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Troy Kirby

Tuesday, April 12, 2011

Self-editing

Some of the more interesting things I chose to do is self-edit my work. This does not mean that I do not have an additional person(s) read it, I do. But I also feel that a lot of the errors made are because description and characterization are hampered down by unnecessary words. And once you give it to someone to edit, you never get that opportunity back.

One of the short stories I am writing is taking some time to get down. It started off at about 8,700 words. Which is good length, but can be improved upon. I removed a lot of the unnecessary words, but also improved the description.

Now it is down to 8,100 words.

Imagine if every document you had to could lose about 6 percent of its words. Would this improve the topic, or diminish it?

I believe that the short story needs a little work. I am hammering down some of the subject text, getting the technical side of it done. A lot of writers just flow it, which is fine in the William Goldman theory of "what works for me."

2 comments:

  1. Just started writing my first short story part by part on my blog. Sadly my grammar skills etc are quite shocking so will need some editing. If this was not the case would indeed choose to self edit http://www.baldychaz.com/

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  2. Go back over each sentence when you are finished with the entire story. Work it through, sound it out.

    BTW - we all make mistakes. that is why we have editors, correct?

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