Another edit completed

Yes, I’ve just completed another edit. Just three more to go. This time it was the “Kill Off Your Darlings” edit.  I only found one, actually. It was one rather melodramatic sentence at the end of a chapter. It wasn’t needed.  The chapter had its own internal drama. Least said by the author the more the reader can decide for themselves. This is especially important in books written for young adults.  

However, I found a slight lack of logic in one of the very early chapters. Renate was supposed to be leaving Nuremberg in time to arrive at Stuttgart by two. That’s why she had got up so early. She’d thought she would be going straight after breakfast. I’ve had to make it clear that her mother was dithering with her packing and delaying their departure. She wasn’t, of course.  She was delaying telling Renate that they were Jewish.

I also found several examples of my favourite typos – “form” instead of “from”. The read out loud edit is yet to come and that actually usually deals with this sort of problem. Not all of the instances, though – which is why copy editors and proof readers really earn their keep and why self-publishers should use them.   

Edits 10 & 11 Completed – pace, and point of view and some oddities

 I am now getting very close to being able to send this out into the world. I may even enter it for another competition – it is already in one. It gets harder and harder to edit objectively. Yes, it seems to have pace to me. But have I limited what I mean by pace? Am I just adhering to my own take on this? Tension mounts in all three strands of the story. I’ve noticed the chapters get shorter as this happens. Then right at the end they become longer again – but not as long as at the beginning. This seems to be a quite natural rhythm.

Point of view is always easier to deal with and I think I’m now quite good at getting this right. I hope it’s not just a matter of what an experienced published writer said to me recently. “Creative writing teachers always like to talk about point of view because it is easy to deal with.” Is it? Maybe. But hard, at first, to get right, surely? I’m actually a fan of using close third person narratives and also often use first person for young adult books. I have two different third person narratives in this and use first person for the letters. Two of the German girls and their teacher actually also have close third person chapters. However, I’m still puzzled as to why it seems right to refer to Hani’s mother as Frau Gödde a lot of the time. It just does. I guess that happens sometimes. Something works just because it does.

Bizarrely I now notice I have changed a surname and the name of a school part of the way through. Although I’ve checked for logistics, I now doubt whether one character has continuity. It just goes to show that we can edit forever and ever and how important it is to get a good objective copy edit and proof read before publication.