I thought I would share a few thoughts about the process of editing Silent Skies — the first book in the Flames of the Exiled series. My updates about the series are few and far between, I know. While motivation always remains high, the progress has been slow — marred by self-doubt (some healthy and some unhealthy, I’m sure), as well as the other pressures and pleasures of life.
But, slowly and surely, it’s getting there.
Over the last four years, Silent Skies has been subjected to multiple rounds of developmental editing and beta reading, and now — at last — a comprehensive copyedit. After one or two proofreaders have had a squiz, it might be just about time to release it — well, after finalising the cover art, formatting, print service and publishing plan, of course … For those unfamiliar with a novel’s editing process, I believe it usually follows a pattern similar to this:
First draft (leave for at least three months and work on something else).
Quick developmental edit for beta readers.
Round of beta reading (don’t touch it again until beta readers have given feedback and you have had at least a week to digest the feedback).
Full developmental edit.
A second round of beta reading and touch-up based on feedback (this might be optional).
Copyedit.
Round of proofreading.
Final draft.
Anyway, I have cause for a little celebration at the moment — I think — and motivation for a little reflection on the editing process. All that follows and is true has been doubtless discovered and written about by countless writers before me. All that follows which has not previously been discovered and written about is, likely as not, a little off the mark. True and untrue, it may be interesting to those curious about writing, and about Flames of the Exiled.
In this little thought piece on substack — On the Way to the Beginning: Pulling and Following a Story — I wrote a bit about one of the broader goals I aimed for in my developmental editing: to reclaim the playfulness of the first draft at the same time as polishing plot and symbol to improve the story. What I didn’t write about in that post was the battle of confidence and self-doubt — ego and anxiety, perhaps, or the left and the right hemisphere — that pervaded my time of developmental editing.
I would become confident that a particular draft was finished, send it to a beta reader or two, and then fall into anxiety two weeks later — and curse my over-confidence. Sometimes this self-doubt is right, good and useful … On the other hand, such over-confidence might lead to insight from beta readers that you sorely need. The perfectionist might need more confidence, the go-getter more caution — simply put, the right and left hemispheres need to keep each other in check.
In attempting to find a way to reduce the sickening feeling of subjecting a kind beta reader to a tooth-grinding draft (and saving them a trip to the dentist) I have landed on this thought: that a piece of writing should sit, untouched, for at least a few months, then be subjected to a small developmental edit, before it reaches beta reading eyes. One might suggest that a piece of writing should only pass under a beta reader’s gaze once the author can think of no way of further improving it themselves, but this seems a dubious route, for a perfectionist especially.
This being my first attempt at editing a book, I thought it absolutely necessary to hire a copyeditor — and I’m very glad I did. She picked up on a few inconsistencies I missed in the developmental stage and I learned a great deal about Australian-specific grammar and style.
My guess is that most people aren’t particularly interested in hearing much about Australian-specific grammar and style, so I’ll only say a little. I’ll mention that my number of quotation marks was all but halved — and my number of ellipses too — and that all adverbs ending in ‘-ward’ were changed to ‘-wards’ with the exception of ‘forward’. Also, folk from over the sea might not readily picture a ‘magpie’ or ‘mountain ash’ the same way that an Australian will.
Perhaps in the future, when Silent Skies is out, I’ll go into further spoiler-filled detail about the developmental editing I did on the book; the trouble I had with multiple perspectives, interweaving plotlines and an overabundance of monsters … For now, though, I’ll just try to intrigue you.
I'll celebrate, recuperate and settle lightly on plans … And hopefully it won't be too long before the next little update about Flames of the Exiled hits your inbox, dear readers.
PS. If you're interested in reading the beginning of Silent Skies, these are the copyedited versions of extracts I've posted here on the website: