#My Editing Process

[moerusai]

What is something challenging about giffing KP compared to other sources?

I got jailed thrice. Does that count? 💀

Jokes aside. While KinnPorsche's colors forever reign supreme, I can think of at least 3 incidents where coloring a scene was the bane of my existence. Some before/after's below:

The backlit windows (paaaaaain. once a scene's overexposed, there's no way to get the colors back)

2. The bisexual sky (that wasn't very bisexual originally)

You can just tell how many takes are in this scene bc the shot matching is really not up to par 💀.

3. The pool scene (hello dark/mood lighting)

I recolored the whole thing in Davinci Resolve before giffing it. Who knows, maybe one day I'll release the entire thing (not on Tumblr bc I would def get jailed again lol).

Ask a giffer!

[cuppatealove]

My editing process:

*Reads passage*

I should probably kill some darlings here

*Adds 12 more*

[gracehosborn]

Hi Grace! I love hearing about your writing process and reading the snippets of your books that you post! Can you share what your editing process is like? I would love to publish something one day but I find editing to be so difficult! What do you do and do you have any tips?

Hi, Anon!

As I’ve only completed one project to the point where it’s being queried to agents, I’ll be using this to go through that process.

To my own surprise, I managed to draft Ink of Destruction in about eight months. I don’t know how and I highly doubt I’ll ever be able to do this again, but it was done. Once I was done, I tried to take a few weeks’ break from touching the project, to give myself some distance so that when I touched it again I could look at it more objectively. You can take as long or as little of a break as possible between drafting and starting the editing and revision process, but regardless it is a good idea to give your brain a break after completing something that took you a lot of work.

In total, IOD has since gone through about seven rounds of revisions and editing, or what I like to refer to as “drafts.” Starting off, as this was the very first book-length project I had ever managed to complete, I didn’t really have a solid plan for revisions, but Draft 2 (the first round) I mainly focused on minor edits and only a few larger developmental edits, as I was not quite certain where to start. Though, it is said that you learn and grow with each project you complete, and therefore your process of both writing and revising/editing will change.

After I finished with these minor edits, I gave the draft to a wonderful friend and critique partner to look over and give feedback. While I was waiting, I started to work on what would become The American Icarus before I had to put it down once I started working on Ink of Destruction again. Having notes back, I began the larger developmental (story, plot, characters) edits and thus began a cycle: revise, give the new draft to my CP, revise again till it felt complete.

Around the third or fourth round of revisions I began to look for beta readers (early readers who give more feedback from a reader’s perspective) however I never had much luck on this front as everyone I gave IOD to either never finished or didn’t get back to me. The majority of the feedback I received was from my CP.

Usually I prefer to tackle the things most on my mind first when it comes to editing/revising. Doing it this way (and not necessarily in order) allows the writing process to still be exciting, and it keeps me going—wanting to see the project to its end. This however is what works for me and everyone will have different ideas. For when Volume I of The American Icarus is fully drafted, for example, I plan to start off immediately tackling the larger developmental edits—then weed through the smaller things as I go.

If I had to give any specific advice: take things one step at a time, and trust your gut. Sure you can heed other editing advice, but if something isn’t working for you, don’t waste your time with it.

Thank you for the ask! I hope this is helpful in some way.

[author-a-holmes]

Leaves, warm coat

Hello Anon! Thank you for the asks <3 This is going to be a bit of a long post, because my editing process is... detailed, so I'll answer Warm Coat first, in case you get bored about reading my long-ass editing process <3

Warm Coat: Share a happy or fuzzy scene from your wip!

This is a cute moment that I love. It's from Chapter 20, and it really shows how Lizzy and Cara's friendship develops over the course of the book. Poor Lizzy though, they fey just don't celebrate birthday's the way we do...

"It's Lizzy's birthday," Cara said, pretending that she wasn't still blushing, and Lizzy rolled her eyes. Cara slid on the straw sun hat she'd been carrying in her hands, the orange band of fabric encircling it the brightest splash of colour on her entire outfit, and Cara's hands fussed with the ribbon tails as they trailed off the brim and down her back.

"It's— Your birthday?" Andric asked, switching his attention from Cara, as she fussed with her sunhat, to Lizzy mid-sentence, and Lizzy shrugged.

"It's not that—"

"It is important," Booker cut her off with a growl. "You're eighteen. This one's important... even without Maddy," he added, voice softening.

"I was thinking; Shopping, movie, meal," Cara said quickly, stepping closer to Andric, and Lizzy watched, bemused, as Andric got hit full blast by her roommate's wide-eyed pleading.

He seemed to hesitate a moment, and Lizzy half expected him shut down Cara's extravagant plans, but then she leant forward and added, "Did you know that fey don't do birthday parties?" and he caved.

"Sounds like you've got it all planned out," he said simply, holding out an arm towards the front doors of the school, "if we want to fit all that in, we'd better get started."

"Yes!" Cara celebrated, jumping on the spot and throwing one hand in the air as Lizzy looked on bemused.

"Looks like you're getting a mortal-realm style birthday," Booker teased as Cara and Andric moved towards the doors, and Booker began dragging her after them with the arm that had curled around her shoulders, "whether you wanted to or not!"

Leaves: What does your editing process look like? How does your wip typically change as you work on it?

My editing progress is... in depth? I guess? I know that grammar is my weak spot, so I kind of just do the best I can to get it as clean as I can before I send it off to an editor.

The way I do that, is to edit in layers, and this ties into the second half of this question about how my WIP changes. Because once I have a completed manuscript, my WIP's core story doesn't change all that much.

So, it might sound strange, but step one of my editing process is actually to create an outline of my story before I start writing. I know. Sounds weird. Bear with me...

So I make my outline. It's very rough, it's not in depth, it's not detailed (Sometimes it's nothing more than a list of bullet points), and I'm not going to stick to the outline as I write. So why do I make it, you might ask... because I can use it when I come to edit.

For example. Changeling's outline. The first version I wrote before I started the series. I changed the outline after I finished the first act. By the time I'd reached the 3rd act, I had to entirely rewrite the final act of the outline, because my story had drifted so far that the original outline no longer worked.

So now I have a finished manuscript, and 3 versions of the Changeling Outline, because while I was editing the outline, and rewriting it, I never deleted the original.

The first thing I do to edit, is I reread my original outline. I look at the story I wanted to telll, and the things I wanted to include, and I decide if I managed that. If I didn't, do I still want to include them? Or is the story better without them? I'll make handwritten notes about all this while I'm reading the outlines, because I don't edit the manuscript straight away. I have to let it rest, but I go over the outline as soon as possible after finishing the manuscript so that it's still fresh in my mind.

The second thing, once I have all my notes from re-reading the outlines, is to let my manuscript rest. The length of time varies. Stolen I let rest for 8 months. Changeling I was happy going back after about 3 weeks.

The third step is to actually edit. I don't reread my manuscript. I've let it rest so it's fresh, and I don't want to lose that by rereading it. I have the notes I made from the outlines, after I first finished it. These are usually large, plot structural changes I need to implement, so I have that notebook beside me as I work through the project. For example, in Changeling, I realised I needed Booker to have a 'Tell' for when he's using telepathy (for plot reasons), so that's something I needed to weave in throughout the story as I went.

And then I edit the manuscript one chapter at a time.

This is still step three, but I do each chapter in small, easily repeatable steps.

(A) I copy/paste the chapter from my writing program into the Hemmingway App. (Warning for Anyone who uses Hemmingway; It will not save your work. If your browser page refreshes, closes, or your computer restarts, you will lose ALL your work. If you need to navigate away from Hemmingway, copy your work into a googledoc or something)

While it's in the Hemmingway App, and before I use any of it's functions, I use Ctrl+F (Find in my browser) to search through the chapter for Weak Words, Filter Words, and my commonly overused words.

Caveat; If any of these are found within character dialogue, I ignore them. Character's shouldn't speak perfectly and so Character Voice always wins out.

Weak Words

Suddenly

Then

Very

Really

Started

Just

Somewhat

Slightly

Somehow

Seem

Definitely

That

Filter Words

see / saw / look / looked

hear / heard

taste / tasted

smell / smelled / smelt / scent

touch / touched

feel / feels / felt

wonder / wondered / think / thought

decide / decided

realise / realised

know / knew

My Personal Overly Used Words

Own

Though

Quickly

After I've searched for each of these words, looked at the paragraph it's contained in, and decided if it's the best word for the job/if it can be rewritten to remove it/if it can be deleted outright/if i want to keep it there... then I move onto the things Hemmingway App can actually do.

Hemmingway highlights a bunch of things, but the only two features I actually use or pay attention to is it's highlighting of Adverbs and Passive Voice.

If my Passive Voice is below the recommended, then I'll still go and have a look at them and see if I can reword to remove them, but I don't worry about it too much. I've usually only got 2 or 3 instances per chapter, and that's a comfortable quantity for me, as most of the time these are within character dialogue.

Adverbs are where I'm quite weak, I usually have a painful number of Adverbs, so I will painstakingly go through and check each adverb to see if it's a strong or a weak adverb. To see if I really need it there, or if I can cut it. If I do need it, then I try and see if I can rewrite the sentence or paragraph to remove the adverb, and replace it with a stronger verb instead.

I always try and get my adverbs below Hemmingway's recommended number, but as long as I've checked over each one, and made a decision on them, that's good enough because that usually gets me within 5-10 adverbs of their target anyway.

As I'm going through editing Adverbs, I'll also work in any new content I need to add from my notes. I'm rewriting paragraphs during this stage, so it's the easiest moment to slide in extra, additional, or changed content.

(B) Once I've done my final Adverb check in Hemmingway, I copy/paste it from Hemmingway into Grammarly.

I use Grammarly's free version. I've tried their paid, but I don't think it's worth the price, especially if you're also paying for a professional editor. ProWritingAid is another good grammar checker, but I find it too complex to work with. Your Milage May Vary.

So, my document gets placed into Grammarly, and I wait for it to run it's grammar check. I then go through each of it's suggestions. I don't accept every suggestion, I read it and make a decision based on how I want my story to read.

Honestly, this is probably the fastest step.

Once I've said yes or no to each suggestion, I move onto Natural Readers, but KEEP the Grammarly Document open in a different tab.

(C) Keeping my chapter open in Grammarly in one tab, I go to Natural Readers Online. Natural Readers have really GOOD sounding voices, and they will read back to you any text you paste into their website.

So I'll copy the chapter from Grammarly, and paste it into natural readers. You can get 5 minutes of their Plus voices for free per day, and I think it's 20 minutes of their Premium voices for free per day. Their basic voices are free, unlimited, but do sound more like the robotic voice you'd expect.

I hate reading my own work aloud, so this is the way I bypass that embaressment. I have Natural Readers read my work back to me. I find this step invaluable. I can hear the flow of the text, I can catch spelling mistakes that a spell checker thinks are correct, but aren't what I intended (like Brian instead of brain, for example).

I also find that I can spot repetativeness more easily when it's read back to me too. I can hear I used "running" three times in two paragraphs easier than I can see it.

I can also spot where I've duplicated paragraphs. Sometimes, at the Hemmingway Stage, if I need to rewrite a paragraph, I'll go to the next line and retype it out from scratch, but will forget to delete the original. Natural Readers, and hearing it read back to me, is where I'm most likely to catch this mistake.

The reason I keep my Grammarly tab open, is that any errors I hear in Natural Readers, I edit in Grammarly. That's because Natural Readers doesn't like my Em-dashes. It breaks them. So it's easier for me to copy/paste from Grammarly that it is from NR and to fix all my Emdashes later.

(D) So after Natural Readers has finished reading my chapter back to me, and I've fixed any error's that's highlighted, I copy my final version of the chapter, and I paste it into my manuscript's Googledoc File.

I run Googledoc's spellchecker, to catch any tiny, last things every other step missed, and then I log the final wordcount of the chapter so that I know how many words I cut or added, and so that I can keep track of my manuscript's final word count (Because final word count is what I'm paying my editor to check)

(E) Then I do it all over again on the next chapter. This process can take me anywhere from 2 hours to 6 hours, per chapter.

Final Step, once I've completed all my self edits, is to read through the book from start to finish myself. At this point, I'm hopeful, I don't find anything else I think I can change.

Then I hand it over to Beta Readers. I'll make any small changes they find, then it'll be time to send my manuscript off to my professional editor, Nicole at Evermore Editing.

She edited my prequel short story, Whatever Happened To Madeline Hail? and I have every intention of going back to her for Changeling

So that's my editing process. It's also why my core story doesn't really change a whole lot once the manuscript is completed. Any huge, structural changes happen during the outline, and during the actual writing process. If I reach the end of a manuscript, it's almost entirely how I wanted it to come out, or I go back and rewrite.

Editing is really the final stage, and some once I'm reached that point, there's not a whole lot that is due to shift.

So I whine about editing a lot, but it's more that I find it highly tedious, and repetative, than stressful or difficult.

[myclericalromance]

i went to a tiny counterserve diner once and accidentally poured sugar instead of salt all over my hashbrowns and was eating them sadly anyways. the waitress took them away and started making me another one and I tried to protest, but she just snorted and said "we're not catholic here". now every time i'm doing something painful out of obligation i think about how that is not repenting, this body is not a catholic establishment, there is no nobility in suffering.

[astrhae]

"I'm very good at forgiveness. It's one of my favorite things."

[heartorbit]

find another role, carry on the show

[critai]

4321

[thecomfywriter]

one day, someone is going to simp for my favourite oc harder than me, and i will no longer be a one-woman act in this fanclub

[ashleys-doodle-corner]

ACT 2 "You're... me?" "That's right, stardust!"

You know I've been drawing Loop as their Siffrin form so much that it's got me thinking. I've read and seen so many fics and artworks of Loop eventually getting back to looking like their old self, but I don't think I've seen any so far of Loop already being a mirror copy of Siffrin. So uh, yoink?

ISAT AU where the game plays out the same way (plot-wise at least) but Loop looks like Siffrin the whole time and while Siffrin is extremely perplexed that there's another him, he's still gotta accept their help because how else are they supposed to escape the loops? Good ol' Loop is here to help, helpful friendly Loop!

Siffrin is going through it still but Differently.

[nohomie]

New friend?

Unedited version + those funky text stuff that you may like to read properly below the cut:

First circle text:

You are who you always will be. Caged by pure definition and perception. Self is not absolute, never complete. As long as there is a you that is perceived by the other, you will never have a self that is completely yours.

Second circle text:

Once a saint always a saint. Once a monster always a monster. Convince as one might, they are eternally damned by title alone. If not the boy who cried wolf, or the flock themselves, the hands will serve as one's signature. One's reminder. There must be a god to allow them to never precieve one's self. We wonder... should one look into one's eyes, --should they dare,-- will one find a soul? Will one weep? Will one smile? Will one find the name they have been given? Or the name they have chosen for one's self?

Just a buncha words for Wally's whole mental state lol

[moerusai]

My PC crashed and there is no backup whatsoever of my projects. I am strangely not freaking out about this as much as I should 😂.

[firstprinced]

two homes.

[angelsdean]

SPIRIT OF THE WEST: The Major Motion Picture

It's a summer evening in the late 90s and you and your friends are looking for something to watch at the slumber party. You go into your local Video & Variety and happen upon the coming of age romance, Spirit of the West. Let's hope this doesn't awaken anything in you....

SUMMARY:

Dean grew up on a horse farm and can't imagine any other life. There are drawbacks to working for his father, but they're worth it if it means remaining with his beloved horses. Besides, between his broken arm and his lack of prospects, he hasn't got much else.

Something of an outsider, Dean always feels like there's something he's missing. But this tense summer brings back a figure from his past: years ago, a teenaged Cas worked for a season at the Winchester ranch. His return could change everything.

Reviewers rave: "If you ever wanted a 90s horse girl book, but starring a young Dean Winchester, this is your flick."

Spirit of the West is written and directed by Teen_Dean / @urne-buriall

▶️ PLAY Spirit of the West ⏪ REWIND with Spirit of the West Prequel by @foolondahill17 ⏩ WATCH IT AGAIN with SOTW Daily 🌟 BONUS FEATURES ✨ Director's Commentary 🎶 The Official Motion Picture Soundtrack

[canisalbus]

do you pencil traditionally and then colour digitally, or do you just have a very convincing digital pencil brush? I really love the organic, sketchy feel of your work.

I always sketch and ink on paper first, then scan the piece and color it digitally.

[elderwisp]

𝔗𝔞𝔨𝔢, 𝔭𝔩𝔢𝔞𝔡 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔠𝔯𝔶 𝔴𝔦𝔱𝔥 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔰𝔞𝔦𝔫𝔱𝔰 𝔏𝔞𝔲𝔤𝔥 𝔴𝔦𝔱𝔥 𝔱𝔥𝔢 𝔰𝔦𝔫𝔫𝔢𝔯𝔰 𝔞𝔫𝔡 𝔯𝔢𝔰𝔱 𝔦𝔫 𝔭𝔢𝔞𝔠𝔢