Editing Tools

To celebrate National Novel Editing Month, we’ve reprinted a writing tool from a great novelist. In a tribute to Kurt Vonnegut, blogger Derek Sivers reproduced a series of story grids that the great novelist made during a New York City lecture.

Follow this link to see all the charts. These story grids are invaluable tools during the editing process.   Writers can chart their manuscript against popular and successful story arcs–deciding how much they want to deviate from a classic structure.

Here’s more about the “Cinderella” grid embedded above: “It starts with her awful life with evil stepsisters, scrubbing the fireplace. Then she get an invitation to the ball! Things look up. Then the fairy godmother makes her a dress and a coach. Even better! Then she goes to the ball, and dances with the prince! This is great! But then it’s midnight. She has to go. Oh no. Sadness. Back to her humdrum life scrubbing the fireplace. But it’s not as bad as before, because she’s had this encouraging experience. Then, the prince finds her, and the happiness factor is off the chart! Happily ever after.

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Kirkus has launched a new book editing division. The new service will provide editing, copyediting, proofreading and copywriting services for unpublished and self-published authors.

The book editing division follows the success of Kirkus Indie, the company’s review program for self-publishers. Meg Kuehn, COO of Kirkus explained in the release: “Offering book editing services is a natural extension of our brand. We’ve been notorious for our high editorial standards for decades, and our success working with independent authors in the Kirkus Indie program paved the way for new author services that serve this fast-growing segment of the industry.”

Editors looking to participate in the Kirkus program must have experience working at a big six publisher or at an “award-winning” independent press such as Graywolf, Kensington or Abrams.

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In a blog post, Curtis Brown literary agent Sarah LaPolla (pictured, via) recommended five “band-aid editing” tips for fixing a manuscript before sending it to an agent.

LaPolla first advised that authors avoid sentences that begin with a conjunction. Here is an excerpt from the post: “Sometimes standalone sentences that begin with ‘And’ can be used for emphasis. And that’s OK. Other sentences, however, can end up sounding like a mere continuation of the previous sentence, making them sound weaker in comparison.”

LaPolla’s other tips elaborate on how to steer clear of weak sentences, redundant points, and the passive voice. Can you think of other “band-aids” that would be helpful? (via Elizabeth S. Craig)

Tired of having your writing club or spouse read the same common mistakes over and over? Try using the EditMinion–the robotic copy editor will spot common mistakes before you send your copy to a real human reader.

Here’s more from the site: “EditMinion is a robotic copy editor to help you refine your writing by finding common mistakes. To get started, paste a chapter of writing into the box below and click Edit! Don’t paste too much or the script will stop responding. This is still very much in Beta and I’ll be adding features as I come up with them. If you have suggestions, tweet @DrWicked or email imp[at]editminion[dot]com. Thanks!”

March is National Novel Editing Month (NaNoEdMo), a time for writers with unpolished manuscripts to clean up their copy–a good opportunity to revisit your National Novel Writing Month work. To celebrate this month of editing, we are sharing an editing tool every day.