The easiest formats to handle are WORD and RTF, either one of which would preserve your formatting. If you need to paste it into the body of an email for some reason, that would work, but some of your paragraphing and such would be lost. I don’t think I’d reject a sample for formatting reasons.
Great opportunity to work with ‘The King’. Wonderful, Dave. I will email you directly.
Dee Willson
Award winning author of A Keeper’s Truth
Hi Dave,
Check out Janice Hardy’s blog and her Real Life Diagnostics (RLD) posts, a sister to what you’ve proposed, for the overall format. It can be tough to hop from the numbered list of corrections or suggestions back to the original material. Perhaps those could be listed after each paragraph?
This sample does have a repetition of ‘big fuss’, as well as a problem with this bit of text: ‘Started shouting how we could we pretend’.
I wondered if you would be looking at the opening 250-300 words, or anywhere in the material?
Janice’s RLD posts are always interesting, and the material reviewed may be revamped and re-submitted months later by the author. The coolest thing is that everyone learns by example.
Glad to see this idea being offered. Thanks!
Dear Maria,
I wasn’t so bothered by the repetition of “big fuss,” since it seems like a linguistic tic — that kind of repetition by a single character describing a similar situation could be authentic.
And the sample could come from anywhere in your manuscript. It’s a good opportunity to submit a scene that may not be working for reasons you can’t quite pin down.
I love this idea and look forward to reading the forthcoming editorial comments.
Knowing you’ll possibly read part of my WIP, caused me to apply the editorial points you made in the above post.
Dave, this is wonderful. I, too, will be adding to the deluge. I’m looking forward to seeing more. Thank you!
Hi, Dave — great feature, and I’m looking forward to seeing future examples. Your book on self-editing was one of the first books I bought on writing, and I still rely on those lessons.
One substantive comment on this sample: As a lawyer, I think that if April is also a lawyer, as appears to be the case, she would check out the state’s laws the moment she begins to think she’s being stalked. Rather than let Jim do the research and call her back, I’d suggest he offer some other advice or information, such as personal experience about how such cases go, which she can then discuss when the scene switches to her and her husband.
I like Dave’s edits, and I agree with Leslie’s suggestion that April should research stalking laws & Jim should react, especially with “personal experience about how such cases go.”
Whenever I take on a new client, I always insist on reading the entire manuscript first. I’ve always felt that I can’t edit a passage intelligently without knowing the entire story.
This is a good example of why. Actually, April is an actress who worked as a paralegal for a while early in her career. And Jim appears only in this scene, then never again. Extending the interaction between them would make him into a more major character than he needs to be.
Of course, you couldn’t have known that. But it does show the importance of context in editing.
This is AWESOME! Coincidentally or not, Writer’s Digest had an article on editing a sample 2 months ago and I’ve been meaning to request that they continue that every month because it was SO helpful just like what you just did. Telepathic request answered on WU!
I believe this is *essential* to unpublished writers (or at least me). I have read and learned a lot about the craft over the years trying to teach myself. Even though I ‘know’ something in theory, it can be lost on me in practice until I actually see it visually pointed out, corrected, and explained. THEN my brain has an “Aha!” moment of learning.
This clinic is a fantastic example of Show, Don’t Tell.
Well, Show AND Tell.
I am *so* excited to have this feature!!
Also wanted to point out, in case you didn’t catch it, that there was a mistake.
“Started shouting how we could we pretend to be…”
There’s an extra “we” in there.
I’m happy to be of service. Actually, I pioneered the Writer’s Digest online clinic back in the early days of the internet — I think I did it using a screechy 56K modem. But there really is no better way to learn to write more effectively.
I’ve fixed the typo, thanks.
A wonderful opportunity for experiential learning. Thank you for taking this on! (I’m not quite yelling, but the exclamation mark is valid here in any event.)
“Self-Editing for Fiction Writers” was one of the first craft books, if not the first, I dove into when I decided to try my hand at fiction. I really need to reread. The King, indeed!
Hello Dave. I sent my work before to a similar process before and it was great (Janice’s). However, I’m brazilian and I’m writing in Portuguese.
I’d like to participate, but sometimes I make the most stupid mistakes related to basic English grammar rules. If you could overlook that, it would be a fine opportunity. I’m amazed by that example.
Part of the editing art is to be able to read past the superficial stuff and see the quality of the writing underneath. So I wouldn’t worry about English as a second language.
Great! I’ll submit for sure.
I loved when you did this for Writer’s Digest and am thrilled that you’ll be doing it here. Great crit. Expect my pages shortly…lol
Wow, you actually remember the Writer’s Digest days? I think the last one I did for them was in the print magazine, in 2001.
This is really great! Also the comments at the end! Loved it! I started writing barely a few months ago, but this is already so helpful! Thank you! I am looking forward for the next “clinics”
I just did an entire piece (came out last Tuesday) based on the comments on one of my articles. The conversations that develop around the article topic are often the best part.