As I continue my first editing pass, I notice that I am taking out about 10% of the general prose. At the same time, I am adding to the dialogs among characters. The conversations need breaking up and refashioning with reactions and such.
I need to flesh out some of the sections that I left primarily as place marks during the draft. These are sections that were primarily narratives, and need to be expanded upon and given life. Instead of saying, for example, “So and so struck a deal…” I put it more like, “So and so stuck out his hand. The other so and so, took his hand to seal the deal…” I also add some dialogues in these sections where there were none before.
Another major task this time around is changing much of the writing from a passive voice to an active voice. Phrasing things in the passive is one of my biggest writng sins, and changing just this one aspect improves my story considerably.
A last thing I will note now is that I am rephrasing some sentences to more original arrangements and replacing ordinary words with out of the ordinary words. I have to be careful not to over do this. Too much makes writing seem overworked and contrived, even comical.
