Distance from a Manuscript Can Open Your Eyes

A bit of distance can help spot manuscript flaws.

Earlier this week, I stopped by Twitter before getting to work for the day. A friend had posted about getting down to edits on her current project. “I need to make sure that I focus on macro-edits today instead of diving into micro edits.” I totally understand. Micro-edits are so much easier to spot. Our word processors help us by underlining spelling errors, highlighting grammar problems, and even making some changes automatically. 

Macro edits?  Those take careful reading an analysis to locate. 

Back in May, I posted about macro-edits. Those are the big-picture items that are all about pacing and structure, characterization, and setting. Are your characters sympathetic? Do your beginning and ending work together? Does your manuscript lag in the middle? All this and so much more can come up when looking at the big picture.

On the day my friend posted about making macro-edits, I was reading over a graphic novel manuscript that I hadn’t touched in over a year. It languished while I worked on other things, but my writing instructor has agreed to take a look at it, and I wanted to make a quick run through the manuscript before sending it to her. 

As I remembered, the ending was a little weak, but, other than that, the manuscript was sound. I could tackle it and have it read to go out by lunch. Are you laughing hysterically yet? 

Atom Mom is a picture book graphic novel about a group of children who want to do something special for their mom. She’s a superhero, and all the responsibilities of being everything to everyone are weighing her down. 

But a year’s absence meant that I was seeing my manuscript with new eyes. It didn’t take me long to realize that the beginning of the story just didn’t sing. With triplets as the main characters, I was constantly shifting from character to character to work then all in. Allegedly each had a unique personality, but one of them faded into the background. It won’t take long to delete her, but it will also mean reshaping the remaining characters. A remaining character will need to take on her few essential tasks. 

If only this was all I spotted. My secondary characters include a pair of teen siblings. I don’t need them both because they are doing the work of a single character. Sorry, boys. One of you needs to hit the road. 

In addition to removing characters, I’m going to have to rename two of them. I have a pair of names that are too similar, and another name is painfully cliché. It seemed clever at the time, but now it just seems cringeworthy. 

By the time I finished my read-through, I had a list of things to rework. And sadly? They were all macro-edits, big picture items that I hadn’t spotted when I was working on the manuscript on a regular basis. Absence had made these problems glaringly obvious. 

Sigh. I miss the good old days when I only spotted micro-edits. I could have been shifting commas and coming up with a better word for “fling.” Fortunately, that will all be waiting for me when I’m done with the bigger fixes. Only then will it be time to move on to fine-tuning the manuscript and helping my characters fling their problems into the stratosphere. 

--SueBE

Sue Bradford Edwards' is the author of over 30 books for young readers.  To find out more about her writing, visit her site and blog, One Writer's Journey.

The next session of her new course, Pitching, Querying and Submitting Your Work will begin on August 7, 2022).  Coping with rejection is one of the topics she will cover in this course.

Sue is also the instructor for  Research: Prepping to Write Nonfiction for Children and Young Adults (next session begins August 7, 2022) and Writing Nonfiction for Children and Young Adults (next session begins August 7, 2022). 

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8 comments macro-edit, macro-edits, revising, revision, rewriting, self editing, Sue Bradford Edwards

Start with the Macro Edits

Recently I took a webinar on self-editing picture book manuscripts. The presenter, editor Natascha Biebow, explained that when we edit our work we need to start with macro-edits and then move on to micro-edits 

I quickly realized that her macro-edits were what I call “big picture” edits. These are the structural things that make or break your story. Micro-edits were the minute details like word choice, spelling, and punctuation that make for smooth reading, but without the macro-edits no amount of polish will save a manuscript. 

Discussing this with my accountability group, we realized that we are all much better at micro-editing our work. Angela pointed out that many writers really need an outside reader to help them see the big picture. Without another pair of eyes, it is hard to see what works and what doesn’t on a structural level. 

One thing that can help you conduct your own macro-edits is to analyze your work based on a checklist of possible problems. For fiction, macro-edits include: 

1. Whether or not the reader knows who the main character is by the end of chapter one for a novel or the first paragraph for a piece of flash. 
2. Does the reader know what the character’s problem is or what is at risk if the character fails to solve this problem? 
3. Does the story have a beginning, a middle, and an end? The beginning is where you set up the story problem. The middle is where the character attempts to solve this problem. The ending of the story wraps it all up. 
4. Is the character sympathetic and three-dimensional? This doesn’t mean that the character needs to be likable, but they need to have one or more traits that readers can sympathize with. She may be an anti-hero, but she does her mother’s laundry every week, or she feeds the stray cats in her neighborhood. 
5. Does your reader know what the setting is? This means that they need to know when and where it takes place. Too often stories take place in some un-named blank space. 
6. Is each of your characters essential to the story? Maybe some of them can be combined or eliminated. You need to similarly scrutinize each chapter and scene. 

Nonfiction is going to have a slightly different set of possible macro-edits but these include: 

1. Is there a clear introduction? This is where you let the reader know what you are writing about and why it matters. 
2. Do you build your piece step by step? This means that material needs to be presented in the most effective order. But it also means that you include enough clear, meaningful examples to lead your reader through the argument or the steps in completing your how-to. 
3. Is the voice consistent throughout the piece? Or does it start out stiff and then get more conversational as you warm to your topic? You also need to verify that this voice is appropriate for the audience and market. 
4. Make sure that all necessary terms are defined. 
5. Is each paragraph unique? It can be easy to give the same information in more than one place. Delete all repetitive sections. 
6. Does the ending include a clear summary of all conclusions? Or is it rushed? 

Analyzing your work to make macro-edits is tough. It is too easy to see the manuscript you intended to write vs the manuscript you actually created. Going through a check list and examining one element at a time can make this task easier. What items would you include in your own macro-edit checklist?

--SueBE

Sue Bradford Edwards' is the author of over 30 books for young readers.  To find out more about her writing, visit her site and blog, One Writer's Journey.

The next session of her new course, Pitching, Querying and Submitting Your Work will begin on June 5, 2022).  Coping with rejection is one of the topics she will cover in this course.

Sue is also the instructor for  Research: Prepping to Write Nonfiction for Children and Young Adults (next session begins June 5, 2022) and Writing Nonfiction for Children and Young Adults (next session begins June 5, 2022). 

Read More »

6 comments macro-edit, macro-edits, micro-edit, revision, revisioning, rewriting, Self-editing