Edit a Chapter of My Book With Me

Over the past three years, I’ve been sharing a lot about my book writing process, but not what my book is actually about. And I want to change that. So today, I thought it would be fun to take you guys along as I edit a chapter of my book (which is a YA contemporary romance).

More editing insights:

Draft: 4 (line edits)

Chapter: 22 (out of 46)

# of pages edited: 11

Time spent editing: 6 hours

There are four steps I take when I approach line editing a chapter. The first is that I look at that chapter’s editing notes, which I created during my read-through of the previous draft. These are developmental-like edits, such as tweaking a character’s emotional reactions or adding in something that clarifies a plot thread.

Once I know what I need to fix, I begin marking up the manuscript. This is the line editing draft, so although I’m addressing these developmental-like edits, my main priority is tightening the writing on a line level. I decided to print out my manuscript for this draft because I wanted to physically cross out and add sentences/words. That way, I could better see how the writing was changing on a line level.

After the manuscript is marked up, I transcribe it to my computer. I type up all of the changes I’ve made, then do a final read-through to make sure it flows together well. I typically will do some more tweaking during this final read-through, as some of the edits don’t translate the way I want them to.

Then the chapter is complete, and I do the whole process again with the next!

The fun part! Here’s where I’m going to give some sneak peeks into what my book is about, albeit out of context. Hopefully it’s not too confusing!

Chapter 22 is the scene right before the midpoint, so it’s setting up for that. In it, my characters are competing in a Fourth of July Olympics. It starts off with a water balloon toss, and then transitions into a scavenger hunt for the remainder of the chapter.

While it seems like my characters should be having fun in this scene, there’s actually a lot of tension and conflict. The two love interests got into a fight shortly before this chapter, so at the beginning of it, they’re ignoring each other. Then it escalates into another big blow-up. I just love some good romantic tension hehe.

There’s also conflict between my main character and her half-sister. They hate each other, and this scene creates some forced proximity.

So most of my characters are having a very unfun time during the Olympics. (Except for Sammie. She’s having a ball, like always).

My favorite part about this chapter is the tension between the love interests. Since they’re not exactly on speaking terms, it’s fun trying to convey the tension through things other than dialogue, like their actions and facial expressions.

I also love the events of this scene. I wanted my characters to do a Fourth of July Olympics because I did it with my own family and neighbors at our cabin growing up. It gives me the nostalgic feeling of being a kid again in the summer, which is exactly how I want this book to feel. I also thought the Olympics would make a fun movie montage if this book ever gets made into a movie (hehe, one can dream).

One of the things that isn’t quite working in this chapter is that my main character makes a realization that feels a bit too convenient. I need to connect the dots more so it makes sense how she comes to that conclusion. But I’m honestly not really sure how to fix it right now. I tweaked a few things to try and improve it, but it kinda feels like I’m putting a band-aid over a bullet hole.

I don’t want to get too caught up on it, though, as it’s a relatively small thing in the grand scheme. So I’m just going to move on for now, and hopefully the solution will come to me later on.

They’re also climbing a tree in this scene, and yeah… that’s also just not really working haha.

One of my editing notes for this chapter was to give some reasoning as to why my main character purposely hit the MMC with a water balloon. So here’s what I added to address it:

It served him right for ignoring me all day. He’d told me before that he couldn’t ignore me if he tried. But clearly, that wasn’t the case, because he was doing a damn good job of it today. And every day since our fight on the beach. So I figured if he was going to act like a child about it, then I would too.

Since this draft is my line-editing draft, I’m mainly focused on making my writing as tight as possible to allow for an easy reading experience. And boy, did I have a bunch of unnecessary words in it. Here’s an example of a section I originally had, and how I tweaked it to make it cleaner:

Old:

Lexi startles for a moment, like she forgot I was even there. Which I understood. Looking into Kade’s eyes tended to do that, to make everything else disappear.

She untangles her fingers from his and pulls her gaze towards me, her expression morphing into one of disdain.

“Kade and I win the scavenger hunt nearly every year,” she says, contempt written in bold letters across her face. “We don’t need your help.”

New:

Lexi startles for a moment, like she forgot I was even there. She untangles her fingers from Kades and shoots me a disdainful look.

“Kade and I win the scavenger hunt nearly every year,” she says. “We don’t need your help.”

Here’s what I changed and why:

I deleted my main character’s interiority about how looking into Kade’s eyes tended to make everything disappear because it just wasn’t necessary, and it slowed down the pacing. I needed to stay in the action and dialogue more, rather than in her head.

I also reworded the middle sentence because it was unnecessarily clunky. Instead of saying that she pulls her gaze and her expression morphs into disdain, I could just combine it so that she shoots her a disdainful look. This still gets across the same meaning but in fewer words, making it easier to read.

The last thing I did was delete “contempt written in bold letters across her face.” This is because I already got across that the character has an unpleasant expression. It was just repeating what I’d already said in a slightly different way.

I’d won the water balloon toss. Well, not technically. But I had hit Kade with a balloon. Hard. And that felt like a win to me.

I didn’t particularly want to fall — or be pushed — to my death.

“If I was in love with her, do you really think I would have kissed you?”

“So this.” The air crackles as he takes another step. “What you’re doing right now.” And another. “This is about how Lexi feels?”

And that’s a wrap on chapter 22! Another one in the books (literally)!

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How do you approach editing a new chapter? Is your process similar to mine? Let me know in the comments!