Undertaking a Structural Edit: Part 4 – Manuscript Assessments

In 2020, I was awarded the Anne Edgeworth Fellowship to develop my manuscript, The Selkie Curse. The fellowship is generously funding a manuscript assessment and a mentorship. Along with the funds and my project work, those who win the fellowship are expected to undertake some community outreach. This post is the fourth in a series that I will write over the next few months about the process of structural editing. I hope to share my progress as well as any insights I uncover into the challenging task of editing my own novel.

About The Selkie Curse: Elsa and her mother, Queen Tiari, are at war with the Fisherman Kingdom. The young king of the Fishermen blames Queen Tiari for his father’s death, and he is set to destroy Tiari’s queendom. It is up to Elsa, and her best friend Aada to end the war and save their home.

Since my last post, I have done little work on my manuscript—but for good reason! I had to send off the novel to my editor for a manuscript assessment. I spent several weeks doing hefty re-writes to restructure scenes, fix up the prose, and ensure the manuscript was ready for fresh eyes. Even after all that work, I knew it wasn’t perfect, but the plot was as far as it was going to get on my own. With an enormous sigh of relief, (and an impending sense of dread) I hit send on the email to my editor. For the first time since starting this project, someone was going to read the full manuscript.

After that, I took a break. There wasn’t anything I could do while my manuscript was being reviewed. I wasn’t completely idle, however; I finished an outline for an upcoming project and started the draft of my next novel. Working on different projects really helped me to get my head out of the world of The Selkie Curse. When it came time to return to the manuscript, I’d hopefully have a sense of detachment.

While it is impossible to fully separate yourself from your work, when I got the manuscript assessment back several weeks later, I’d already begun to forget what was in the manuscript! I viewed the feedback as objectively as I could. My manuscript assessment was fourteen pages of pure gold. My editor broke down the major elements of the story and suggested how they could be built back up bigger and better than before. My lovely editor understood the story I was trying to tell and how to strengthen my own voice. It was exciting and daunting to read the assessment because I could see how much more work there was to do.

I sat on the feedback for about two weeks, thinking over the issues and brainstorming the way forward. When I had some solutions, I worked them through with my editor, ensuring that they would weave into the story and not veer it off a cliff. After all that, it was time to get back to writing! I estimate I’ll have to add 10k words and cut about 5k.

With my June 30 deadline looming, I better get back to work!

My key insights from the last few weeks:

1. A set of eyes other than your own can find issues you won’t be able to see on your own (this doesn’t mean you need to hire an editor, find a writing pal to swap manuscripts with)
2. Those issues are opportunities to improve your manuscript—not problems to complain away
3. Give yourself time to think and find connections organically—structural editing can’t be done in a single session

Here is Part 1, Part 2 and Part 3.

Undertaking a Structural Edit: Part 3 – Scenes

In 2020, I was awarded the Anne Edgeworth Fellowship to develop my manuscript, The Selkie Curse. The fellowship is generously funding a manuscript assessment and a mentorship. Along with the funds and my project work, those who win the fellowship are expected to undertake some community outreach. This post is the third in a series that I will be writing over the next few months about the process of structural editing. I hope to share my progress as well as any insights I uncover into the challenging task of editing my own novel.

About The Selkie Curse: Elsa and her mother, Queen Tiari, are at war with the Fisherman Kingdom. The young king of the Fishermen blames Queen Tiari for his father’s death, and he is set to destroy Tiari’s queendom. It is up to Elsa, and her best friend Aada, to find a way to end the war and save their home.

In the two months since my last post, I focused on the scenes of my novel and getting the manuscript ready for my editor to assess. My first task was to finish moving, deleting and adding scenes as I said I would in my last post. This took quite a bit longer than I expected, but in the end, I managed to add an extra ten thousand words to the manuscript to boost it to my desired word count of 90,000 words. I also cut quite a few words to sharpen up the prose and make sure the text was consistent with my new outline.

Ensuring that changes in one scene, or crucial plot point, are carried through the entire manuscript was an immense challenge. The zoomed-out view of the manuscript won’t highlight where there are references to events that no longer happen or characters that don’t exist. After completing my first pass of the manuscript, I had to do multiple additional rounds to check that I wasn’t going to leave my reader very confused with a redundant reference. In these next passes, I also noticed silly mistakes such as a character’s eye colour changing or a convenient note to myself to find some information later ([solution goes here]).

After this work, I was ready to look at the scenes themselves. The process of reviewing a scene was similar to how I approached the manuscript as a whole. I broke it down into mini-acts. I checked the pacing and setting. I ensured that all the scenes had a clear purpose, whether to drive the main narrative forward, or to reveal something about a character. A scene that was just world-building needed to be merged into another with action.

Finally, I had to prepare the manuscript for my editor. A manuscript assessment is a high-level report on the key elements of a novel such as plot, conflict and character, so the prose doesn’t have to be perfect. But I wanted to save my editor some headaches. I did a quick last pass of the manuscript to fix grammar, spelling and any obvious mistakes. Even though I put lots of effort into this structural edit, there were a few issues I was aware of that still existed (for example, the prose not being as polished as I would have liked). So, I also prepared a letter to my editor for them to look at after their first read.

With everything as ready as it was going to be, I emailed my editor the manuscript and the letter. I should receive my report at the end of April, at which point I will have another round of edits to go. Unless my editor thinks it is perfect as is! In the meantime, while I await my manuscript’s return, I will turn my attention to some other writing projects.

My key insights from the last few weeks:

1. Keeping a record of your changes makes it easier to check for consistency. Only look for a handful of things each read through so you don’t miss something.
2. Interrogate your scenes. Do they work internally and externally?
3. No matter how many passes of revision you do, it won’t feel like enough. Have a deadline (such as someone waiting on your words) so you know when to stop and take a break.

Here is Part 1 & Part 2.

Undertaking a Structural Edit: Part 2 – The Bigger…

In 2020, I was awarded the Anne Edgeworth Fellowship to develop my manuscript, The Selkie Curse. The fellowship is generously funding a manuscript assessment and a mentorship. Along with the funds and my project work, those who win the fellowship are expected to undertake some community outreach. This post is the second in a series that I will be writing over the next few months about the process of structural editing. I hope to share my progress as well as any insights I uncover into the challenging task of editing my own novel.

About The Selkie Curse: Elsa and her mother, Queen Tiari, are at war with the Fisherman Kingdom. The young king of the Fishermen blames Queen Tiari for his father’s death, and he is set to destroy Tiari’s queendom. It is up to Elsa, and her best friend Aada, to find a way to end the war and save their home.

In the last month, I’ve been tackling the bigger picture of my novel. After my first mentoring session, I had a better grasp of the gaps in my worldbuilding and story. There are plenty of areas that needed a bit of thinking to tease out and develop. I spent several days making new maps, writing world histories and even wrote a sea shanty! (Much to my disappointment I was about two weeks early to The Wellerman craze.)

With a better understanding of my world and story, I returned to my spreadsheet. Each scene in my manuscript was recorded with its POV, setting, purpose, and word count. Then, in the spreadsheet, I began to add, cut and move scenes around. Using a scene outline was like zooming out on the manuscript and enabled me to see where there were pieces of the picture missing, or if areas were blurry, or if they were out of place. I examined the scenes based on which story Act they belonged to, to try and balance plot, setting, tension and pacing. The result was a new order for the scenes and a few new scenes to write.

The next step was to apply my notes and edit the manuscript to make it match the new scene order. I tried to be very deliberate with these edits, making sure that they reflected the new plot elements. I did not fix spelling, grammar or punctuation (unless it was truly horrendous). My goal is to have finished these edits by mid-February.

I also got to meet with Leife again to discuss the next steps and get feedback on my synopsis and first five pages. I had a few more light-bulb moments this time around. Synopses are such a bugger to write and I think I’ve worked out why it’s so difficult for me. A synopsis has to be like poetry where every word counts. I suck at poetry. Moving forward I’ll need to work out a few tricks to make this process easier for me.

A second realisation was that sometimes I need to push my ideas further. Leife gave me some excellent feedback on my opening scene. I know in my head how I want my main character to experience the event that starts her character arc, but I wasn’t doing everything I could to make that moment more emotional. In the coming drafts, I will need to raise the stakes of the scene. I also had some homework to research tall ships, to make sure the sailing scenes have the correct texture to them.

This next month is all about scenes! I’m going to be doing so hefty re-writes to restructure scenes, fix up the prose, and bring the manuscript one step closer to my vision.

My key insights from the last few weeks:

1. Editing will always take longer than you think and it isn’t just about changing words on the page.
2. Push the limits of the story and raise the stakes. Is your character having a bad day? Make it worse!
3. A scene outline can let you “zoom-out” on your manuscript and view it like it is a picture.

Here is Part 1.