Congratulations to you as you finally write –The End– on the first draft of your manuscript. You have a right to feel proud; it has been a lot of work. But before you hand off the book to beta readers, you need to fine-tune the storyline. This process is called content editing. In the first of this two-part series, guest blogger Lynn Perretta discusses content editing and the importance of plot. In the second part of the series she discusses pace and clock.
I can’t talk enough about the importance of editing. Mostly that is because if I keep talking about it, I can put off having to do it. I hate editing. At least, I have always hated the mechanical edit: going over grammar and spelling. Content editing, however, is a different story. Content editing is my chance to fine-tune my story. I can figure out what needs to be added or, shudder, taken out. I can determine what elements in the story are working, what needs work, and what I need to do to build the suspense or tension that I want.
As enjoyable as content editing can be, there is a lot that goes into it. It may take several reads to get everything down. How many? Well, that depends. In a content edit, you’re examining the different elements of fiction and how they work in your story. What your story needs out of the edit will depend on what kind of story you’re writing. There are three elements of writing that are important to any kind of story, however, and I want to take time in this series to talk about each of them: Plot, Pace, and Clock.
Plot
Your plot is more than just what happens in your story. It is what keeps the different events and characters in your story together. Even if your story is about an in-depth study of a few characters, exploring their interactions versus their inner thoughts, there still has to be a plot. There has to be an event, or series of events, around which your characters interact. Plot moves the message of an allegory from the question in the beginning to the answer at the end. The plot is the case your hard-boiled detective solves. The plot is the ups and downs, twists and turns of your romance. Plot is the sequence of events that are the purpose for your memoire or historical novel. Plot is what the narrator uses to move the reader from one place to another in his magical, mystical milieu.
No matter what kind of story you are writing, plot matters.
The first thing that you need to understand about your story is what it is about. You need to know this because people are going to ask you that question. You need to be able to sum it up in one or two sentences because that is all that most people will give you to answer. You would think knowing what your story is about is easy. After all, you wrote the thing. The problem is, many writers, and I come from this lot, begin a story not with a sequence of events, but with a character. You get to know that character, then ask what is happening. Next thing you know, you have a plot. If you were to ask only from the stand-point of writing the story what it is about, you’d be saying it’s about this character, and that may not be true at all.
So before you assume what the plot is of the story you have written, read it. Find the story line that continues from roughly the beginning and wraps up at the end. That is what your book is about. You will still have sub-plots, and that is good. Your next job will be to measure those subplots. Do they tie into the main plot in some way? If they so, do they make the plot richer? If they don’t, do they deepen the characters or setting in some meaningful way? If the answer to these questions are all no, then you may need to scrap the subplot. Any plot in your story that doesn’t work to the main plot or to develop the characters, setting, theme, or idea in some way will only detract from the over-all story. Your story will risk becoming muddled or it’s pacing will slow down too much.
Is there more to plot? Oh yes. You could write whole books about plot. Actually, people have. But this is the basic stuff, the high level of plotting a story that is important to an edit. Next time, I’ll discuss the difference in pace and clock and why these are so vital to understand in the editing process.
AUTHOR’S RESOURCE BOX
Lynn Perretta has worked as a freelance writer for White Wolf Games Mage: the Ascension (revised). Her writing credits include (as Lynn Davis): Guide to the Traditions, Initiates of the Arts, Bitter Road, and Cult of Ecstasy (revised). Lynn has also written a series of articles for Polymancer Magazine titled “I Was Thinking of Making My Character…EVIL!”
Lynn graduated Georgia State University with a bachelor’s in English – Creative Writing. She is currently working on The Shulim Cycle, a modern dark fantasy series that ties the distant past to the present, exploring predestination, fate, and hope. She writes her own blog, The Writer’s Manifest, and has started a project with her husband Nick called StreetWraith.net, dedicated to highlighting and discussing self-published works. You can contact Lynn on G+, Facebook, and Twitter.
Lynn was born in Atlanta, Georgia, but currently resides in Florida with her husband, their daughter Rebecca, and her cat Boo.
