The Daunting Task of Editing

Many people dream of writing a novel, few actually do it. I imagine that’s why the main advice for anyone starting a novel is don’t quit. Get the words down on the page—even if they’re terrible words. Don’t worry about making your story perfect. Just finish it. You can deal with the mess later. 

Which is all wonderful advice until it’s later and you’re staring at a pile of 80,000 terrible words, wondering how to begin cleaning up the mess you’ve created without enlisting the support of the American Red Cross.   

To put it in the perspective of an ICU nurse, approaching the first draft of a manuscript feels a bit like approaching a newly arrived trauma patient. Sometimes there’s so many issues needing addressed, you don’t know where to begin. The blood oozing down the patient’s face? The IV that’s about to fall out? The soiled undies bunched up between the patient’s legs? 

It’s tempting to look at the mess and decide the best course of action is to throw a sheet over the patient and ignore what’s beneath. Walk away. Drink more coffee and pray the nurse following you gets everything straightened out.

But for some reason this gets frowned upon in the hospital setting. Patients don’t like it. Their families don’t like it. And the nurse following you especially doesn’t like it. 

Oddly enough, readers feel the same way. They hate opening a book and finding a messy first draft wearing soiled undies.

So as a writer, where do you begin?

From my experience, the same place you start as a nurse. The heart. Or in this case, the plot.

The first thing we do in the ICU whenever a patient arrives from the ER is hook them up to our monitor. Ensure they have a pulse. A rhythm. A blood pressure. No point in worrying about dirty undies if the patient’s heart stopped beating somewhere between the ER and the ICU. 

The same applies to the plot. Sure, there might be some broken scenes that need mending, but if they’re not life threatening, ignore them for now. Resolve the life threatening plot issues first. 

And if the plot is the heart, think of the characters as the lungs. They breathe life into the story and go hand in hand with the heart. If they’re not oxygenating well, it’s going to affect the heart. So no matter how strong your plot may be, weak characters will eventually kill the story. 

Once you’ve ensured the plot and characters aren’t causing your story to circle the drain, do the next thing a nurse would do. Give the entire story a wipe down. Head to toe. Clean off the adverbs. Wipe down the repetitive words. And yes, for goodness sake, toss those soiled clichés in the trash. 

Discover which parts of the story are still bleeding and which are only minor scrapes. Bandage the deep cuts. You may need to change those dressings multiple times, but don’t worry. You’ll get more comfortable with it each time. You’ll get better at it. Faster. You’ll start to see what works and what doesn’t. And somewhere along the way, you’ll realize the task of taking care of this story somehow feels less daunting.  

Why? Because by now you know every mole and freckle of this story. You know what the issues are. You know which parts will require extra monitoring. Which parts are already healing. 

Then you can move to the next stage—my favorite stage as both a nurse and a writer. The fluff and buff stage. Nice clean pillow cases. Crisp snappy dialogue. Labeled IV tubing. Punchy action verbs. And that last final sweep through to get rid of any left-over debris. 

Then, when you’ve done all you can, there is only one thing left to do. Slide back the curtain and let the reader take a look at your story.