This book started out as an attempt to help people analyze their stories so they could better edit them. Of course the actual chapter specifically on editing has taken a longtime for me to post.  I think, in retrospect, it was necessary to post the earlier chapters so that once we got here everyone would know what I was talking about as I went through my editing process.

As with the other chapters, this way of editing is not the end-all be-all of editing processes. It is my attempt to distill my process, which has been a conglomeration of multiple other people's processes, as well as a general analysis of my story using the story elements touched on in previous chapters. I hope it will work for you, but it's ok if you find something else works better.

The goal is always to find something that works for you, and which produces great stories that people love.

For this process I will use my novella, The Dark Heir (at least that's the title at the time of this chapter) as an example.

Editing step 1:  Print It Out

Print out your manuscript (I'm assuming yours is on a computer).

Why?

A few reasons.
1. Being able to take a fat red pen and mark up your MS (Manuscript - MS for short) by hand works a different part of your brain using hand-eye coordination similar to sketching. You don't get the same feedback when you type, so marking by hand will help you catch mistakes.

2.It gives you a hard copy of your work by default - which is nice to have just in case your pesky computer glitches. Speaking of which I really need to back up this book...

3. You'll look very professional at the coffee shop. 😉

I've taken my manuscript and exported it from Scrivener to Microsoft Word. There I formatted the footnotes and the chapters.  Then I printed it out  - all 132 pages of it typed, double spaced, and put it in a three-ring binder. I suggest a large one. Mine has uncomfortably small rings.

TIP:
It's a good idea to choose a font that is different from the one you typically write in because it forces your brain to see the words in a new way. This will help you catch mistakes.

Editing step 2:  Analyze The Big-Picture Story Elements

Once I printed out my manuscript I went through and checked my story elements on a global, chapter, scene and beat level. A quick note - this may take more than one pass over your MS. I basically went through and marked where my scenes, acts, and story elements were in each chapter using red pen.

I used both the 6 story elements talked about in the previous chapters, as well as the elements from the Writing the Perfect Scene chapter.

To recap, those elements are the following:

6 Elements of Story
THE INCITING INCIDENT
PROGRESSIVE COMPLICATIONS
CRISIS
CLIMAX
RESOLUTION
TURN

Or in the Writing The Perfect Scene:

"SCENE"
GOAL
CONFLICT
DISASTER

"SEQUEL"
REACTION
DELIMA
DECISION

Ideally you want each element present in each beat/scene/chapter/act/global story arc.

Don't be discouraged if you find you're missing some elements, or there are paragraphs that don't seem to fall into any categories. Make a note where you're missing something, or where something seems to be a little fluffy. You can go back and add/remove when you're past the basic analysis phase.

Some of these are harder to pick out than others, and there were parts in my editing where a paragraph or dialogue fell into the "scene"/"sequel" elements better than the 6 story elements.

I think it's ok to have this happen, but only objective evaluation of my story by others will really tell me this. If in the end the book doesn't work, and isn't enjoyable, that's the clearest way to grasp if your writing/editing is working.

Hopefully it works. 😬

TIP:
When you're doing this step, I highly recommend ONLY doing this step. Try your best not to get bogged down in line edits. Those should ideally be your last pass, and if you begin changing your lines you'll find you've edited a whole chapter and completely forgot to look for these overarching story elements. Then you'll have to go back and recheck. Worse, you may find you spent time editing a scene or chapter that must be removed for the story to work better. Ack!

Don't worry if you get bogged down occasionally though. This happened to me several times because IT IS HARD! I see one word I want to change and BAM! My MS looks like I've spilled Cajun soup on it from red ink, and I've done an hour of editing without checking my chapter is working on a basic level.

Now for the fun (?) part... spreadsheeting.

Editing Step 3: Spreadsheet Your Story

If you google The Story Grid, on their website you can find sample spreadsheets for Pride and Prejudice, Silence of the Lambs, and other stories. These are FREE!!!! And you can download the excel spreadsheet as a template for your story.

I copied and pasted the title cells into my own spreadsheet as a starting point. Mine is laid out slightly different because I added a few columns up front to track my story acts and arcs.

I also added a column for tracking the 6 story elements for the acts and global story arc. The Story Grid also has a separate spreadsheet called The Foolscap Global Story Sheet. This one is where you can put those story elements to make sure you're hitting the 15 basic global scenes.

These are:
THE INCITING INCIDENT
PROGRESSIVE COMPLICATION
CRISIS
CLIMAX
RESOLUTION

They should be represented by a different scene for each act and if you have a three-act structure that would be 15 scenes. Since the Turn isn't a scene it's not represented here. However, you should be able to pick out where each act and where the global story turns.

Here is a look at my spreadsheet when I began filling it out:

The grey, green and rose colors are where I have scenes which are particularly from one character's POV.  These are kept to Rose, Gerald, and Lorred D'Kay, except in the final act where there is one scene which is primarily from Arien's POV.  The non-highlighted scenes are group scenes. Doing this can help you determine if whomever you believe your protagonist is, truly is your protagonist.  

Spreadsheet screenshot of Act 1

You'll notice a few things if you look closely. First, there's a spot in my first act where I've written: "WRITE THIS!!"

By filling out this spreadsheet I found things which I already intuitively knew would be an issue and I wrote them into this spreadsheet.

One is my third chapter, which originally glanced over a potentially fantastic climactic build because I was worried about my overall word count at the time I wrote it. I also had no clue what the Mages' "plan" consisted of or how it would work so I literally wrote, "We won't go into the details of how the plan worked, but suffice to say it was laid out expertly, executed flawlessly...[and] considered a complete success." While this complete glance over the details actually fits the tone of the story, it really deserves a second pass.

I also found that my first act was short of the general 25% rule for word count. Without that extra bit, it was at 19%, which is not quite where it needs to be. So I allotted myself about 1000 words for my extra bit in the third chapter. This brings my word count up to a respectable % of the overall. 

Spreadsheet Screenshots of Act 2

Another change is where I knew that the Prophecies of Geraldo The Foreshadower, and Omega Shave chapters had several elements that really weren't so important, and had gotten too conversational. I've axed a large portion of the former and moved a whole scene of the latter into the former. In the future, the Omega Shave chapter will stand on its own as only from Lorred D'Kay's POV and will be a shorter chapter. I think this is good since I'm using the chapters from his POV almost like pallet cleansers.

Evil pallet cleansers...

Spreadsheet Screenshot of Act 3

You can also see from the calculated % of my word counts that the third act is a couple of % points away from a full 25%. This is probably good since I know I need to explain what happens to Onyx Rose's mother in here. I think in the end it will be about what it should be. 

What else have you noticed?  Well, you may have noticed I have a weird-ish story structure shown on the left-hand side.  This is because I actually have two stories within one here.  The first act is shown both as Act 1 for the global story, but also as STORY 1 with 3 acts which stands by itself.  This is because I have (mostly) completely different characters for this story, and I needed to make sure it could stand independently of the rest of the story - at least in structure.  

Due to the Russian-doll nature of story structure, I'm pretty convinced this is actually how any act should function.  Within each act, you should be able to call out sub-acts as well.  Perhaps your structure goes to a 5-act sub-structure instead of a 3-act sub-structure, but I think it's worth it to see if your story holds up in this way. 

Other things I put in my spreadsheet:

Character's and Their Goals

I've written out every major and minor character in this book and their goals - and I'm actually amazed at how many there are who really have screen time.  I've even grouped/left some out in here and I may go back and add them back in to see if I can find ways to weave them into the overall story in minute ways so they all end of becoming layers upon layers of each other - like all of the butter that is baked into those fluffy layers of a croissant to make it rich and delicious. 

As I go through with a finer grain of editing, I can use these goals to really tailor my character's voices and mannerisms to bring them more fully to life.  

I'm going to do another chapter on Editing which will be a sequel to this one, where I will show you my fully completed spreadsheet, as well as take you through the fine-grained passes I do/will be doing on my MS.  

Some Takeaways From Spreadsheeting:

Sometimes your protagonist isn't who you think it is.  Sometimes you have more than one.  

You should be able to describe each of your scenes in one sentence.  If you can't or if there feels like there are a lot of things going on in it, you may have more than one thing, or it may not be necessary for your story.

It's ok not to have it all figured out, and for it not to work in the beginning.  Spreadsheeting can help you figure out where it's not working.  

This is high-level analysis only.  I'm not analyzing each scene saying, "Are my characters behaving according to their personalities?" Or, "is this really the best word choice?" This is neither the time nor the place - but doing this can help you see where you might be falling short on this.

Like architecture, editing takes three-times longer than you think it will.