Editing – Ellis Morning's Blog

I’ve Finished 2 Novels. Here’s What I’ve Learned.

February 15, 2017 Ellis Morning Comments 2 comments

With the release of Harbingers, the story I began working on in 2009 with the hazy goal of finishing a single novel has now materialized into 2 published books. Hooray! But something looks a little off there. 8 years to finish 2 books? Lots of authors publish novels on a yearly basis. I’ll tell you right now: I’m not “lots of authors.” I haven’t distilled novel-writing down to a crank-’em-out science. But, I also don’t think it’ll take 4 years to outline, draft, and finish Sword…

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Polish Your Manuscript With One Final Sanity Read

October 12, 2015 Ellis Morning Comments 0 Comment

What? This picture SCREAMS sanity. Last time, I talked about the editing and revision “groove” I got into and rather enjoyed. As you read there, it involved a defined but flexible schedule, a good heaping helping of self-compassion, a blend of making edits directly on my computer and typing in edits made on paper. Some of the edits were rather substantial, basically drafting whole new, fresh paragraphs (or pages). Then there was the matter of all that typing. Data entry…

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Finding My Editing And Revising Groove

October 6, 2015 Ellis Morning Comments 0 Comment

“OK, now I gotta go back over it from the beginning!” When you’re editing a novel, you’ll say this at least 37 times. I was on a blogging hiatus for a while there! Sorry about that. Two major things kept me from blogging for the past while: (1) Both of my cats passing away in August, less than a week apart. (2) My final editing passes on Blood’s Force. Which is a real book now. Holy crap. :D With (1),…

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Ridiculously Simple Tricks For Reducing Word Count

April 27, 2015 Ellis Morning Comments 0 Comment

Choose your weapon wisely! Once you’ve got a fiction or nonfiction piece ready for prime-time, there may still be a word count limit you have to worry about. It may be a restriction imposed on you by the publisher, or you may want to get your piece as short and concise as possible- not just for simplicity’s sake, but also to reduce its overall file size. A smaller file size means a larger per-sale commission when you sell your work…

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Killing (And Sparing) The Adverb

April 20, 2015 Ellis Morning Comments 0 Comment

Any tool can be used goodly or badly! Why are adverbs “bad?” Well, to be fair, they’re not. They’re quite simple and clear in their meaning, and are very common in ordinary speech. However, some are severely overused in prose, making it plodding and tiresome to read. Some are extremely extraneous. And some tell what you can easily be showing instead. One good way to step up your writing is to strike and swap out adverbs- when it makes sense…

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Successfully Rewriting Existing Scenes When Expanding An Outline

January 26, 2015 Ellis Morning Comments 0 Comment

We’ll need a bigger, better palm tree! There are tons of degrees of rewrites: the little tweaks here and there; the nuke-it-from-orbit, scorched-earth policy; and everything in between. The sort of rewrites I’m conducting right now are part of a larger effort to expand the outline of a manuscript, all the way from A to Z. New scenes get inserted, old scenes that no longer fit get removed. There are also plenty of previously written scenes that still fit into…

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How to Successfully Delete A Scene

January 19, 2015 Ellis Morning Comments 0 Comment

Kill it with fire! (Image credit: Imagebase.net) Is there a particular scene you’re having a really hard time with? Do you dread writing it, and just can’t come up with a way to make it more significant or fun for yourself? Or have you toughed through it, but reading it over makes you cringe? Then have you thought about deleting that sucker outright? This scene might be taking up unnecessary space in your story outline. Maybe you can gloss over…

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Why I’m A Draft Packrat

September 29, 2014 Ellis Morning Comments 0 Comment

I miss college. In the five years I’ve been writing this novel, I’ve done everything you’re not supposed to do. I let things sit for weeks or months, until I “felt” like writing. I wrote slow, under the misguided assumption that the words had to come out perfect the first time. I edited, edited, edited well before I ever had a first draft done. Don’t feel much like writing today… I’ll polish that last chapter I wrote! Only to have…

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Pacing: Seize Control Of Your Story’s Tempo

August 18, 2014 Ellis Morning Comments 0 Comment

(Image credit: imagebase.net) Along with the million other things writers must worry about, there’s pacing! Basically, pacing is how fast the story moves. Ever hear someone describe how a book took off running from the first page? Or how it started slow, but picked up toward the end? What creates those impressions? How do you control them? Each individual sentence of your story has an effect on overall pacing. If it’s advancing the plot in a meaningful way, then it’s…

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The Rapid Prototype Model of Drafting

July 28, 2014 Ellis Morning Comments 0 Comment

(Image credit: Imagebase.net) When most people think of “editing,” they think of reclining on the couch with a printout, red pen in hand, making tiny, gentle corrections in the space of an afternoon. Probably followed by a cookie and a well-earned nap. With a novel-length work, though, editing is a complicated slog. You take out extraneous words, and collapse chapters. You add words where they’re lacking, and split chapters. You say, “holy crap, this character would NEVER do/say that!” You…

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