Why You Should Embrace Extreme Editing
Edits can be emotional and daunting, but they can also offer an opportunity to see your story in a new light. Here, author Julia Kelly shares why you should embrace extreme editing.
One question I’m asked most often about being an author is whether I enjoy editing. My answer is always, without hesitation, an emphatic yes!
I’ve been lucky enough to have great editors—even if I always open their editorial letters with a sense of dread, because of the hard work to come. No matter how great your first draft is, it’s hard seeing all that feedback laid out on the page.
Every time I get an editorial letter, I make myself close the laptop, step back, and return to it the next morning. I know that once I get over my initial “I don’t want to!” reaction, my editor’s notes will help me figure out how to fix the parts of my book that aren’t working.
Never was this truer than during the developmental edits for my new historical novel, The Lost English Girl. Every book has its own personality, and this one was a lost teenager. It knew that it had things to say, but it wasn’t sure how to articulate them.
While I was writing the first draft of The Lost English Girl, I knew that something was off. I was telling the story of Viv, a young mother who is forced to send her daughter Maggie from their home in Liverpool to the safety of the English countryside during Operation Pied Piper — Britain’s evacuation of children at the start of World War II. Years before, Viv had quickly married Maggie’s father to legitimize an unexpected pregnancy, only for a betrayal to force an immediate separation. At the beginning of the book, Viv is estranged from her husband and living a deeply unhappy life with her judgmental parents.
I knew that The Lost English Girl would focus on Viv finding her voice and taking ownership of her own happiness. I also wanted to explore the emotions underlying the separation of families during the evacuations and, ultimately, whether people can ever forgive and reconcile after a betrayal.
Those might have been my good intentions when I started the first draft, but instead I ended up with a wandering manuscript that was 50,000 words too long. Even as I was writing, I could tell the words weren’t falling into place like they do when a book is on the right track.
Maybe I was getting caught up in researching wartime Liverpool (my mother’s hometown), and I was guilty of wanting to pack everything I’d learned into the manuscript. It probably also didn’t help that I had recently quit my day job to write full-time and I didn’t realize how much pressure no longer having the safety net of a salary would add onto me. Or, most likely, I was simply so deep that I couldn’t see the forest for the trees.
When I handed the draft in to my editor, Hannah, I knew it needed serious work. Her editorial letter confirmed that, yes, I had my work cut out for me, but there was hope. Somewhere in the wilderness of words I’d just sent her, she thought that there was a good story; I just had to chop away to find it.
I learned long ago while writing my book The Whispers of War—which required several versions—that, if I have to make major revisions, it is easier for me to delete the parts that need to go and fully rewrite them rather than make smaller tweaks and find myself unhappy I didn’t cut enough. As Hannah and I discussed her editorial letter on a call, I quickly realized that I needed to hone the story to let my original themes shine through. This meant changing entire character arcs, and—most significantly—moving the third act of the story back in time from 1961 to 1945.
I won’t pretend that a huge rewrite like this isn’t incredibly intimidating. However, I made copious notes based on Hannah’s and my ideas, took a deep breath, and got to work. I junked the entire last third of the book. I cut characters. I rewrote large chunks of scenes or, if they were unsalvageable, eliminated them entirely. I killed my darlings right and left. It was brutal.
But what I ended up with was a story that hewed more closely to the book I had originally envisioned than my first draft. The characters had room to breathe and develop. The plot wasn’t bogged down by scenes that went nowhere. The emotional turning points had more punch than I could have imagined.
I’ve heard that many sculptors working in marble can see the shape of their piece within the rough block of stone before they ever touch it. One of their skills is knowing how to chip away to bring their sculpture to life. I see a writer’s editing process the same way, especially when it comes to a major rewrite. By deciding to cut and cut (and then cut some more), I exposed the strong, raw bones of the story and finally found The Lost English Girl.
I can’t wait for readers to discover her, as well.
Julia Kelly is the international bestselling author of historical fiction and historical mystery novels about the extraordinary stories of the past. Her books have been translated into 13 languages. In addition to writing, she’s been an Emmy nominated producer, journalist, marketing professional, and (for one summer) a tea waitress. Julia called Los Angeles, Iowa, and New York City home before settling in London.
