Oh, Now I Made it Worse: When Editing Goes Astray

By Janice Hardy, @Janice_Hardy


When I talked about ambiguous pronouns, and there was a comment about one of my examples. In trying to fix that ambiguity, I made the whole passage awkward. This is the perfect example to help illustrate what I call revision smudge. The things left behind when we edit one thing and it changes something else.

Here’s the original text: 

Bob and Gary ran for the house, zombies crashing through the woods behind them.

"Get to the car!" Bob screamed, reloading the shotgun while Gary dug into his pockets for the keys. Bob tripped and went flying, slamming against the dirt with a grunt.

The comment was that “his pockets” could refer to Gary or Bob. Which it technically could, so I edited the example to read like this:

Bob and Gary ran for the house, zombies crashing through the woods behind them.

"Get to the car!" Bob screamed, reloading the shotgun.

Gary dug into his pockets for the keys, hands shaking. Bob stumbled and went flying, slamming against the dirt with a grunt.

Moving Gary to his own line fixes the pronoun, but now the "Bob stumbled" part feels tacked on there at the end. Originally, it was part of Bob’s passage, so it made sense that Bob tripped as he was reloading the shotgun. Now, it reads awkwardly.

Something like this can easily be missed when we’re editing. There was nothing “wrong’ with it, so to us it reads fine unless we’re really looking at it. But it's common for these types of smudges to trigger a red flag that something is off, even if we're not sure what it is.

Let's rework the passage yet again to fix that smudge. Since the problem occurred because it moved away from Bob, sending it back there seems to be the easiest fix. But then it reads like this:

Bob and Gary ran for the house, zombies crashing through the woods behind them.

"Get to the car!" Bob screamed, reloading the shotgun. He stumbled and went flying, slamming against the dirt with a grunt.

Gary dug into his pockets for the keys, hands shaking.

It’s better, as Bob now stumbles in the right spot, but now Gary’s looking for his keys like Bob hasn’t just taken a dirt nap. It feels unconnected.

To flow smoothly, the trip needs to be in the right spot (after Gary goes for his keys). So let’s take a step back and look at what we’re trying to accomplish with this passage. Bob tripping is clearly a problem that makes the situation worse. He’s easy pickings for the zombies on their tail. So if this is a complication, why not add a small success for this event to mess up? Or even better—a way to make it worse.

Bob and Gary ran for the house, zombies crashing through the woods behind them.

"Get to the car!" Bob screamed, reloading the shotgun.

Gary dug into his pockets for the keys, hands shaking. Breath spray, matchbooks—keys, where are the damn keys! He emptied his pockets, tossing the useless crap to the ground.

Bob backed away from the zombies, firing. The tube of breath spray rolled toward him and slipped under his foot. He went flying, slamming against the dirt with a grunt.

More interesting, right?

When you have revision smudge, it’s a good idea to look at what you were trying to do and not so much at the words written. It’s not always about finding a spot for it, but making it fit the scene with whatever new changes caused the problem in the first place.

Often, a quick tweak is all you need to fix it. Change a few words, move or delete a line or two, and find a more interesting way to show what you wanted to show all along.

Do you find revision smudge when you edit? How do you handle the leftover bits that clog up otherwise good prose? 

Looking for tips on revising your novel? Check out my book Revising Your Novel: First Draft to Finished Draft, a series of self-guided workshops that help you revise your manuscript into a finished novel. Still working on your idea? Then try my just-released Planning Your Novel Workbook. 

A long-time fantasy reader, Janice Hardy always wondered about the darker side of healing. For her fantasy trilogy The Healing Wars, she tapped into her own dark side to create a world where healing was dangerous, and those with the best intentions often made the worst choices. Her novels include The Shifter, Blue Fire, and Darkfall from Balzer+Bray/Harper Collins. The Shifter, was chosen for the 2014 list of "Ten Books All Young Georgians Should Read" from the Georgia Center for the Book. It was also shortlisted for the Waterstones Children's Book Prize, and The Truman Award in 2011.

Janice is also the founder of Fiction University, a site dedicated to helping writers improve their craft. Her popular Foundations of Fiction series includes Planning Your Novel: Ideas and Structure, a self-guided workshop for planning or revising a novel, the companion Planning Your Novel Workbook, Revising Your Novel: First Draft to Finished Draft, and the upcoming Understanding Show Don't Tell (And Really Getting It).  

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