Strategy for Write an Entire Story Month: Submission

Here we are a week later. Monday we start posting submissions to our Write an Entire Story contest. Now is the time to finish up the last of our edits. Last week, we took the week off and let the our stories settle into the back of our minds. Today, we reach back into our work, brush off the dust, and get it dressed in it’s Sunday best. As with the rest of this process, we have a couple tips to help you finish up. Now get a pad of paper, your manuscript, and a glass of something to drink.

Have and Have Nots

We get this tip from Carolyn See‘s “Making A Literary Life”, on the pad of paper divide the page in half. Title each side with “Have” and “Need”. As you read your manuscript and try not to hate yourself too much, under “Have” write the elements you have. Under “Need”, write the elements your story needs. Do not edit at this point, you are a reader and not a writer at this stage.

Think Macro and Micro

We have a list of our stories “have” and “needs”, which breaks down to a guidle of how to edit our stories. But is that all you need to consider? Maybe, if everything works. Here we come to the subjective point of art. However, before we can say it is a masterpiece, we want to give thoughts to how we go about the editing process. There are two types of editing styles we should consider, the Marco-edit and Micro-edit. We know from the moter mouthed micro machine Ad man that Micro Machines are tiny toy cars. Therefore Micro-edit must be tiny toy edits, right? Sure, but we call them line edits. Alternatively, Macro-edit edits the forest from the trees. The big picture is taken into view and we see the art from the lines.

With our list and the story fresh in our mind, think of your Macro-edit. How is the story pulled together? What is the common theme? The Micro-edit is next and we want to know if there are subtle neuoncance we can add in the Micro-edit that will help the Macro-edit?  Wrtie down your ideas on the pad of paper. Take a break and consider everything you have thought.

Micro-Edit it all Together

Now we have a list of our haves and have nots, we have notes on the big picture, what we need now is a line edit. Micro-editing is the niddy griddy, the nuts and bolts of the story. The only thing left to do is get out our tool belt of grammer and get to work on the machine. Tighten your prose, cut off the lose ends, and turn your story into a lean, mean, literary machine. We will read our stories out loud with a mechanics ear. The mechanic’s ear listens for the slight adjustments to fine tune his jalopy into a Indy 500 contestant.

Final Edit = Last Draft – 10%

The most perfect sentence is “I am.”, with a subject and a action. The sentences of our story are most likley a tab more complex. However as we take a last look at our prose, we must remember this helpful tip from Stephen King’s On Writting “Final Edit = Last Draft – 10%”*. Our objct as a writer is to convey our story with the best possable way. In our final edit, we look at the meal and trim the fat. If you suspect a word dosen’t cut the mustard then cut it out. Kill your darlings as they say but remember it is only 10%.

Submit@AmericanNonFiction.com

Subject: W.E.S. Contest: title of your peice
Cover: 190 width x 300 height

Monday we start to post the submissions and all the early birds will have a chance to gather their fane base early. Get to work over the weekend and check us out Monday with this first submission in American NonFiction’s Write an Entire Story Month.

*paraphrased