Two weeks ago, I announced that I’d completed the first draft of “A Healing Love.” Since then, I’ve kept my head down and switched over from ‘creative’ mode to ‘editing’ mode.
Initially, I read through the book as if I were a reader (or tried to do so) over the weekend of the 17th and 18th. That’s actually a really difficult thing for the author of a piece to do. I know what I wanted to say. I know what I meant. Putting yourself in the position of someone who doesn’t have access to my inner workings is a challenge.
After that, I began a thorough and careful read-through and edit last week. Line by line. Scene by scene. Chapter by chapter. That work is ongoing. I’m currently about halfway through chapter ten.
It’s demanding work, requiring a certain ruthlessness. You might adore a particular passage, but if it doesn’t serve the scene, then you need to make the difficult decision to cut it.
At other times, you’ll discover a passage and think, “That doesn’t quite get across what I want,” or “that doesn’t quite make sense,” and find yourself rewriting the whole passage. This is all in addition to the standard checks for grammar, spelling, and missing or misused words. While challenging, the process is incredibly rewarding; you witness the manuscript evolving and improving with every revision, no matter how minor.
Let me give you an example of the kind of decisions I’m having to make:
Chapter Nine features Paul’s first formal meeting of the Board of Directors of his new company, and I think I’ve done a pretty good job of having Bobby and David explain some fairly dense and dry accounting principles to Paul, most importantly Balance Sheets, Assets and Liabilities. After explaining to Paul that his new company has one asset, its bank account, and one liability, Paul’s share capital, and, importantly, why Paul’s share capital is a liability, the next step was to explain that the balance sheet has to balance, and so a new line needs to added to it to take account of any difference between the assets and the liabilities.
I used the interest earned on the money in the bank as an example. The bank account earns interest and so its value as an asset goes up, but Paul’s share capital stays the same, so there is a need to add an “Earnings” line in the balance sheet to account for the difference.
So far, so good. For readers unfamiliar with these concepts, it can be complex. I hope I’ve managed to have David and Bobby explain it simply enough for both Paul and the audience to grasp.
But…
I did go into too much detail.
Paul’s company actually has two bank accounts: a current account, which doesn’t bear interest, and a reserve account, which does. Each night, funds are automatically shifted between them to maintain a minimum balance in the current account while maximising interest earned. I initially had David explain this to Paul as well.
But was this detail important?
It was important to me, but I’m quite anal about these kinds of details. But is it important for the reader to know this?
Probably not.
So, it was cut. This necessitated adjustments to the remainder of the meeting, but as much as I appreciated that small detail of Paul’s financial life, it ultimately didn’t significantly contribute to the core discussion between Paul, Bobby, and David. It didn’t justify its inclusion.
So far, in the ten chapters I’ve gone through, there have been three or four such cases.
I don’t have an editor—I’m very much on my own with this, and that’s fine. I’m quite happy to do it. I am making use of the tools available to me, be that Word’s built-in grammar and spell checkers, Grammarly or Gemini. Three useful tools that can all be used in slightly different ways.
You do need to be careful, though, particularly with Grammarly and Gemini. It would be terribly easy to feed a passage, scene or chapter into those tools, say “please improve,” and just accept the result. But I think that would be a very bad way to use them, and it’s not how I use them.
Grammarly works as a Word plug-in. It reads the text of my document and highlights sections of the text with a thick red underline for ‘errors’ and a thick blue underline for ‘suggestions’. This is similar to the way that Word’s built-in tools highlight mistakes and suggestions, but the style of the highlight is different enough to see which comes from which tool at a glance.
Grammarly is very good at spotting errors, better even than Word’s built-in tools. This includes spelling errors and grammar slips, but it’s also very good at missing and misused words. It’s very useful in this regard.
The tool also includes style suggestions. Some of these suggestions are very good, while others are… not. And as an author, I find myself dismissing more of these suggestions than I accept. I don’t want Grammarly rewriting my authorial voice, so I just won’t let it.
Which brings me to Gemini, something I’ve written about before. It’s an incredibly powerful tool and, as long as you are very careful how you use it, very, very useful.
You have to be strict with it. One of the standing instructions in the chat I’m using for this task is “DO NOT ALTER THE TEXT YOU ARE PRESENTED WITH IN ANY WAY.” I can’t stress how important that is for me. I do not want, in any way, for Gemini to make changes to my text without my 100% approval. I’m happy for it to point out weaknesses in the text that can be improved or even suggest what those improvements could be, but it’s my job to do any rewrites, not Gemini’s.
The main areas I’ve got Gemini looking at are:
Proofreading: A final check after Word and Grammarly, catching lingering stylistic points or missed errors. It’s picking up some things, usually stylistic rather than errors, but it has still picked up things that I’ve missed.
Style and Flow: This is probably the most useful thing it’s doing for me, identifying awkward phrasing, logical gaps, or sections that feel out of place. Crucially, it also affirms what does work and why—an invaluable insight.
Clarity and Conciseness: This is related to the above and is proving to be just as useful.
Word Choice: I’ve asked Gemini to comment on my word choice and point out areas where it could be stronger, more dynamic or more evocative.
Variety of sentence structure: This isn’t massively important, but it is helpful to get feedback on how much variety there is in the text. Variety tends to keep readers more engaged than uniformity.
Pacing: Apparently, I’m quite good at this. Gemini consistently describes the pacing of scenes and chapters as ‘masterful’—a reassuring piece of feedback.
Show, Don’t Tell: Again, this is something I think I’m pretty good at anyway, but it’s good to have that confirmed and to point out when I’m telling rather than showing, so I can decide if that needs to be changed.
Passive Voice: Historically, one of my weak spots, so getting Gemini to pick out where I’ve used it is really useful.
Repetition: Something else that I’ve done historically, so this is a useful back-stop to have, highlighting repetitions, forcing an examination of whether they are effective or could be refined. It’s about prompting critical thought.
Dialogue: Unrealistic sounding dialogue is one of my bug-bears, so I’ve asked Gemini to check if my dialogue sounds authentic. It’s also checking if the dialogue serves its purpose – is it advancing the plot or revealing something about the characters? If not, why is it even there?
Editing a 200,000-word novel is a daunting task. But making use of the tools available to me is making it a little bit easier, a little bit quicker and, I think, means I’m doing a lot better job of it than not using tools.
The way things are going, I think I’ll have done the first pass in another couple of weeks.