You've Got This Tuesday: Multi-Pass Editing

Welcome to another edition of You've Got This Tuesday!

Once your first draft is done and you're ready to begin the editing process, what do you do?

One of the tools I use is called Multi-Pass Editing. What that means is that in order to continue going deeper into your story and into your characters' heads and hearts, you take multiple passes through the pages you've written, continuing to flesh out the story by adding new things and taking out those things that are no longer working or are no longer true.

In other words, you want to go multi-pass deep with your story. It's okay if on the first pass through the book (when you're writing the first draft) you don't get all of the material you want to write just right.

It's highly likely that your first draft can't be felt at a heart and soul level by your readers. Why? Because, most of the time, when you're writing the first draft, you, as the writer of the story, aren't going that deep into your characters' hearts and souls yet either. You don't know them well enough yet to mine for all of the great emotional gems waiting for you to discover. You're just getting out all of the surface stuff - the action, dialogue and general emotions that come right away before you know why they're there and can get to the heart of the motivations involved.

***Note: Use Multi-Pass Editing before you send out your book to a professional editor. You want to send out your best work, the version of your story that you feel is almost ready for publication. The better your story is, the less your professional editor will have to edit, which means the less your bill will be. The harder your editor has to work, the more you're going to pay him or her.

When your first pass is done, it's time to go for a second pass. And then a third. And perhaps a fourth. However many passes you need to go deeper...and deeper still. No one is keeping track or using a stopwatch to time your journey. So, take your time, and enjoy the process. Get to know your characters at a heart and soul level. And get to know your strengths and weaknesses as a writer.

Each pass you make, you're looking for and discovering new things. There's certainly no right or wrong way to approach each pass, but I share what works for me in my bestselling on-writing and publishing textbook THE ABCs OF WRITING AND PUBLISHING A BOOK, available on Amazon.

Here are the basics:

1. First Pass (aka Your First Draft)

2. Second Pass - This is where I use Margie Lawson's system called the EDITS System to look for the following: backstory management, kinesics and facial expressions, nonverbal communication, levels of intimacy, power lines, throw-away words and cliches, rhetorical devices, viscerals, tension and conflict and more.

3. Third Pass - Line and Copy Editing where all of the final punctuation and grammar problems are fixed.

4. Fourth Pass - Final read through (and I do this out loud and sometimes record myself reading it)

Do any of you use Multi-Pass Editing, and if so, what are you looking for in each pass?

Cheers Hugs and Love and Happy Editing --- DD