I recently did a beta read of a gentleman’s first book. If we were being true to the Greek alphabet, it’s probably a gamma or delta read, as this story has been through beta readers and edited before.
Good, solid bones. Good characterization. Good pacing. A few moments that made me grin, and one that had me burst out laughing. Some really rough spots, too, as I can tell where he grew as a writer over the course of the book. After all the other feedback, I noted when he’s finished reading my feeedback, I don’t recommend he edit this book yet; I recommend he writes the next one instead.
My reason was:
“Editing and writing are two separate, not-equally-overlapping skill sets. Editing the hell out of book 1 is a very low ROI way to be a better writer for Book 2.
Whereas Writing Book 2 makes you a better writer, and that makes it easier to see where you need to edit for large returns, and where you’re just doing the equivalent of… cleaning the grout in the bathroom with a toothbrush.”
I thought that made perfect sense. He did not. In hindsight, this advice is probably only obvious once you’ve already travelled the road to hard-won knowledge.
The people who tell you to turn right “just after the pizza place that burned down” probably think it’s obvious, too.
So, unpacking.
Writing is not a skill; it is a skillset. A toolbox, If you will, that contains a great many tools. Just like working on classic airplanes and working on classic cars requires two different, though closely related sets of tools (with overlap, but less than you’d think), so working on different genres requires different tools.
For example, pacing.
Pacing for thriller is different than pacing for cozy mystery, is different than pacing for epic fantasy. Three different sizes of crescent wrenches.
Hooks, both in the first sentence and at the end of each chapter, to get them to turn the page? Tools. Heinleining your information in so it’s not an info dump? Tool.
Breaking things up with comic relief? Planting the real clue with the red herrings? All tools. Making sure your emotional arc (if you have one) rings true? Tying up all your subplots by the end of the book in a way that feels natural? Characters seeming real, not cardboard? All tools.
Then you’ve got the genre cookies – the things that signal a particular genre, and make the readers of that genre happy.
In the toolbox, we’ve got the Character Makeover. You know the moment in all those movies where the awkward Hollywood-ugly girl takes off her glasses and gets a haircut/ditches the wig, and comes out in a different dress looking like a million bucks? That’s it, and that’s wish-fulfillment that makes female-reader-heavy genres happy, from urban fantasy to romance to space opera. But it’s not a single tool; each genre has slight variations.
Sometimes it’s not nearly that obvious.
For the guys in the audience, in the monster hunter international books, a female deputy is being read into having been turned into a werewolf, and to the puzzlement of the man trying to explain all the many vicious downsides, she keeps coming back to “I can eat all the cake I want and NOT GAIN WEIGHT?” That, right there. That’s exactly what I’m talking about.
How about Character Saves The Day With Their Weird Quirk / Hobby / Area of Competence? That’s a standard reader cookie, too, which is more blatantly popular in male-heavy-genres, from superheroes to Hard SciFi managing to MacGyver the victory.
It’s not only in male-heavy genres, though. What is the movie Legally Blonde, if not this?
So, that’s a bare start to the writing toolbox.
…but no matter how much you learn about writing, it’s still not the same skillset as editing. That is a different toolbox.
When you are writing, you are using your creative mind. You are playing with characters and ideas, and conflict, and coming up with solutions in narrative.
When you are editing, you are being analytical, and applying criticism to the story as an object separate from yourself. Indeed, think about the oft-leveled charge “You left too much story in head, and didn’t get it on the page.” The writer is coming up with story in head, and when starting out, can’t see what didn’t make it out of the page because it’s all there in their head.
The editor is viewing it dispassionately as an object that exists only on the page. That distance kills creativity. Thus the important dictum: WRITE THE STORY FIRST, THEN EDIT.
When beta-reading a different story a few months ago for a friend, I told them, “You failed to complete the promises made to the reader in the beginning. As such, your emotional arc is unsatisfying.”
That is editing, because I am seeing the story not as a person’s journey, but as an analytical graph of their emotions over the course of the story, and did it rise or fall by this percentage or that percentage of the story. I am not reading the story as story, but as a checklist of “you promised this, did you make good on it?” And the ability to make that graph, and see its completion or lack thereof? Editing tool. The making the checklist of reader promises? Editing tool.
When beta-reading for a friendly acquaintance, I told them, “You have too much narrative summary front-loading your chapter; it kills the tension in the chapter.” Identifying that the text is narrative summary? Editing tool. Measuring a chapter not by what happens to the characters, but by a line graph of the rising and falling tension? By now, you’ve figured out, I hope… editing tool.
Now, these are not completely separate toolboxes that never the twain shall meet. No, the more you learn of editing, the more you can apply that after you’ve written it to identify the potholes, the missing bits, the padding. The more you internalize the tools to the point they’re subconscious, the more your stories come out better so that your pacing doesn’t need fixing, you don’t have info dumps to cut, etc.
However, getting really good at editing makes you a really good editor. It does not by itself make you a good writer.
To do that, YOU NEED TO PRACTICE WRITING.
Writing one thing and endlessly editing it is like… like getting really, really good at maintaining your fencing gear. That’s a skill set that overlaps with being a good fencer, for certainly you must take care of your tools… but being perfect at maintaining and repairing your gear doesn’t help one iota on block, thrust, or parry, or the footwork that is the foundation of that.
You don’t get any better at any of the skills that don’t overlap, you lose return on investment with very time you’re trying to edit the same old thing again instead of practicing those skills on a different variation, and you gain rapidly in frustration and criticism of the very creativity that brought forth the words…
And screaming at someone about all their faults and failures doesn’t actually produce any joy or motivation in the person being abused to Do The Thing. That’s universal, whether it’s a kid who doesn’t want to do their homework, or your own creative self.
In order to get better, you need to practice your writing skills by writing another story. And another, and another.
So at some point, the best way to edit Book1? Or This first thing you tried in this new genre? Or the first thing submitted to the writing group / beta readers?
Is to file all the editing notes and remarks and feedback away, box it up, let it sit, and write something else, then come back to it, when time and other words (possibly even other worlds) has given you not only the distance that will make it much easier to practice editorial skills, but the growth in your writing skills that will make it easier to see where the earlier effort didn’t match your current skill levels…
…and then it’s time to edit your story.
Mad Genius Club 
5 responses to “When NOT to edit your story”
The thing I realized after the first fanfic thing was, it had some structural problems that no amount of editing or fine tuning was going to fix. And the best thing was just to learn from the mistakes, and start the next one.
Which was better but also had new, different structural problems, that no amount of fiddling at the edges would fix. Margret Ball graciously edited it, and I learned a lot about problems that could be fixed in the edit, but there are limits without starting an entirely new story.
Which I did. And it has new different structural problems, which I don’t know how to fix without dumping it and starting over from scratch, but that’s ok, because I’m sure once this one ever gets done, and I’m onto the next one, it to will have new, different problems, that won’t be fixable without writing an entirely different story.
And on the cycle goes, I think.
I find that things go better if I set the project down and go do something else (next book, all the stuff I put off while writing, short stories), then come back. I spot some problems, and my subconsious flags things stuff that I might have missed earlier.
After my first NaNoWriMo, I was feeling pretty froggy. I’d done it, and a work of absolute magnificence now sat before me.
WRONG!
I was saved by a magnificent beta reader who said, “Ah, there’s a hole here as big as the federal deficit, and this doesn’t belong here, and the ending goes thud.” It hurt, but I’d been exposed to academic critiques before, so I thickened my skin and started work. The results taught me a lot, things I couldn’t see in the white-hot act of writing at speed.
I’ve got a novella sitting on my harddrive. There it will sit for two more weeks until it’s been a month since I wrote that they lived happily ever after.
When A Diabolical Bargain crept up on me by feigning to be a novelette and then a novella before it admitted to being a novel, I could write short stories. Bargain spent years on the backburner, twice, before I had mastered the novel form well enough to edit it to completion and publish it.
Still was my first published novel.
There’s degrees of “edit.” At least, I think so. Maybe flavors is more precise a word.
There’s the “I have FIFTEEN minutes to edit before post, now are there any characters with three hands left (that aren’t supposed to have them)? Dialogue reads like humans more or less? Plot points ticked? Schpeeling moarorless keywreckedud? POST!”
Then there’s the “it’s been a month or three since I wrote that. Does it still suck gas?”
There’s the “am I hitting the right plot notes in this arc?” And the “do I need to tweak character growth some more? Add a few miniscenes to flesh out the humans?” Or “this needs more evil. Like, a LOT more evil.”
Then there’s the post-edit, where you take a good long rest, then a longer look at the whole thing and decide how to turn wordvomit into threads of emotion to weave a tapestry of tension, failure, risk, loss, determination, growth, and inevitable conclusion.
Probably the best line of the zombie story wasn’t even in it when I wrote that bit. After a month wait (and several more chapters) it came up. Almost didn’t hit “post changes” on it. Felt like too much cheese.
Reading audience liked it though.