Writer, Edit Thyself!
By Liza Nash Taylor | September 2, 2022 |
Stephen of England, 1153 from WIkipedia.
In my last post about revising a novel draft, I offered up some primo advice from four successful and wise author friends. I’m still revising my own draft, so, being totally self-serving, I thought I’d stay with this theme and tell you about a fabulous program I found for self-editing. Then, I’ll fangirl for a bit over two gifted authors who don’t follow the rules, and finally, I’ll wrap up with a short rant about style. If you’re up for it, read on.
I’ve just joined up with two talented writers in a novel critique group and I look forward to having fresh eyes on my work. My number hasn’t come up yet, so being the insecure impostor that I am, I wanted to buff up my pages as much as I’m able to on my own before handing them over to my critique partners. I’m deep into the hairpulling stage of revising my third novel manuscript and I have some character arc issues to and some sequencing to work out, so it’s a great time for feedback. In the meantime, I’m exploring techniques for polishing pages on one’s own.
Here are the resources I used so far:
MS Word. I wrote my first two novels in Word. 350-page documents, and I used up hours of my life scrolling, searching for a keyword to find where I wanted to be in the manuscript. I kept separate desktop files for research, photos, and drafts. I like Word for finding overused words. A word search through the manuscript produces a tidy list in the left margin, and slap, slap, slap, like a teacher’s ruler across one’s palm, those pesky overused words go away and you can enjoy the smug self-satisfaction that only a lowered word count can bring. Also, Word’s basic spelling and grammar checker is easy to use to find glaring typos.
Scrivener. As a pandemic pastime, I converted. Like the camera on my iPhone, I know Scrivener has a lot of cool features I haven’t mastered yet, but to utilize them, I’d have to remember 1. what they are, and 2. how they work. So there’s that. Once I learned the basics, there was no going back. And I haven’t gotten much past the basics. I love the corkboard feature for sequencing, and I can add a mood photo to accompany each scene. It’s also handy to have research right there at hand, as well as character sketches. I’m not a Save The Cat devotee, but I did recently see a Scrivener template for that construction format offered from writer/blogger Jen Terpstra. (Save the Cat was originally a book about screenwriting, by Blake Snyder, recently adapted as a novel-writing format by Jessica Brody).
Grammarly. I’ve written about this program before, with mixed reviews. I don’t trust it. I’ve fed it my novel manuscripts, chapter by bloody chapter. Sometimes I get a proper hand slap: [really, Liza, how many times are you putting in “its” where “it’s” belongs, and vice versa?] As writer’s grammar goes, Grammarly is often just plain wrong. It has no sense of humor and no allowance for nuance. I yell at Grammarly sometimes and that helps a little.
Lately, I’d been feeling desperate ready to find a new self-editing program. I was willing to invest some time and money because I had allowed my manuscript to reach a bloated, anxiety-producing 390 pages and 119,000 words, with three scenes still to write. I wasn’t looking for plotting software, but for a critical program that wouldn’t ding me for nuances in dialogue or era-specific terms in my historical fiction, the way Grammarly does.
Enter ProWritingAid! Let me clarify here: this is not a sponsored post.
I signed up for a free, seven-day trial, and got to work. You can download a desktop version for Mac or PC, and I opted for the version that meshes with Scrivener. It amazed me that ProWritingAid can open my Scrivener manuscript file and allow me to work in it, and the changes save back to the Scrivener document. No need for two screens; no back and forth between documents. The interface is intuitive and well laid out and again, I feel sure this program has features I haven’t found yet.
You can set ProWritingAid to the style of whatever you’re working on—Script, Book Review, Magical Realism, etc. They even have a “Dating Profile” setting. I set this article for “General Casual” and I work on my novel manuscript using the “Historical Fiction” setting. Then, of you want to, you can actually choose from a list of well-known authors and compare their usage to yours. First, I ran the basic spelling/grammar check chapter by chapter, and found the missing/ doubled/ misspelled words. Whew. At the same time, I was getting reports, line by line, pointing out passive verbs and phrasing, sometimes with suggestions for fixes and increased readability. What an eyeopener! By the time I had reviewed my third chapter, I was hooked.
So, being a thrifty individual, I thought I would edit free for seven days, then bail before having to pay. The first three days of this slog were like driving cross-country in 100-degree weather in a beater with sprung seats and no air conditioning or radio, on highways with no scenery and lots of tolls and construction, with only Wendy’s and rest areas for breaks. You catch my drift. But when I arrived on the other side, five days later, I had cut 7,000 words without losing a scene. I made myself an Aperol spritz.
I will happily pay money for this program, thought I.
Next, I ran each chapter through the ProWritingAid filter for overused words (Enter just, maybe, had, and felt). Hey, you four! Go stand in the corner over there. (Yes, all of you. I know, it’s crowded.) The Realtime comments also ding me for beginning three or four sentences in a row with the same word.
All of this was enlightening. Had a ruler been at hand, I could have smacked my palm many times. Reviewing line by line, I realized that tend to write passively. I’ve always been upfront about my comma issues. I use too many, and in the wrong places, and also leave them out of places where they should be. I did some good comma work with this program and was on the verge of considering myself someone who knows her way around comma.
Not so fast.
After several long, sweaty summer days of immersion in comma moments, I closed my laptop, made myself another Aperol spritz, and picked up Colson Whitehead’s HARLEM SHUFFLE (Anchor/Penguin Random House 2022). After one page—hell, after the first paragraph—I was blown away. I was already a huge fan, and Mr. Whitehead does not disappoint.
This is a novel with voice, attitude, and confidence. Colson Whitehead did this brilliantly in THE UNDERGROUND RAILROAD as well. That book made me suspend disbelief completely. Whitehead, like another author idol of mine, George Saunders, confronts the reader with opening pages that convey in effect, “Listen, here’s the book. Figure out how to read it, or get off the ride. Rules are for fools. Comma, schmomma. I’ll put them where I want them, or not. My circus.” [not an actual quotation from either Whitehead or Saunders, btw]. Saunders’ LINCOLN IN THE BARDO (Penguin/Random House 2018) is genius, IMHO. I started reading it, not understanding the trick, but the humor and gorgeous writing made me follow the trail of crumbs until boom! I got it! Those disembodied voices! (no spoilers). A few years ago, when I saw Mr. Saunders having quiet lunch with his family during the Savannah Book Festival, I was too awe-struck to interrupt and gush my praise. My friend Mary marched over to his table and said, “Mr. Saunders, I really liked your book. It made my head explode!”
He smiled, and responded, “Mine, too.” Then later, when I asked him to pose for a photo with me after his event, he said, “Give me your camera. I take good selfies.” And he did.
A George Saunders selfie.
As a reader, I trust Saunders to do more than take a good selfie. His newsletter for writers, Story Club, is well worth a look.
My inserted fangirl rant actually has a point, and it is this: Even if we use all sorts of programs or plot plans and our spelling and grammar are flawless, our writing won’t be perfect. Look at Saunders’ sentence construction, the rules he breaks. Look at Whitehead’s word choices, his swagger, his humor; the authentic voice that overlies his stories.
Following the rules doesn’t guarantee a compelling story.
So, having found a program that really has helped polish my manuscript, I’m going back in again without it. This time, I’ll see where I might break some rules, and finesse the voice and style, and increase my character’s agency.
What programs have helped your writing? Which authors inspire you while you’re writing?
Liza Nash Taylor (she/her) is a late-blooming historical novelist and self-proclaimed empty nester with attitude. She was a 2018 Hawthornden International Fellow and received an MFA from Vermont College of Fine Arts the same year. Her work has appeared in Gargoyle Magazine; Deep South, and others. Her debut novel, ETIQUETTE FOR RUNAWAYS (Blackstone Publishing, 2020) was listed in Parade Magazine’s 30 Best Beach Reads of 2020 and Frolic’s 20 Best Books of Summer 2020. Her second novel, IN ALL GOOD FAITH, came out in August 2021, also from Blackstone.
A native Virginian, Liza lives in Keswick with her husband and dogs, in an old farmhouse which serves as a setting for her historical fiction.
Find out more at lizanashtaylor.com.
Informative! I’m definitely bookmarking this one. Thanks for doing the research for us, Liza.
Btw, this was a joy to read. Well-written, and the flow was as gentle as tubing down a lazy river. “General casual” on ProWritingAid was a perfect template.
Thanks for reading and commenting, Mike.
I’m another self-editor who relies on Word plus Grammarly — and I’ve learned to mostly ignore the Grammarly too.
One favorite new proofreading trick of mine: make a copy of a chapter, and use Word to split each sentence into its own paragraph. Then I can eyeball them and isolate each chunk’s grammar to make any errors pop out — plus, I keep my mind fresh by reading this from bottom to top. And I jump around, sometimes checking (and deleting) the larger sentences carefully, sometimes skimming through a set of smaller ones in a hurry. It’s all about making the patterns more clear.
Hi Ken, this sounds interesting! Thanks for sharing and for reading.
Grammarly only has two rules: Insert a comma everywhere conceivable (and in a few places that aren’t) and if it can’t insert a comma, insert a hyphen. I don’t care if they claim “Oxford” as the point of origin. I now come close to ecstasy any time I can delete a comma. It’s become a “man conquers the elements” sort of thing. Any time a word has an association with the one before or after it (as happens in a written language) Grammarly wants to see a hyphen. I’ve come to the conclusion that Grammarly doesn’t speaks a good English.
Michael, I’m with you!
Then, there are those of us who can’t help but proofread like in paragraph 2 above, this seemed to be missing something. “I have some character arc issues to …..” Then, further on down, it looks like an “I” is needed. “Reviewing line by line, I realized that tend to write….”. Later, “Then, of you want to,” should be “if” . Sorry, can’t help myself, so if you ever want a free proofreader, let me know. BTW, I’m deep into “Harlem Shuffle” right now, so thanks for the explanation of the style.
Well, you got me there, Warner!
Lisa, I grumble about Grammarly too. You are either the fourth or third writer who has praised ProWritingAid, so I should check it out, ready to bail in my standard cheapskate way after the trial. Scrivener’s a strong tool, though I too use it for the fundamentals you listed, and haven’t gone into its attics and cellars.
As for Underground Railroad and Harlem Shuffle, wowie-zowie, great books! I just started Lincoln in the Bardo, but have been getting George Saunders’ free (cheapskate again) Substack newsletter, and it has some of the most acute-yet-generous-and-grounded advice about writing I’ve read. Thanks for the post.
Thanks for reading and commenting.
I use LyX. You feed in your plans for page size, margins etc, then when you press a button, it produces a pdf in perfect book layout. After all the edits, proofreading etc are complete, that pdf is what goes to the printers. Not to mention it builds in navigation as you put in chapter headings, section markers etc, and it handles things like verse without turning a hair. Basically, it typesets as you write. Love it.
Hi Deborah, I’ve never heard of this program. Is it for self-publishing? Sounds like it does a lot of the heavy lifting for you.
It can be used for a lot of things: academic articles (handles fancy mathematical stuff), letters, scripts, and various sorts of books – even recipe books! Available for Linux, Windows, and Mac, and best of all: free.
It’s not quite as easy to get started with as Word is, I’d say, but it’s much less frustrating, and you can bend it to your will more easily. (Whenever I want it to do something I don’t know how to make it do, I just do a web search and there’s bound to be someone else reporting how they made it do that.)
I use AutoCrit extensively, continuously, at every stage of creating a scene.
When words fail, I listen. When listening doesn’t point to anything obvious, I run it through my (lifetime membership) Autocrit, but ONLY the counting parts. I am not interested in its version of grammar (and hate Grammarly with a passion). Then I go back and see if what I wrote is what I wanted (about half the time), and remove the embarrassing ones, and the places where I’ve used too many ‘that’s or too many somethings (my damaged brain has a tendency to do that).
It helps me focus on the possible places where a tweak would clean it up, a synonym or synonym phrase would make something fresh rather than faded, and warns me I have used a 3-4 word phrase several times in a scene.
They want you to use other features; I avoid everything but what I’ve found helps ME improve the text.
And it lets me put a set of MY word problems, things I really need to check every time, into a file just my own.
I have a workflow through AC, and use it until no more flags of any color pop up.
Hi Alicia, how great that you’ve come up with a system that works well for you. I’ll check out AutoCrit, too.
Health to you, Liza, and to all other self-editors who embrace an approach like yours. If systems, programs, nanny tutorials and the rest of it work for you, who shall say you nay? True, times change and so do approaches taken to what we do. Goodbye quill pen, hello typewriter, hello word processor. True as well, we are all self-editors. But what your article demonstrates for me is what I’ll call a rapidly accelerating effort to technologize composition itself. It’s a little like turning over responsibility for driving to the car. I see Joan Didion and Anne Tyler shaking their heads. Philip Roth just looks his usual glum self. While reading about Scrivener, John Cheever spilled his martini and is down on the floor, looking for the olive.
Well, Barry, we all have our weaknesses and I was happy to share something that has helped me. I wonder which earlier writers might have welcomed this technology. More than a few embraced the typewriter.
Great post. I really appreciate all the information. I am going to look into getting one or two of these programs. Thanks for the post. I will be linking to this on my blog.
Hi Rosie,
Thanks for reading, commenting, and not mentioning my typos!
I haven’t tried any editing aids yet. Thanks for the information.