#developmental editing is feedback on plot stuff

[magicalmelancholy-blog1]

I feel like a lot of time, people will ask for betas wanting developmental editing only to get copyediting in response.

[literaryvein-reblogs]

Writing Notes: Levels of Editing

The 5 Stages of Editing: Beta Reading, Developmental Editing, Line Editing, Copyediting, Proofreading

The Editorial Process

Writing

Drafting

Sourcing feedback from beta readers

Self-editing

Developmental editing or manuscript evaluation

Line editing

Copyediting

Proofreading

Publishing

2 Levels of the Process

MACRO / STORY LEVEL

This is where developmental editing (also sometimes called content editing, substantive editing or structural editing)

and manuscript evaluations (sometimes known as manuscript reviews or editorial critiques) are to be found.

It’s big-picture work that looks at the novel as a whole. Editors who specialize in this level of service focus on how your book works – stuff like structure, plot, flow, point of view, characterization and pace.

Story-level editing involves the following concepts:

Character arc: Goals, motivations and conflict

Effective dialogue

Genre: Impact on writing style and length

Narrative arc: Beginnings, middles and ends

Narrative style: Viewpoint, tense, voice and distance

Plot and subplot analysis

Problematic representation, stereotyping and othering

Story structure and pacing

Themes: the main ideas that connect the components of the story

World-building: creating engaging settings

MICRO / SENTENCE LEVEL

Includes line editing, copyediting and proofreading.

Sentence-level work that looks at the text on a line-by-line & word-by-word basis.

Sentence-level editing involves the following:

Chapter sequencing

Character-trait consistency

Cliché and awkward metaphor

Dialogue expression: style, tagging and punctuation

Effectiveness of sentence-level narration

Letter, word, line and paragraph spacing

Narrative style: Consistency of viewpoint, tense, voice

Effectiveness of narrative distance

Pace and flow: Special attention paid to repetition and overwriting

Problematic representation, stereotyping and othering

Spelling, grammar, syntax, punctuation, hyphenation and capitalization

Standard document formatting using Word’s styles palette: indentation, paragraph style, section breaks

Told versus shown prose

The Levels of Editing

STAGE 1: BETA READING

Authors send drafts of their novel to test-readers.

To receive feedback on structural issues such as plot, pacing, characterization, writing style and reader engagement.

Not the place for uncovering micro problems (spelling/grammar).

Beta reading may be free (via, say, a writing group or a critique partner) but some professional editors provide paid-for services (sometimes called early reviews) that provide guidance on the next-best editing steps.

It’s a good first step for those who want someone else to take their novel out for a test-drive before deeper levels of intensive editing begin.

STAGE 2: DEVELOPMENTAL EDITING

Also called structural or story editing - the shaping stage where decisions that affect how the novel works as a whole are made: Plot, story arc, structure, pacing, characterization, genre, narrative viewpoint and tense.

When the reader has finished the journey, they should feel satisfied by the experience of reading your work.

The journey might be bumpy. There are peaks and troughs – action, contemplation, and deduction, all of which are structured and paced so as to engage the reader as the story unfolds.

Developmental editing is where your story is tested and revised so that readers want to turn the page.

Alternative: Manuscript Evaluations/Critiques

Critiques can be thought of as mini developmental edits.

A professional editor provides a report that analyses the strengths and weaknesses of the writing, and what the author can do to improve their book.

Unlike full developmental edits, no changes are made to the book file. They’re an affordable first step for any author who wants to learn how to implement their own structural revisions.

Additional: Sensitivity/Diversity Reading

This is a niche form of evaluation in which a specialist reports on the potential misrepresentation and devaluation of marginalized others.

Readers are looking out for cliched, harmful, biased or false content and non-inclusive language.

Sensitivity readers focus on how others’ identities are represented in terms of race, sexuality, gender, physical ability, mental or emotional health, political beliefs, religion, age, culture and socioeconomic status.

Others identify potential problems with how those who’ve experienced abuse, trauma, violence, bigotry, illness, bereavement and poverty are portrayed.

They’re a valuable addition to the editorial process for authors who want to positively diversify the voices in their fiction but don’t have the lived experience of the individuals/groups they’re writing about.

Identifying goals and selecting a sensitivity reader with the appropriate experience is essential.

STAGE 3: LINE EDITING

The smoothing stage.

Sense is checked and flow is mastered so that the reader is driven to stay on the page and immerse themselves in the story’s world.

Good writing acknowledges that readers absorb words in a certain way – in the West we read from left to right and top to bottom, regardless of the device through which the book is delivered. Though our brains allow us to take in more than one letter and one word at a time, unless we’re scanning we move through sentences from start to finish. Those sentences should say what they need to say, and only that. Too many words, or repetition of what’s already known, can make the reading experience boring and frustrating.

Authors can play with sentence length and language style to reflect the historical period, genre, and the mood of a given scene. And punctuation is not about pedantry. It’s a powerful pacer that can evoke tension and impart clarity.

If a strong story compels readers to turn the page, line editing is what helps them want to stay on it.

Alternative: Mini Line-Level Critiques

No changes are made to the book file.

Instead, a professional editor provides a report that analyses the strengths and weaknesses of sentence-level craft.

The editor may suggest recasts to dialogue and narrative with a view to improving line-level flow, pace, drama and readability.

They’ll also offer advice on layout, spelling, punctuation & grammar conventions.

They’re an affordable first step for any author who wants to learn how to implement their own sentence-level revisions.

STAGE 4: COPYEDITING

The correcting stage

Inconsistent or incorrect spelling, grammar, and punctuation are attended to, and where logic is checked, such that the reader is allowed to follow the story without distraction.

Compelling writing makes readers forget that they’re reading.

Copyediting removes distractions.

Style sheets are the author’s and editor’s friend.

They record decisions on the language choice (e.g. American or British English), style (e.g. -is- or -iz- spellings, both of which are standard in British English), proper-noun spelling, character traits, location identifiers, the book’s timeline, use of idiom, dialogue treatment, how numbers are rendered, how capitalization and hyphenation are handled, and a hundred other decisions.

Many professional editors carry out line- and copyediting simultaneously because they’re complementary processes.

STAGE 5: PROOFREADING

The quality-control stage

Any final literal errors and layout problems are flagged up such that the book is fit for publication. Since human beings are doing the editing work, it’s rare for a book to get to the pre-publication stage without a few snafus remaining.

During the previous rounds of editing, new errors might have been introduced by accident. The design process can cause problems too:

Some elements of the book (a heading, a paragraph, a footnote) might be formatted inconsistently and incorrectly … think about indents, line spaces, end-of-line wordbreaks, page-number chronology, running heads and alignment just for starters.

Proofreading is the final line of defence.

The Order of Play

There’s a logical order of play when it comes to editing.

Think of it like building a house:

Developmental editing is like laying the foundations and building the structure

Line editing and copyediting are like plastering the brickwork, painting the walls, and sanding the floorboards

Proofreading is where you move in the furniture and fill in any tiny cracks that have appeared

Swap the order around and you’ll end up in a pickle.

At best you’ll waste time; at worst you’ll waste money.

Let’s imagine you invest in smoothing your prose and eradicating most of the spelling, grammar, punctuation, and consistency problems (line editing and copyediting). Then you discover a gaping plot hole that requires you to move two chapters, rewrite three, and make 75 sentence-level tweaks throughout the rest of the book (structural amendments).

Every move, every deletion, every rewrite, and every tweak brings with it the chance of damaging the line/copyediting work.

That’s time and money down the drain.

Source ⚜ More: Writing Notes & References

[prettyquickpoetry]

so im thinking about booking w/ you to have my book edited, the draft isn’t quite ready yet and i also dont know which kind of editing it will need? what are the different types for?

Hi!! You’re totally welcome to message me to talk about your draft because no one knows your story and better than you do!

Below are the editing services I offer in order of when they should be done:

Editing Services

1. Beta reading

Get a reader’s perspective to make sure you’re on the right track and there are no surprising reactions. I read your work and highlight things that I like/love, made me laugh, intrigued me, and confused me. I annotate my thoughts on the side.

2. Developmental editing

Now get an editor’s perspective with more in-depth feedback on story points like plot structure, characterization, arcs, pacing, etc. No edits are made to the text—this is big-picture stuff. (My favorite step!)

3. Copy editing

You may have heard me call this line editing in the past. Line editing is a form of copy editing, but copy editing is a more inclusive form of editing and I found out that that’s what I actually do. Spelling, grammar, punctuation, capitalization, POV, word usage, word choice, tone, voice, flow, etc.

4. Proofreading

Once you’re happy with EVERYTHING ELSE and no more changes need to be made, I’ll read through out loud and catch any remaining typos and spelling/grammar/punctuation errors. This should be done last, unless you also need fact checking (which I don’t offer).

Book with me!

I have availability this month for some more clients, so DM me!!

[writing-with-olive]

A starting place for self-editing your novel

I wrote this in a reblog to one of @boy-who-can-fly​‘s posts, but as I couldn’t add any tags to that that would make it findable to more than just my followers, I figured I’d make the same content in an original post because YAY TAGS!

Without further ado...

1) Take a break.

Some authors have suggested taking a break for six or so weeks, but I find anything longer than three makes me too distanced from my story, and I have to work a lot harder to get back into my protagonist’s head. During this break, don’t so much as look at your story. Instead, focus on something else. Maybe growing your author platform, planning or developing another wip, or researching the publishing industry if publishing is the end goal for your book (this goes for both traditional and self pub). The point of this is that without some distance, it’s going to be a lot harder to see larger developmental flaws.

(this is a very long post, so the rest of the steps are below the break)

2) The first read-through.

After your break has ended, and you’ve got to be a little stern with yourself not to extend it farther than what you set, or else you’ll never return to it, do a readthrough. This means either just reading it off you’re computer or kindle, or going to somewhere like staples and getting it printed and spiral bound (this costs money, but I found it helpful down the line). Two rules: 1) no editing. 2) look at the first rule. This read-through is going to help give you a general sense of what is and isn’t working in your book; the problems you notice here are likely going to be the biggest ones. (if you want, you can combine this step with step three, but I found it more helpful to keep them seperate)

3) Outline.

It doesn’t matter whether you outlined before, or whether you decided to pants it. By the time you get to editing, you need to have an outline that’s reflective of what you actually put on the page. Go through your story, chapter by chapter, and for each new scene write down

what is your character’s goal in this scene

what is standing in their way

what is the outcome of the scene.

This list should not go into depth; one short sentece per point, MAX. That being said, make sure to keep things specific, so “MC wants to convice X to go with them to Y.” is going to be a lot more useful to you later on than “MC tries to convince them to go.” This outline is going to help you objectively look at your story structure, as you can see a lot more of what’s happening at once, without being quite so overwhelmed by the sheer mass of the words you wrote. Yes, this step can be a bit tedious, but it is so, so worth it.

4) Sort out what you need to fix, aka start making a game plan for your edits.

Now that you’ve read through your wip at least once through, and probably twice, you probably have a pretty good idea of what you need to fix. The key here is that right now, you want to be fixing on the global edits - the things that span beyond just a single scene or chapter. The reason why is that you don’t want to be spending hours perfecting a scene that you’re just going to need to cut later because it doesn’t advance the plot.

In a new document or spreadsheet (whatever you think will work better for you, I liked using a google doc), write issues you see with:

Each of your main cast (regarding character development, motivations voice, etc)

Setting/s (consistancy, realism for your world)

General worldbuilding (consistancy, things poorly explained/set up)

Main plot (following a given plot structure, building tension, etc)

Each subplot (how it intertwines with the main plot, plot structure, building tension, etc)

Other major things you noticed during your readthroughs

These things tend to be larger scope, and generally are worth addressing first.

5) Picking your edit.

Look at the list of edits, and see which one is going to cause the most ripples through your story. This is going to be the first thing you look at to fix. If there are more than one edits that will all have major impacts on the story, think about which edit would make the other ones easier.

For example, in my wip, Project Toxin, my plot was, well, a trainwreck and a dumpster fire’s love child. But my characterization for my MC was also a wreck. Still, getting the overall plot more in order would make it easier for me to edit my MC, so I chose plot first.

6) Make a game plan for your edit.

Before diving in and ripping through your first draft, come up with a game plan. Brainstorm possible solutions to the edit you’ve chosen, and look at what ripples it would cause. You want to make sure that what route you take isn’t going to upset something major or crucial to your story. Most likely whatever solution you choose will cause some other upsets, so just make sure to think through what makes most sense for your story.

For example, when working on my story, I was fixing plot first. Figuring out my game plan meant looking at my scene list and moving things around/adding/cutting content until I had a plot that was much more satisfactory, and that was, in my mind, not a wreck.

Possible game plans for different types of edits:

1. Plot:

Look at your scene list. What helps to advance the plot? What is dragging the pacing. Are there any elements that you are adding or cutting in your overall story that need to be accounted for? With this in mind, cross out scenes that you want to cut, move scenes around that need to come in a different order, add scenes that need to be added, and mark scenes that need to be combined into one.

2. Characters:

For each of your characters, look at their character development. It’s going to be hard to make them come to life better on the page unless you’ve got a grasp of who they are, even if you didn’t plan them out originally. If you have not, consider listing in a spreadsheet or google doc what their backstory is, what their goals are, why they want those goals, and what a few of their strengths and weaknesses are. Also think about their voice: what words do they use more often? Sentence structures? What do they sound like when they’re talking? Stuff like that. If your character is inconsistant, pick one version of them that you want to follow (knowing that they will likely change over the course of the story), and look at what parts of them you will need to change to accomodate that.

3. Setting/Worldbuilding:

I’ve put these together here as they’re somewhat similar. For poorly explained aspects of worldbuilding, look at where you might add in little details so you can better set that foundation (this is not usually a global edit). If things are inconsistant, look at what makes the most sense for your story, and like what we talked about with characters, alter the rest to accomodate that.

7) Making edits.

This is where you really get to dig in and really move things around. Using the edit you’ve picked and the game plan you’ve developed, go through scene by scene and make the changes. I strongly recommend having a seperate doc from your rough draft to store your second draft in. Currently, my process is to have both open at the same time, and if a scene is already fine, I’ll just copy/paste it over. At least for me, however, it’s usually not, and I’ll either make tweaks to fix it up, or, more often at this early stage, I’ll rewrite it. As an added bonus, I also find that rewriting it makes my prose a lot stronger, since I’ve grown so much as a writer since I originally wrote the scene.

Since you know your story better, you may find other elements that you want to change are improving as you edit. If not though, don’t worry - they’ll get their own editing pass.

8) Repeat steps 5-7

You made a list of edits you needed to make back in step four. Now, follow steps 5-7 to make all of those edits and changes.

9) Repeat steps 2-8

Two steps telling you to repeat in a row? Yes. The deal now is that you want to make sure you’ve cleaned up any global edits before moving on to anything smaller. If you’ve been thourough thus far, this will be a very fast step. If not, think of this step as a safety net. There may have been ripples that you didn’t notice earlier on, and it’s a good thing you’re catching them now.

10) Chapter edits

At this point, we’ve cleaned up all the big edits. Now we’re going to look at each chapter. Within each chapter, there needs to be a mini-arc. A beginning, middle, and end. This is the time to really focus on that. Also focus on things like tightening up prose, combining or compressing paragraphs, making sure you’ve adequately set the scene, etc. If you’re over the word count limit regarding your genre, also focus on cutting a certain number of words from each chapter to put your story back within those limits.

11) The little things

This is about combing through your wip to find all of the little errors that have made their way through edits. Typos, weird or incorrect grammar, useless adverbs, things like that. At this point, everything is on a more superficial level.

Beta Readers

Given that this has gotten quite long, I’m not going to go in depth about beta readers here, but around step 10/11, you’re going to start recruiting beta readers (you’re going to want to try and have multiple rounds of somewhere around 10 betas each, which is why having a good author platform is useful: recruiting is easier). Between each round, you’re going to look at their feedback and make the necessary edits. After several rounds of beta readers, you’re going to look it over a few more times, and then if you’re going the traditional publishing route, you’re going to query agents. If you’re going the self-pub route you’re going to look to hire a professional editor. If you’re not looking to publish, this may be the end of the line.

Good luck editing!

[rawliverandcigarettes]

Assessing Draft 2

Hi there tumblr,

We’re nearing the end of the dreaded 2020, and I thought it might be worth updating you all on what’s up with me and Halfway Home, for those of you still following this blog despite these centuries of waiting. Thanks to you, so much! You make it worth it to me, and I’m sorryyyyyy

Okay, so several things happened these last months.

First off, I finished the Draft 2 of Halfway Home. I’ve rewritten a good 75 % of Draft 1 over the course of a year, cut a LOT of stuff (maybe a bit too much, but we’ll get to that) and made several drastic improvements to the overall structure. It’s been some serious hard work, and it’s not over yet. But finishing it in 2020 opened the way for my Halfway Home 2021 plans, and I’m glad I managed to complete the project despite the kind of year we’ve been through.

Also, I quit my job, and left literally yersterday. I felt all sorts of way over it these past months, but right now I’m at peace with my decision. That means I’m going to leave Sweden and come back to France, and take some time off paid videogame development to recuperate and reflect on where to push my career next.

So yeah, this post is about what I plan my 2021 to be like (especially in regards to HH).

So first off I don’t want to make any promise that Halfway Home will be released in 2021, because I don’t want to overstress myself over this decision and want to give myself a mental backdoor in case I still don’t think the story is up to my standards by same time next year –but there is a very real possibility it might happen.

I’ve reread the story last week from start to finish. I wanted to wait longer so my mind was clear off it, but I also want to have a version to send to beta-readers by end of march 2021 so I can’t really afford to wait too long on that.

There are a lot of things that are better than Draft 1, and the rewrite was a notable improvement in most ways (the story never needed to be 275k long, that was insane of me). Every character is better, most notably Shlee who’s leagues better now that he’s not biotic anymore, and the batarian subplot is by far the best thing in this story currently. I’m starting to be really fond of Aria’s characterization, and I think some of the ideas are sort-of-working. Also, the prose has spiked in quality and I’m starting to do work I’m actually proud of!! Incredible I know. You can track my progress and figure out what has been written when by the quality alone, and even if it makes a lot of work of this very year outdated already, the drastic improvement is a good sign.

But there’s also a lot who still needs serious work, and I had to come to terms with some issues that exist at the very core of Halfway Home, at its very premise, and therefore might never be fixed and will never fully work. There will be balancing to do, and identifying what can be still improved and what needs to be let go will be an integral part of my next step.

The one thing I had to reconcile with was that I’ve been trying to write a story about sociopolitics from a single point of view character. And while this specific character could hardly be more at the crossroad of perspective and political shift than he is, we’re still dealing with a subjective view of the world, and my tendency to want and shoehorn every existing political thread inside his narrative to compensate mushes it up as a result.

I think the best thing to do is to roll with the subjectivity, and use that perspective and its uniqueness to heighten the perspective on the world instead of trying to be absolutely fair to everyone; and eventually challenge that with the coming next parts.

Also, I might have cut to much and made the world shrink too much as a result. This is also a consequence in trying too hard to abode by “normal” narrative structures and advice: while this resulted in tighter threading of plots (once again, may I gloat about the batarian subplot whom I think has that level of quality I wanted to reach), some of the story’s soul was lost, and my next steps will focus on trying to recapture it.

So yep. From now on up to end of march, I’ll focus on working on the Draft 3.

What I mean by Draft 3 is way less drastic than what I did for Draft 2 (which was a full rewrite). This time there will be some rewrites still–namely the entire beginning, which I did not dare to tear apart as violently as I should have the first time–, but otherwise, any developmental work will generally focus on scene-by-scene massaging; some will have to be revisited or replaced by a new one, but despite all that stressful juggling there are a couple of chapters that I think already work as they are, and that’s Quite Cool.

(me trying to fix the plot while also not breaking the plot, allegory)

During these 4 months, I will fix up some of the developmental problems, and also do a first pass of line edit for the very first time. Down with repetitions and sentence bloating and excessive adverbs: my scissors are sharp and ready. I also have this desire of doing very specific and intentional lexical work to enhance Shlee’s narration and development as a person, as I think it could do a ton for his characterization without being overpowering, and inform the way he looks at the world in general. But that’s gonna be intense shit.

When I’m at the end of March 2020, regardless of the state it’s in, I’m going to send Halfway Home to a couple of people who kindly volunteered to review it and give me feedback.

It’s like the first time anyone (besides one friend) will read the entire story, and I intend to give them 3 months to do so. Nerve-wracking, but I’m loosing all sense of objectivity on what the fuck is up with this story and need an outside perspective quite desperately.

Once this passes, I’ll assess the feedback and work on the final version. Depending on said feedback, that could be very long or very short (which is why I’m not promising anything for 2021, as people could tell me It’s Garbage Actually, and that might change my plans).

But yeah. Moving forward. Doing the writing thing. We try.

How are you all doing?

[jam2289]

Giving Feedback on Someone's Writing

A friend of mine reached out to me recently because he's working on writing a book. I'm guessing we'll get together and discuss it more in the future, but I highly encouraged him to do the work of writing, because you can spend your entire life studying something and never get around to the doing. I know that from personal experience. (And, I did send him a big list of videos and books to check out, probably too many.)

This is a writing exercise he did with my comments included.

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I will offset my comments like this.

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So since I think I should just start writing, I used a writing prompt to create a very short passage . This is the first time I’ve just written off the top of my head . Lemme know if it’s decent, like if there’s room to grow, anything . Thanks.

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The important part about writing is that your style is going to naturally change over time, so you want to get past the early and fast changes as quickly as possible. There is always revision of course, Patrick Rothfuss has done hundreds of rewrites on his books. But, it did take 14 years of work before "The Name of the Wind" came out.

I did a writing exercise about 2 years ago that changed my writing style quite a bit. It's in these articles.

http://www.jeffreyalexandermartin.com/search?q=imitating

I plan on doing another way that may be significant soon based on the advice of Benjamin Franklin. We'll see how that goes.

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Writing prompt: unstable man being broke up with from girlfriend

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There is some emotional depth to that prompt.

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Owen’s vision began to change. The typical colors he had come to recognize as normal, the smooth brown of the hardwood floors, the many greens of the endless house plants that filled their home, began to flicker hues of red and black. Everything around him started to vibrate, pulses changing familiar shapes into images he couldn’t quite make out, vague shapes of a world that had always seemed to pummel him into ground. A world he hated. He knew this was coming. For three weeks now, he had watched the changes in Brit, each day reinforcing his belief that the end was near. Why was he here again? What had he done wrong? It seemed anytime he began to have real feelings for a woman, she would turn him away. He had given her everything. Every piece of his soul was dedicated to her. And yet, it wasn’t enough.

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Nicely done. I like the style. The in media res start of psychological action. Perception mixed with contemplation. I think you would probably like the start of "Replay" by Ken Grimwood.

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“I just can’t see us being compatible long term,” she had said. Those words, with that demeanor she exhumed screamed “I don’t give a fuck about you” to him. He was confused. He was angered. He was dangerous.

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I like the introduction of dialogue as an act of remembrance here. The second sentence seems slightly clunky in the middle, very minor. Nice repetition of He was at the end.

Those words, with that demeanor of hers, screamed "I don't give a fuck about you!" at him.

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“You’re not making any sense!” Owen said, in a tone that was quickly becoming more aggressive than he had hoped. “Why won’t we work together? I do everything for you! Every time you ask me to do something, I do it without question! I love you Brit! Please don’t do this!”

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The switch to the present tense went pretty well.

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Brit sighed, a long uncaring exclamation that made Owen feel even worse. “You want the truth?”, she said. “Yes!”, Owen cried, his tone and resolve broken so much that it was hard for him to even not notice. “The truth is, you’re just too attached to me. I know you’ve never been in a serious relationship, and I get that you might feel extra protective because you don’t want to lose me, but Owen, you don’t give me any room to breath! You’re constantly on my side, every where we go following me around like a scared puppy! I’m sick of it! It’s so fucking unattractive!”

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It's good. There are three levels of editing. Copywriting is fixing stuff like punctuation and spelling and such. Line editing is what I've done, that's where you make sure the lines are communicating as well as they can. Developmental editing is where you think about the plot, adding and deleting scenes or characters, and that sort of thing. For copyediting, I would cut the commas after those first two pieces of dialogue. For line editing, Brit sighed, the long uncaring sound of exasperation in her unspoken words, a sound that made Owen feel even worse. I would also change sentence three, but I'll skip the example on that one. For developmental editing, I basically have nothing so far.

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“Oh excuse me for trying to be near you! What am I supposed to do? You have random guys follow you around all night every time we go out! It’s embarrassing for me!”

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It feels like too much of a change in Owen here, but a little more description of his internal state, or his appearance indicating a change in internal state, might be able to bridge that gap.

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“YOU’RE EMBARRASSING FOR ME, OWEN!!”, Brit screamed in retaliation. Owen flushed, his cheeks and neck quickly becoming the tint of someone in the sun too long. “Why can’t you just act like a normal guy, like Paul or something?!”

“Like Paul?” Owen whispered in a hushed tone. “You mean the guy I’ve been asking about for months? You mean the guy that you swore was just a friend? That Paul?!”

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Ooooh.

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She had gone too far. She knew this was a trigger for him, and she did it regardless?

“It’s not like that, Owen”, Brit cried. “You know he’s just a friend”. Owen didn’t hear a word she said, his anger rising to uncontrollable heights. “The fuck head who I’ve been stressing over for weeks? That Paul?! You fucking piece of shit whore! I knew there was shit going on!” “It’s not like th....”

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The question mark is weird after sentence two. I can feel the instability now.

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Something in Owen snapped. He grabbed Brit by the neck, not really understanding what he was doing. He couldn’t think. He couldn’t stop himself. It was almost as if he was watching himself act out a scene he had fantasized for months.

All he could do was hate. He squeezed harder and harder as he thought about all the moments that she had made him feel worthless. Now she would understand him. One way or another. She would know how he felt.

He pressed his face against hers. Using the remainder of his strength to close down hard on her neck. Owen saw the light begin to drain from her eyes, and despite a sudden moment of fear and regret, he watched her die.

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An intense and fast end. It feels a little abrupt and flat compared with the style in the beginning where you're more descriptive. It might make sense to continue that here and go over some of the things that are flashing through his head. Or, to move into more of an objective third person point of view and be more detached from the internal states, but more descriptive of the environment.

Overall, super good man.

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And that's it. The end. Obviously my stuff could use some editing here as well. For instance, I said copywriting at one point when I meant copyediting.

I think this type of thing is useful for people, I hope so. Art is a difficult thing to both give feedback on, and to receive it, for multiple reasons. But, potentially still useful.

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Read more of what Jeff deems worthy of attention at: http://www.JeffreyAlexanderMartin.com