country heart

The AutoCrit Editing Wizard is an online application where you paste in part or all of your manuscript and run one of fourteen different reports, such as Overused Words or Cliché Finder. The results are displayed in your web browser. Which reports you can run and how much of your manuscript you can paste in depend on which version of the AutoCrit wizard you are using.

The Free version has 3 reports and accepts up to 800 words per submission/paste into the text field.

One-year memberships are available at three price/service levels:

• Gold – $47 – 5000 words, 9 reports
• Platinum – $77 – 8000, 14 reports
• Professional – $117 – 100,000 words, 14 reports, ability to submit your entire manuscript

So far, I’ve been using the AutoCrit Wizard on a chapter at a time. Chapters I have looked at, read, read aloud, edited, re-written and edited some more … and which still contain repeated phrases and other things these reports point out to me that I need to fix. It is helping my manuscripts be just a little bit cleaner, a little bit more polished, stand out just a little bit more from the others waiting in the pile.

And that is worth a lot more than the prices listed above to me.

Dorothy: Oh, please! Please, sir! I’ve got to see the Wizard! The Good Witch of the North sent me!
- The Wizard of Oz

sometimes me

When I was cutting a recent fan music video, I wanted to show the action that took place over 15 minutes of the movie. It’s a five minute song. Therefore, those 15 movie minutes had to be condensed into about one and a half minutes, because there were a lot of other scenes from the movie I wanted in my mv.

I spent over an hour editing the footage down. It was still three minutes long. I then reviewed each scene used in those three minutes and asked myself if they supported the song. If I cut that scene, would the mesh of images and music still be as strong? Would anyone be confused if they didn’t see that scene?

With that criteria, I edited that segment down to just under one and a half minutes.

This is just like writing a novel. The song for a novel is, in my home-made metaphor, the plot; the action that keeps your reader turning the page.

If a scene doesn’t advance the plot, it shouldn’t be in your novel. No matter how much you love that scene, no matter how beautifully you think it’s written – it must go. You only have room for the scenes and sequels, the actions and reactions that move the story along.

A song is only so long, and so is your book. Stay true to its music.

Space Ghost: Will you please keep your mind on the music?
- Space Ghost Coast to Coast

east meets west

Then it’s time to put that story away – out of sight, and as much as possible, out of mind.

Not because I’m not happy with it. And definitely not because I’m finished with it.

I put it away to gain distance and objectivity.

It’s much easier to see the flaws in the story from a few days away. A week is even better.

The typos and awkward sentences stand up. The repetitious words are obviously repetitive.

So once you’ve finished your first draft, step away from the manuscript. Put it to the side and celebrate your accomplishment. Catch up on all of the things that you didn’t do while you were dancing with your writing muse.

The manuscript will still be there when you get back to it, in all of its flawed glory.

Adelle DeWitt: No! I’m beginning to suspect he hasn’t the proper distance.
- Dollhouse, “Gray Hour”, 1.4

I just got a copy of Manuscript Makeover by Elizabeth Lyon. In the introduction, she presents three completely different ways three prominent authors revise their work:

• 32 pages of revision for every single final page – Dean Kootz
• revise no more than 3 times, then start your next work – Dean Wesley Smith & Kristine Kathryn Rusch
• throw away the first 2 drafts, keep and polish the third – Jonis Agee

more spooky buds

As Lyon notes, “These examples represent but three philosophies of revision, but as many methods exist as there are writers.”

I’ll admit, throwing out my first and second draft did not occur to me. But now I know it’s an option. As is revising every page more than 10 or 20 times. I haven’t tried that, but it could work for me.

I am going to finish reading Manuscript Makeover first, just in case I find something else I want to try before the 32 Page Revision Method.

You’ll know when something works for you. If you’re not sure where to start, find out what other people do and try that out. If it works, remember it and do it again. If it doesn’t, try something else.

Thomas Edison: If I find 10,000 ways something won’t work, I haven’t failed.