I often get asked to read other people’s stories, especially lately. New writers often want comments on their stories and advice about how to improve them with editing. However, new writers don’t always take the advice as it is intended, so this is a guide to help you understand the edits you get from a structural editor, and it includes information about structural editing so you can work on your structure yourself.

Sometimes editing feedback is nice, and it inspires the author to write more. Sometimes it’s harsh, and it inspires the writer to improve. These are all good things. They may not feel good at the time, but they are helpful if you are willing to learn.

Since I seem to find myself saying the same thing over and over again to different people, I’ve decided to write up a guide, listing the methods that I use, which may help them. Hopefully, it can also help explain why structural editors ask for certain changes.

One very important thing to remember is that preference comes into editing. There aren’t many fiction rules that can’t be broken. There is never a right or wrong answer. There is only opinion. The popular opinions are what lead to getting published or having a successful book. However, always remember that like language, editing changes. So right now, what I am posting is my opinion and the current opinion on editing. It’s a popular style right now. It’s important to remember that you never stop learning as a writer, and that the rules constantly change. No one in the universe knows it all, and there is no such thing as the perfect book.

That being said, the idea of editing is to create a book that is a good reading experience for the reader. It’s all about reader access.

Editing a popular fiction novel hinges on structural editing. The point of structural editing is to create a book that is easy for the reader to access. A book should not be hard to read, but it is hard to edit. Structural editing is about the writer working their ass off to create a book that is easy to enjoy, not the reader working their ass off to understand the book. If you write literary fiction, then you live by different rules. But if you want a book that the masses will enjoy (popular fiction), you need to embrace structural editing. If anything in your book makes the reader struggle to understand the story, then you’re probably in need of a structural edit.

Unedited books often receive the following kind of responses from readers:

  1. No one reads past the first few chapters. The reader quits on the book.
  2. People tell you it’s a bit slow or boring.
  3. Readers get confused and have to ask you a lot of questions that the story doesn’t answer or confuses them with.
  4. Readers call the story ‘jumpy’.

It’s worth noting that a first time structural edit is not a pleasant experience. Most authors don’t want to be told that their first four chapters need deleting. But if they ruin the reader experience, then those bulky pages need to go. Often the hardest part of being a writer is getting through that first edit. But if you don’t edit, then you don’t improve. A good author knows they don’t know everything and is constantly learning more with every word they write. There is never a time when you stop learning as a writer. So if you think you know it all, think again.

Good popular fiction caters to the reader, not the author. So before you start fighting for that backstory driven prologue, think about what kind of first impression it will have on a new reader to the book.

So let’s start at the beginning…

The Beginning
Look at the beginning of your novel. I mean, really look at it. What does the first line describe? It should describe your main character as their life begins to get interesting. However, if it describes any of the following, you probably need to rewrite it:

  • The weather – No reader gives a shit if it’s raining or not. They want to read about your character doing exciting things. So unless your book is about the weather, don’t start it with the weather.
  • A dream – No reader wants to read about a dream or a vision. It’s as boring as hearing someone tell you their dreams.
  • A thousand years before the story – This is back story, and no reader gives a damn about back story. Only the author cares about it. Save this for your blog or a prequel. It’s a different story!
  • A misused prologue – Prologues are often used to describe fantasy or science fiction worlds, to provide extraneous information that the reader may or may not bother reading. Too many authors call chapter one a prologue when it isn’t one. Also, prologues are back story in disguise. Avoid like the plague!
  • A day in the life of my character – Nooooo, it’s boring! Readers don’t want to read about your character as they have a shower, shave and a shit. They want to read about when their life gets interesting. Preparing for work, school, a party, or doing anything in a daily life kind of way is the dullest beginning to a book ever. It doesn’t provide deep insight into your character. It just bores your readers. The story begins when the character encounters the main conflict or hints of it. Delete all the chapters before then because they are back story.

Here is an example of what you need to do with the first words in your book:

  • Introduce the main character.
  • Hint at the main conflict.
  • Make it active. (No passive sentences, and no back story!)

The first part of your book:

The first line is the most important one in a book, the first sentence is the most important one in a book, the first paragraph is the most important one in a book, the first chapter is the most…well, you get the point. Everything hinges on the beginning of your story. If you want the reader to keep reading, you put your best work into the beginning of it.

Structurally, the beginning of a story should do three things:

  1.     Introduce the main character—so the reader can connect with them.
  2.     Introduce the main conflict—so the reader gets the story that they chose to read. There’s nothing that will put a reader off more than a prologue about some other story, a hundred years ago that has nothing to do with the kind of book they wanted to read.
  3.     Active sentences and avoiding back story—so the reader doesn’t go into a boredom coma.

This is all access for the reader. If you don’t do these things, it leads to:

    1.     Confusion over who the main character is, and it sometimes causes the reader to dislike the main character when they eventually show up.
    2.     Without a main conflict that begins on page one and builds up through the story to a resolution at the end, your story will have no meaning and will be confusing to enjoy for most readers. A main conflict will often be set off by an event.
      •  (a) Example: The main character is a pacifist who is sent to war. This is the main conflict for the character because they do not want to kill, but must do to survive and save their nation. The character will be drafted, which is the event that should appear on the first page. Their conflict is to work out how to win a war without killing, but in every chapter it becomes increasingly difficult for them not to kill someone.
    3. How you resolve that story is up to the author, but the main conflict must be a main theme throughout the story that is driven in every chapter. Every chapter must build up the conflict until the conclusion where the character can resolve the issue. This is the bare bones of every story in existence. Conflict and the resolution of that conflict are what a story is.
    4.     Active prose is interesting and exciting to read, which is why it is necessary to please your readers. Boring books all use passive prose. The difference between active and passive prose can be narration in the prose or ‘back story’. Back story is you as the author trying to tell your reader things. Prologues, flashbacks, thinking about the past, remembering the past and even dreams are all back story. You should never tell your reader anything. You should show them the story.
      • (a) Example: The prologue tells the reader about the birth of the main character and how their parents died in a war. Even if this is actively written, it is basically you saying: ‘Once upon a time…’ Readers want to meet the main character and get into the current story. The story about their parents is a different story. It’s not what they wanted to read, so they toss the book aside. By introducing this at the beginning, you are alienating your reader from your main character. You can start with the main character visiting their parent’s grave instead and give out the same information in present time while also introducing the main conflict at the same time (eg: they’ve been drafted and don’t know what to do about it). The story belongs to the main character. It is their story. They belong on page one, not some person from the past.

So that’s the beginning of a novel, what to write and what to avoid.

Showing vs. Telling
Why do people bang on about this, and what is it? In the simplest terms, it’s the author killing off the narrator and letting the characters ‘show’ the story. The narrator ‘tells’ a story, and the characters ‘show’ a story.  ‘But why is telling bad?’ you may ask. Well, it all comes down to the reader experience.

Imagine a good book is a movie playing in your head. A lot of readers experience reading in this way. If the narrator ‘tells’ them the story, then they are placed in a boring white room while being told a story. That doesn’t sound very exciting does it? That’s because it isn’t exciting at all. It’s utterly boring and also why many books lose their readers.

However, if the characters ‘show’ the story, then the reader is inside the movie. They are pulled into the action, feeling the emotion, smelling the roses and fighting the dragons. They feel the blood, sweat and tears in your story, and their pulse races when the hero and heroine kiss for the first time. This is how to make a story enjoyable for the reader, by showing it through the character’s eyes.

You are the narrator, so if you try to tell a reader anything, it’s a dull version of your story compared to what your characters can show them.

Another way to look at it is with grammar rules: Adverbs, adjectives, passive sentences–these are all telling. Passive sentences often have ‘was’ and ‘by’ in them. Here’s an example:

“Cory walked into the bank and was held up by a bank robber.” <– This is so beyond boring.

Versus

“Cory walked through the doors of the City Bank, hoping his wages were in. If I don’t pay my landlord today, I’m fucke—. His mind went blank when he found himself staring down the barrel of a shotgun. ‘Get down on the floor,’ the masked robber shouted, and Cory froze in terror.” <– This is so much more exciting!

It’s exactly the same scene written in different ways. The first version is narrated. The second version uses the character’s view and actions to show it instead. and it is a much better read. This is why it is better to show rather than to tell.

*This is not to be confused with first person narrative. My personal preference is limited third person narrative–third person narrative that is limited to the view of the characters. But on narratives, it’s a personal choice for the writer on which one they prefer.

Adjectives and Adverbs
Every time you use an adjective or an adverb a puppy dies! Okay, perhaps not. But adjectives and adverbs are bad if you overuse them in your story because they are telling. Here’s an example:

“Don’t walk away from me,” he whispered softly. <– Adverb = boring to read and really doesn’t do anything for the scene.

Versus

“Don’t walk away from me,” he whispered in a low voice. Menace darkened his eyes as he raised the gun. <– Showing it instead = exciting to read, and I can tell the character is angry and threatening someone with a gun. So much more information is available about emotion and action from this method.

Sure, there are times when the adverb is needed. Sometimes the sentence is long, and you just want it to come to an end. Or maybe the scene isn’t very important, and it’s a simple one liner that you don’t want to evoke emotion in the reader. In these situations the adverbs and adjectives have their uses, but use them sparingly. There’s nothing worse than a novel with an adverb on every other line!

Adverbs are a crutch, safe words for writers to rest their heads on instead of working on a sentence so it is active and exciting. It’s a shortcut to the meaning of the sentence, and—like most shortcuts—it creates a low quality product. Avoid the shortcut, and get into your character’s head instead.

Dialogue Tags
Adverbs are rife in dialogue in most books and again, for the same reasons listed above, they make some god awful sentences.

But even the innocent ‘he said’ can be overused. So when it comes to any dialogue tags, less is better. A dialogue tag has one purpose and only one; to indicate who is speaking. That’s it. If it’s obvious who is speaking as there are only two people in the room then don’t use the dialogue tag more than once. Often in dialogue, there is only a need to mention the speaker in a tag once.

What new writers often do is try to use the dialogue tag to describe the scene, and this is where it all gets crappy to read. ‘He said dryly.’ — no, no, no, no. It’s not a dialogue. It’s an expression of emotion, so express it! ‘He flashed a dry smile and lit a cigarette.’ <– it’s an action. Stop being lazy, and describe it!

So, that long list of dialogue tags you have stored on your desktop (yes, I know about that), delete it and think more about the action. Sure, there can be a tone of voice, but actions describe emotion a lot more effectively than some crappy adverb ever will.

Overview
Overall you want to provide your reader with a story that is both exciting to read and accessible. Everything you do during editing is about making the story easy to access. Confusing sentences should be smoothed out, main conflicts should be driven in every chapter, and characters should be showing the events through thoughts, dialogue and action. This is all so that the reader can easily access the story and enjoy it.

Reading a book should not be hard work, but writing one is. Embrace editing, and replace those shitty sentences with a truly addictive story.

Hopefully this helps.

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