Sophistication (Original Entry)
- Starting sentences with action (-ing) verbs: 30
- Adverbs: ... I stopped counting and just started cutting the buggers.
- Abundance of short sentences: 0
- Overuse of italics or exclamation points: 1
- Cliches: 1
- Unnecessary Profanity: 0 (Some people swear like sailors. Jeremiah is one of them.)
- Overuse of mundane detail: 20 (Sadly, most of these were descriptors of office life.)
Show vs. Tell (Original Entry)
- Summaries of big plot events: 0
- Inability to resist the urge to explain: 12
- Repetition of detail: 7
- Overuse of words/plot devices/effects: 5 (These were mostly quirks that I had to find new descriptions of.)
- Redescription of events: 1
Character & P.O.V (Original Entry)
- Telling traits vs. showing them in other ways: 6
- Backstory that only needs to be known, not shown: 5 (One of these was a hefty 15 pages in the first chapter: a flashback that will probably show up as a short piece elsewhere.)
- Real dialogue vs. pure exposition: 3
- Inconsistent P.O.V: 4
- Description inconsistent with emotion: 2
Character, Pacing, and Beats (Original Entry)
- Details the character wouldn't notice: 4
- Character development disproportionate to plot: 0
- Ineffective or absent tangents: 13
- Overabundant hobbies or mentions thereof: 1
- Beats (poorly spaced): 0
- Beats (mundane): 3
- Beats (rhythmically awkward): 5
- Imbalance of passage length: 1
- Imbalance of chapter length: 0
Dialogue, Monologue & Sound (Original Entry)
- Emotion in description instead of dialogue: 2
- Replace verbs with "said": This is another one where I stopped counting and just had at it.
- Unnecessary speaker attribution: I stopped counting these, too..
- Noun before name: 0
- Inconsistent character reference: Tons. 90% of these were Cam vs. Cameron.
- Ellipses for gaps: All present & accounted for.
- Dashes for interruptions: Also all present & accounted for.
- Dialogue without room for misinterpretation: 0
- Awkward dialect: 0
- Unnecessary interior monologue: 9
- Unnatural-sounding or out-of-character dialogue: 9
Voice (Original Entry)
I could break these down by chapter, since I did make a list of them, but that would ruin so many surprises. Here are the things a lot of my favorite passages had in common:
- description of strong emotion
- personified concepts,
- witty banter or funny dialogue
- atmospheric scene setting
- tense conversations
- use of foreshadowing or placing of points
- pulling together any of those foreshadowing instances or points
Other Edits & Instances of "Kill Your Darlings"
A lot of my generic edits, done in pink ink, involved tightening up sentences, or reordering them so that they read more smoothly on the page. A few places needed a little more "oomph" to ramp up suspense, and others needed extra taken out to speed up the pace. My proverbial darlings, passages that I loved but didn't necessarily need, got highlighted in yellow. The fifteen pages in Chapter 1 I mentioned earlier were a doozy, since that scene was the first glimpse I had of Buster's sister, Dee, and loved her immediately. I also had a few funny lines which were pretty good, but didn't fit Buster quite right. These have been saved and tucked away for later use. One particular darling remains, but in a pared-down and much more subtle form, to help tie the first book to its successors. I won't give it away, but a couple of books from now, it'll be clear as day in a reread.
That officially wraps up my entries on the Rainbow Editing Method! Thank you for sticking through it with me, and I hope that some of what I've had to say over these last few months has been useful ... or at the very least, somewhat entertaining. See you all next Thursday!