Knowing When to Leave the Bloody Sentence Alone

There's a particular kind of madness involved in editing a manuscript.

You write a sentence. It says what you want it to say. It sounds right, fits the character, and moves the story along.

Perfectly good sentence.

Then you read it again.

Perhaps that word could be better. Maybe the sentence would flow more smoothly if you moved something around. There's probably a more elegant way to express the thought, and now that you've noticed it, you can't quite leave it alone.

So you change it.

Then you change it again.

And somewhere around the fourth revision, you realise the original sentence was probably better in the first place.

Welcome to editing.

Better Isn't Always Better

One of the things I've been learning is that technically better prose isn't necessarily better storytelling.

A sentence can be grammatically impeccable, elegantly structured, and completely wrong for the character who's supposed to be saying it.

People don't all speak alike. They don't organise their thoughts the same way, use the same vocabulary, or approach conversations with identical levels of patience and restraint.

Someone who's furious might not deliver a beautifully balanced paragraph explaining their emotional state.

Someone who's frightened might repeat themselves, hesitate, or struggle to find the right words.

And someone who's spent a lifetime speaking plainly probably isn't going to suddenly start delivering elaborate literary observations because I've decided the prose could use a little polish.

That's not improvement. That's interference.

The Difference Between Editing and Rewriting

There's an important distinction between making an author's words clearer and replacing them with the words somebody else would have chosen.

Good editing should help a sentence accomplish what it was intended to accomplish.

It might remove unnecessary repetition, correct a grammatical problem, clarify something ambiguous, or improve the rhythm of a passage that isn't quite working.

But it should also recognise when an unusual turn of phrase is there for a reason.

Not every sentence needs to sound conventionally elegant. Sometimes a slightly awkward expression is exactly what a character would say.

Sometimes the rhythm of a paragraph matters more than its individual components.

And sometimes the author has deliberately chosen a particular word because it carries a meaning that a technically neater alternative doesn't.

The trick is knowing the difference between a genuine problem and a stylistic choice.

Which is considerably easier to say than to do.

The Problem with Familiarity

Another difficulty is that, after spending enough time with a manuscript, you become remarkably good at reading what you intended to write rather than what's actually on the page.

Your brain knows the scene. It knows what the characters are thinking and why they're doing what they're doing. It fills in missing connections without bothering to inform you that anything was missing.

Then somebody else reads the passage and asks a perfectly reasonable question.

Why did that character do that?

What does this sentence mean?

When did they move from one side of the room to the other?

And you discover that the explanation was perfectly clear.

In your head.

Which is not quite the same thing as having written it.

That's one of the reasons another pair of eyes can be so valuable. A good editor or careful reader doesn't have access to all the information floating around in the author's imagination.

They can only work with what's on the page.

Annoying, really, but rather important.

Knowing What to Defend

There's also a balancing act involved in receiving editorial suggestions.

If someone points out a genuine problem, I want to fix it. That's the whole point of having the manuscript edited.

But accepting every suggested change without considering its effect can gradually strip away the very things that make the writing recognisably mine.

So I have to ask myself what the change actually accomplishes.

Does it improve clarity? Does it make the scene easier to follow? Does it correct something I've overlooked?

Or does it merely replace a phrase I would naturally use with one somebody else happens to prefer?

Those aren't the same thing.

Of course, disagreeing with a suggestion doesn't automatically mean I'm right. Occasionally the sentence I'm determined to defend is precisely the one that needs the most work.

That's another uncomfortable part of editing.

Sometimes you have to admit that the bloody thing you were particularly pleased with isn't working.

There Has to Be a Stopping Point

At some stage, a manuscript needs to be finished.

Not perfect. I suspect perfection is a particularly effective way of ensuring a book never sees the light of day.

Finished.

There will always be a sentence that could be adjusted, a word that might be replaced, or a paragraph that could theoretically flow a little more smoothly.

But every change carries the possibility of making something worse rather than better.

And editing without a clear reason eventually becomes an exercise in moving words around because they're there.

I've come to think that the question isn't whether a sentence could be written differently.

Of course it could.

The question is whether changing it would actually improve the story.

If the answer is yes, then change it.

If the answer is no, there's probably something more useful I could be doing.

Like writing the next book.

Or, for that matter, leaving the bloody sentence alone.