Editing With a Partner

Once the fun of writing is out of the way it’s time to edit, and that’s another case where having a writing partner can be extremely helpful. You got yourselves into this mess, now you can work together to get yourselves out.

It’s sort of like having a child. The creation is the fun part. Once it’s there you both need to parent, and everyone will be happier if you’re on the same side.

We like to let a manuscript rest for awhile after the first draft is complete before we get into the editing process, to be able to see it with fresh eyes. When we do pick it up again, we start with a full read-through. On this first pass we mark major problems (plot holes, bad dialog, overexplaining or underexplaining) and any typos that we happen to catch, but we save the line-editing for later.

After each chapter we have a quick (and sometimes not so quick) conversation about what we’ve noticed. The goal is not to fix the problems on the spot, just to make each other aware of concerns so we can pay attention to them going forward.

A writer working on his or her own lacks the built-in sounding board a collaborator provides. The author might sense that there’s something wrong with a passage, but without a coauthor steeped in the minutia of the project to discuss it with, might be unable to diagnose the problem.

You do need to be careful, though, not to talk each other out of necessary edits. We’ll talk about that more in a future post.

Once the first read-through is done, it’s time to start working on those edits. Don’t worry, as you get in and start making changes, you’ll find a million other things to tweak and finesse. It’s fun! Honest!

If you were working on your own you’d be responsible for everything, but since you’re smart and have a writing partner, you can share the load. You can break it down by chapter if you like, or you can make assignments a different way. Set one partner to beefing up character descriptions and the other to improving dialog.

In our edits we’re currently dealing with the fallout of my darling partner deciding that the ending was too abrupt. This derailed all other work while we had lengthy brainstorming sessions and walked laps around the neighborhood, getting some exercise while we confused any eavesdropping neighbors with our cryptic conversational shorthand. We’re coming out the other side of that quagmire now, and I have to admit the finished product is going to be better for it.

Thanks, writing partner!