Visual Editing: Color Coding Your Way to a Cleaner Manuscript

Courtesy of Caesantana

Editing.

Some people love doing it, while others loathe it.

But love it or hate it, editing is a vital part of the writing process.

I use to fall into the hate it camp, because after a while, all those words would run together and turn my brain to mush. It didn't matter how careful I tried to be, an embarrassing number of things would still slip through.

The bad news is that for 99.9% of us, things are always going to slip through. The good news is that there are ways to make life easier for your beta readers and, ultimately, you. Visual editing is one of those ways. The type of visual editing I'll be discussing in this post is color coding.

Going through your manuscript and color coding it can be time intensive, but has proven, for me, to be one of the most thorough ways of pushing small cracks and flaws out into the surface and highlighting the bigger problems with neon lights.

The first little bit of your manuscript is probably the part that will take the longest to get through, but once you fall into the rhythm, it does get faster and easier.

Now, onto the color coding.

How you go about color coding your manuscript is likely going to vary. This is how I do it. :)

First, I take an honest inventory of the areas of writing that aren't my strong suit. I make very sure to assign each of those a color. Then I look at what things I might go a little overboard on and add those to the list. Lastly, I add the things that are important structurally to the story.

Then I assign each item a color. So my list might look something like this:

Dialogue (You could even do separate colors for each main character if you wanted to.)
Description
Metaphors
Similes
Adjectives
Adverbs
To Be Verbs
Pacing
Characterization (Here, I would assign each major character and important side characters a color. If I'm running low on colors, I would assign a color and add bolding, italicizing, changing the font, or underlining.)
Inciting Incident
Clues that tie in together (I would be specific here. For example: All the clues that hint at the hero's destiny.)
World Building
Story Arcs (I'd assign each arc a different color. Again, if you're running out of colors, look at also bolding, italicizing, changing the font, or underlining to help differentiate the different things.)
Things Building Up to the Climax (I'd be specific here.)
Parts that Build/Release Tension (Might want to do a separate run through for this one.)
 Words I Overuse

This is by no means an exhaustive list, just some ideas to get you started.

Once you finish color coding your manuscript, you'll have a visual way of checking at a glance to make sure your story structure is sound, that you aren't being too heavy on, say, description, and too light on dialogue.

You can also go through and read through each character's arc, characterization, and dialogue to make sure they don't ever do anything out of character on accident.

When you go through and color code, it's important--at least to keep a little of your sanity--to go in as an impartial observer. You're not there to fix anything yet, just to observe and color exactly what's on the page. The fixing will come later. If you can't turn off your internal editor, feel free to make comments in the margins, but I would resist actually doing an edit simultaneously.

A handy tip I learned too late: If you want to save yourself a headache later on, make sure you copy your manuscript *before* you go crazy with coloring all over it. That way, when you do go in to fix things, you can have a copy of your color coded manuscript open next to a copy of your manuscript that is still one color and one font.

What about you? Do you color code? What about other types of visual editing that you've found helpful?

Danyelle Leafty| @danyelleleafty writes YA and MG fantasy. She is the author of The Fairy Godmother Dilemma series (Catspell, Firespell, Applespell, and Frogspell),  Slippers of Pearl, andBitten: A Novel of Faerie, and can be found on her blog. She can also be found on Wattpad.

Write Tighter, Write Smarter

As a homeschooled writer, I'd learned to improve my craft one layer at a time.

My first WIP was a stack of notebooks, pages of endless prose that I'd written one summer. I wrote it for fun, an imaginary escape, without the least care for grammar or structure or plot. It was a technical wreck but I wasn't worried--because no one but me would ever read it.

My second…that was different. I knew I wanted to share that story. I also knew I had a lot to learn about writing. I began to amass my writer's library and scoured the internet for articles and discussions and workshops, all in the hopes of improving my writing. I spent years learning how to be a better writer--and will spend many more years learning, too.

Recently, I came across those notebooks of my first attempts at writing a novel and was shocked to see what my style was like when I wrote it eight years ago. I think the aspect that struck me the most was how much I rambled.

It wasn't that I wrote endless chapters of setting or backstory or dialogue. My problem was that I wrote the way I spoke--and I spoke with a lot of extra words.

Extra Words

Extra words make your sentences flimsy. A reader wants the heart of the story--and extra words get in the way. Readers crave hooks and action and a thrilling pace but extra words can cause the story to stumble.

My WIP had a lot of extra words. When I read back through those pages, I found myself skimming. That's the ultimate sign that I lost my audience--and my audience was me. How bad is that?

Tighten Those Lines

When I started homeschooling myself, I'd picked up loads of tips on how to improve the mechanics of my writing. Without realizing it, I began to write smarter because I wrote tighter. Of course, I was learning as I went--and applied most of my new skills through editing.

Editing is a technique that should always be done in layers--sentence, paragraph, scene, and story. You can tighten your writing at each of these layers, resulting in better craft and a better story.

Sentence Level

Extra words like to hide in sentences, adding bulk without substance. You can use the "find" function on your word processor to hunt out those words and eliminate them. The biggest culprits? Words such as really, very, and just, to name a few. You don't need them.

And not just single words-- entire categories such as adverbs and adjectives will loosen your sentences. If you need to enhance a noun or a verb, it may mean you didn't pick the right word in the first place. Find a stronger word and kick the enhancers to the curb.

Another tip to tighten your sentences? Skip the obvious. "He put his hat on his head." Unless he often puts his hat on a different body part, you can skip telling us where he put it.

You can also skip the obvious by eliminating things like "she could see" or "I heard"--because you follow those phrases with whatever is seen and heard. And gerunds? You probably don't need them--if your character grabs a gun and has no intention of swinging it like a club, you can drop the "to shoot" that might follow.

Paragraph Level

When looking to tighten a paragraph, I look for sections that feel like telling and not showing. I'll add a line or two that shows the action and then go back to eliminate the telling part.

Okay, you may be thinking, how can that be tighter? You're adding words!

Yes, I am…but they are healthy, vibrant words, packed with wholesome story goodness. I eliminated the empty calorie words. End result? Better writing and a stronger story.

Example: I could tell she didn't believe me.

The fix: With a sharp shake of her head, she jabbed a finger into my chest. "You do this every time! I tell you that I'm finally happy, and you concoct some stupid story about why I shouldn't be."

Yep, more words…but now the reader sees the disbelief and doesn't have to take the narrator's word for it. I added action and dialogue. That original line "I could tell she didn't believe me" is now fluff to be eliminated. Bye bye, extra words.

Scene Level

Sometimes your sentences are tight but your scenes aren't. Maybe you've got too much going on.

You can tighten your scenes by watching for unnecessary elements--any character or prop or intention or action that doesn't move the scene forward can be removed because they are distractions.

What if one of the characters wasn't present? Is someone worrying about an issue that is keeping the scene from being streamlined? If you can change a character's thoughts or attitude before the scene occurs, would you ultimately improve the flow of the scene itself?

Watch for elements that seem stagnant or present obstacles to your action. Removing them will tighten your scenes and your story.

Sometimes the element is an entire scene. Try deleting it and see what it does to improve the story.

Story Level

Take a step back and think about your story as a whole. How can you tighten it?

List your plotline and sub-plotlines. Do you have sub-plots that do little to move your story forward? If the little stories don't contribute to the plot or to the character's growth, you may be hindering the big story.  It's time to send those extra words on their way.

And the characters that are window-dressing? Send them home. Extra people mean extra words. If they don't work the story, there isn't a reason to keep them around.

Make the Cut

You may be intimidated by the prospect of cutting scenes and storylines and even characters from your story because of the damage it will do to your word count. Keep in mind that readers only want the words worth reading. You can always go back and add to the real story, using strong, vibrant language.

And think of it this way--you'll save an agent or editor the trouble of asking you to revise those same issues. Extra words keep your work from attaining "shelf-ready status". Be brave and do what's best for your story. You and your story and your writing craft will be all the better for it.

(Image courtesy of nkzs.)





Ash Krafton is a speculative fiction writer who resides in the heart of the Pennsylvania coal region, where she keeps the book jacket for "Abraham Lincoln: Vampire Hunter" in a frame over her desk. Visit Ash's blog at www.ash-krafton.blogspot.com for news on her newly released urban fantasy "Bleeding Hearts: Book One of the Demimonde" (Pink Narcissus Press 2012).