Class 16 - Editorial Workshop

Checking In

This time, we’re doing an editing workshop But as usual, we’ll give you five minutes to check in and see how you are all doing.

Editing

By now, you should all have a draft of the memoir / reportage you are going to be submitting for your mid-term. You should also have feedback on your pitches. We’ll be giving marks for your pitching mini-assignment after you have submitted your midterm, so that the marks don’t interfere with your processes of thinking, writing and rewriting.

Today’s session will be quite active. But I’m going to start by talking about editing.

On Editing

Here are a few things to remember about editing. Editing is:

• Essential: you will need to edit, and repeatedly, to turn your raw material into a finished piece.
• Not a sign of the writer’s initial failure: writing is a process of writing and rewriting. We shouldn’t see the need to edit as a sign of initial failure. It takes time to shape ideas and words into something worth reading.
• Invisible in the final product: You can’t tell when you read a final piece if it has been edited 10 or 100 times. But you can tell if it hasn’t been edited at all!
• Most of what you do as a writer: I estimate that I spend 90% of my writing time editing.
• Collaborative: Writers work in community with others — peers, editors, agents, beta readers — to edit their work.
• A bridge between the author and the audience: we start with something we want to say in our first draft, but the work of building a bridge to our audience, finding how to say it in a way that is powerful, direct and compelling, takes a lot of editing.
• Creative: creativity doesn’t stop after the first draft. Editing is an intensely creative process, involving problem solving, imagination, boldness, and the ability to switch focus from big issues to small issues, and back again.

Getting Practical

A lot of the questions you need to ask as an editor are intensely practical. And the way you edit may depend on the writing. But here are four things to think about when editing work:

Logic

The story needs to make sense. Be clear about what is happening and why it is happening. Think about people’s behaviour and if it is credible.

Precision

Use simple, clear and precise language. Don’t use overcomplicated or long words where a simple one will do.

Emotional weight

However small or large the events you are writing about, there needs to be a sense of how they matter, what they mean, and how they affect people. The writing should make the reader feel something and make them care about what is happening.

Clarity

The scenes in the story should be clearly and vividly written.

Questions for Editors

Every piece of writing is different. But here are some questions editors might ask:

• Willl the reader understand what is happening?
• Will the reader know who everyone is?
• Will the reader understand where everybody is?
• Will the reader understand why things are happening?
• If somebody is talking, is this how people actually speak?
• Is the information given necessary to the story?
• Are the sentences clear and precise?
• Are there any digressions, or parts of the story that are not relevant?
• What can be cut out without any loss?
• What absolutely needs to be added for the writing to make sense?

Editing Exercise

We’re now going to get you into groups to edit. We want you to take turns reading your work out loud. This is important! Reading out loud is one of the top two most important things you can do to improve your writing (the other is reading aloud).

1. In your groups, nominate a storyteller.
2. The storyteller will read their work out loud, slowly and steadily. Don’t rush, and give the text lots of space to breathe.
3. Everybody else’s job is to listen.
4. For those who are listening, make notes. Pay close attention to individual sentences, which sentences are unclear, or confusing, or unnecessary? Which are great.
5. After the storyteller has read, take a short pause for the listeners to digest what they have heard, and to make some additional notes on the overall feel, shape and form of the piece.
6. Then feed back to the storyteller / writer with questions, suggestions, thoughts and ideas to help strengthening the work.
7. As the listeners / editors feed back, the storyteller / writer takes notes.

This is hard, intensive work! We’re going to give you half an hour in your groups. It should take at least this long, so if you finish early, you are not going deep enough.

Make sure you split up the time so everyone has a chance to read. Organise yourselves so there is time for feedback too. Remember that you may not get to read your whole piece.

Remember, too, that both roles are active and demanding: the storyteller / writer role and the listener / editor role.

Feedback

We’re now going to talk in the main room about the following:

• What, in general, were the biggest problems you identified in the work (your own and that of others) that you were discussing?
• What advice did you give or receive?

Homework

Keep writing and redrafting! In the next session, we’ll be running it as a “drop-out” session. This is the opposite of a “drop-in” session. We’ll get together, check in,