I have a love/hate relationship with edits. 

On the one hand, I love the fact that every time I get notes from an editor, I can see how the book is going to become stronger by following them. 

On the other, I often hate actually doing the work that’s needed to get there. 

When I first started writing professionally, I took every revision letter from an editor very personally. After all, it is personal, in a way. I’ve poured my heart and soul into a first draft, revised it until I think it’s perfect, then sent it off – only to be told it’s nowhere near the standard it’s supposed to be. It’s kind of heartbreaking. And sometimes, with certain books, it still feels that way. 

With Summer on Seashell Island, my editor, Victoria, asked to meet me in person to discuss the edits before she sent over the official edit letter. This is, in my experience, never a good sign. When an editor, or my agent, tells me they want to talk me through the edits first, it almost always means there’s a lot of work to be done, and they want to gentle me into it.

This was definitely the case with Seashell Island.

So I met Victoria in a coffee shop in London (Ohhh, remember when we could do such things?) and we talked through the story. As ever, she started by telling me all the things that she loved about it (because she’s nice like that) and then we moved onto the things that needed work.

I took a few notes, but not many. At this point, I was mostly getting my head around the shape of the story needed to morph into, rather than worrying about the details. We did talk through some ways of fixing specific things, though, so I definitely wrote those ideas down so I wouldn’t forget them.

And then I waited for the official edit letter, which followed the next day.

What’s in an edit letter?

There are definite common themes in my edit letters – to the point where my editors joke about saying the same thing every time. And yet, I still can’t see it until someone else points out the problems. 

This is why a good editor is essential. 

In essence, my edit letters usually say:

1) Go deeper into your characters’ conflicts and motivations

2) Up the stakes

3) Fix the crazy timeline

4) Add 5,000-10,000 words (because my first drafts are always short)   

Yeah, I don’t know why I can’t do those things first time round either, but I really can’t. 

The real value of an editor at this point is helping me see how I can do these things. No editor I’ve worked with has ever told me exactly what to do; they’ve given possibilities and suggestions that get my imagination working.

Sometimes I end up going entirely with one of their suggestions, sometimes I blend a few of them together, and sometimes I come up with something completely new. The trick is to identify the problem they’ve highlighted, and find a way to fix it that works for the story I’m trying to tell.

Editing a novel in Scrivener

Then it’s time to start the edits. Now, this is where Scrivener comes into its own. 

Firstly, I turn on revision mode. I have this set up so every change or new word I add now shows up in pink, which a) makes me smile and b) means I can see my progress, as well as check back over what’s new and what’s original. (Subsequent revisions get their own colour – as you can see from the blue in the screenshot above.)

Then, I go through each scene card in the first draft and, in the yellow notes section belonging to it, jot down anything from my list that needs to change in that scene. I also add in new cards for new scenes, or move scenes around to approximately where they need to go. It doesn’t need to be perfect at this point; I’m just drawing myself a vague roadmap. 

After that, I just have to follow it! I take it one scene at a time, and fix them in chronological order. Sometimes I need to skip back and amend something, but mostly I just work my way steadily through, ticking off my list as I go. I also keep an eye on my word count as I progress; often, the missing words are just found through the planned changes. Sometimes, I may need to brainstorm an extra scene, or figure out which scene could do with some more beefing up. I don’t ever want to just pad, so the extra words have to earn their keep and be necessary. 

Once I’m done (usually a couple of weeks later) I do a final check through my list and my changes, then fire it off to my editor. 

And then I wait for the next round of edits. 

Second Edits?

You thought I was done? Oooh no. Well, sometimes, if I’m lucky. My shorter category romances for Mills and Boon often only have one set of edits. But a complicated, 90,000 word women’s fiction novel with multiple points of view? Not a chance. 

Thankfully, the second edit letter is usually a lot lighter than the first. It tends to mostly be about refining some of the things from the first letter, fixing any new timeline issues I’ve created (and missed), that sort of thing. 

That was definitely the case with Seashell Island (a lot of timeline queries, even though I actually had a written timeline). 

So I printed out my letter and started the whole process over again. 

Copy Edits

After the second round of structural edits, we moved onto the copy edits. For reasons I don’t fully understand, this copy edit took nearly three months to get back to me and, when I received it, caused me more than a few problems. 

I’ve had some brilliant copy editors, and some that suited my style less well. This one managed to duplicate a scene in the middle of the book and copy edit it twice, with different changes, without apparently noticing. They also ‘fixed’ my timeline by making it make no sense at all. (Scenes that started ‘On Friday’ suddenly took place on Thursday, according to the new timeline…)

Basically, the less said about this particular copy edit, the better. I worked my way through it, took the suggestions I agreed with and changed back the ones I didn’t. I made clearer the points where the copy editor was confused, so that the reader wouldn’t be too. 

And then I sent it back to my editor with a huge sigh of relief. 

Because at that point, the book was done. All that was left was the publication prep… and that’s in next week’s blog!

Any Questions?

What other questions do you have about the editing process? Let me know in the comments, or drop me and email or a message on social media, and I’ll try to answer them.