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Blogs by Karen Harrington
Characters with meaty hands. (Or, why every writer needs an editor.) 10/20/2008 10:45:48 AM
One of the first high-level comments my editor wrote to me about my current novel-in-progress was this: Meaty hands: You have three characters with meaty hands. The edited copy of my new novel, Prodigal Son, FINALLY arrived in the mail after getting lost in the USPS system for almost two weeks. You can imagine my relief that it is now safely on my desk.
Having an experienced editor critique and edit your work is valuable. Here's what I received back:
1. A two page critique, noting the major strengths of the work and a macro summary of what needs to change in terms of pacing
2. A 40 page, page-by-page breakdown of micro-edits (tense shifts, spelling, etc.)
3. Detailed notes and line-by-line edits on EVERY one of the manuscript's 380 pages
And then of course, came the comments such as the one about meaty handed characters.
That birds' eye observation is exactly why every writer needs to have his/her work edited by someone else. Your story can be wonderful an engaging, but an editor is going to show you where the technical pieces breakdown and alert you to an excess of meaty hands.
Since I'm diving into this project full force, I'm going to experiment with using my Twitter account to post small editing lessons from this ms., note examples and keep you up to date on my progress. Hop over to my blog to find my Twitter Box on the left - http://www.scobberlotch.blogspot.com
I hope you will be able to learn from my mistakes and help us eradicate the number of characters with meaty hands. (If I ever write a book on writing, I think Meaty Hands will be the title.)
Please feel free to ask me any questions as I roll along. By the way, my editor is Mary-Linn Roby at A-1 Editing Service. She and I worked together on JANEOLOGY as well.
