Editing resources: Nathan Bransford

I’m deep inside the World of Editing. I’m reading, re-reading and hacking away at Amy’s Courage. It’s not easy. Like most writers, I hate editing. But it’s a necessity. It must be done.

What helps me is to break it down in to little pieces that are manageable and to believe I can do it. I’ve done it before. I can do it again. I don’t have to get it perfect right now, I just want progress.

It also helps if I have resources. And one of the best I’ve seen is Nathan Bransford. The guy is genius. He’s actually written a book on how to write a novel.

Here are some examples of Nathan’s amazing resources for editing:

http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2009/06/revision-checklist.html This is a revision check list to beat all checklists. If you can get through it, your novel will shine brighter than the sun. Awesome resource.

Do you have enough conflict? http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2009/03/on-conflict.html. This is a biggie for me. I like to ramble (oops). Rambling is all fine and dandy with a friend, but it kills a story. A book needs conflict to keep it going. It’s like air. No conflict, death happens and quickly.

And this one is HUGE for me because once I develop my characters, they have backgrounds, histories, tone of voices and even favourite drinks! They’re so complete, they sometimes take over and drive the story where they want it to go and not where it needs to go. http://blog.nathanbransford.com/2010/02/do-you-own-your-characters-or-do-your.html

What about you? Do you have some editing advice? Resources? I’d love to hear about them!