so I recently finished the developmental edits on my current work in progress, Olexia Legends 2
and I thought I would make a video sharing my current process, a breakdown of what I did and
my timeline, and a few comments from the writing community over on Instagram [upbeat guitar music]
so first what are developmental edits? Developmental edits are usually the first round
of editing that you do after your first draft of a completed novel and they usually include
big picture changes like things to the story and character arcs. When you're making developmental
edits you're not so much focused on line by line things like grammar or punctuation
but you're more fixing plot holes and adjusting character arcs and changing scenes around. So when
do I do developmental edits? Developmental edits are usually done at the end of the first draft or
immediately following the first draft many writers like to take a break between finishing their first
draft and starting developmental edits so they can come back to it with a fresher perspective.
On the other hand some writers go into developmental edits before they even finish
their first draft so it's definitely a spectrum here for what people usually do. As far as I
understand this this is more common among pantsers but many plotters change the course of their story
part way through too and so it basically just depends. So in this case you will either go back
and edit everything that needs to be changed before you continue writing your first draft or
you will just leave it and carry on like you have already made those changes. I did this once while
I was writing The Delinquent Crown and it did not work for me [laugh] um I just kind of got really
lost and this is definitely something I've learned is a writing weakness of mine if I start to make
changes before I know exactly where I'm going with them I will feel lost confused and I will
question every single word that I write because I don't know what's going on. I would really though
love to get to the point at some day where I could just do this I could just know where I'm going but
stop drafting and go fix stuff before I continue drafting because I can see where that would be
really helpful in certain situations. For now though I'm just gonna have to stick to my current
way of doing things which is to make lots of notes as I go and then finish my first draft and then go
back and change absolutely everything. So how do I do developmental edits? I do developmental edits
the only things that I need are my writing program and my notes and my outline as far as the process
for actually making these edits the process really varies from person to person so you'll just have
to kind of experiment with what works best for you there are two different methods that I have
personally tried for doing developmental edits and they both kind of have their pros and cons.
First is what I don't know the name for so I'm just going to call it "the total read through"
method and in this method you do basically what the title says you do a total read through of
your book without making changes that's kind of the important part. When you're doing this read
through you basically are writing an entire other novel except it's not a novel and it's just your
notes for what you want to change. This method is helpful for when you're not sure where the
strengths and weaknesses of your story lies and you want to get a really good overview before you
start making any changes so that you'll know what kind of butterfly effects that these changes might
have later on in the story. The con of this method is that you feel like you are not making progress
it just feels so slow to read through your rough draft and write down all the changes that you want
to make and how they could change other things in the story. When I was doing this I always
just had the bug to just start changing things I just wanted to so bad and it's kind of hard to
restrict yourself. This is the method that I used for The Delinquent Crown and it did actually help
me a lot in places because I didn't know where my strengths and weaknesses of the story were but now
that I'm on to the second book in the series I felt like I had a really good grasp on the
story and the plot elements so I didn't end up implementing this method I actually started to
but kind of realized a little of the way through that it wasn't necessary because I had such a
strong outline and I had so detailed of notes already on what I needed to change it. So the
other method is pretty much the standard one where you just start it's that simple no but really um
so while I was drafting I was taking notes as I was going so every single scene or anything
that I would find that I think I want to change later I was already making extensive notes on how
things could be adjusted for later on during my developmental edit. This method is better for me
because it's faster and it's easier to do when I know there won't be a lot of large changes.
The con I guess is kind of the same as the pro which is if you were to underestimate the amount
of changes that you think this project is going to need then you will kind of end up probably wasting
some time when you realize that there's way more you needed to do. [Person off camera] -- I
have a quick question. When you're doing your developmental edits is this a part where you have
already researched the things that you don't know enough about so just say it's cake decorating,
is this during the developmental edits where you put extra details like that kind of stuff in?
-- For me those kind of things definitely come at a later point as long as I know they won't impact
any story elements or the rest of the scene like oh they said they were going to do 'xyz' but
nobody who's an expert 'whatever' would do that at this time of day or whatever so like
I would research things while drafting and outlining to the extent that I understand
a very basic level that nothing that no wrong information I have could cause issues but for me
yeah during developmental edits but it's even more of a second pass kind of thing for me okay
so I mean it totally depends on the person so if it's like "what breed of horse are these and what
does the tack look like?" that's not important to my drafting phase or my developmental edits
because I’m not changing that kind of stuff for developmental edits changing this scene needs to
change and actually this scene needs to be three chapters up and so that changes these four scenes
because then they say they went from this place to this place but now I have to change all this
because they're going to now it's a different time of day or that kind of stuff or like fixing plot
holes. So yeah that's my developmental edits more line in it so it's somewhere in between
some stuff yeah some stuff not. On my instagram story a couple days ago I put up a little question
to ask you guys about your other struggles your thoughts on developmental edits so here are a few
of the responses uh the first one is "Struggle, realizing you have a plot hole and deciding if
you should work it out or get rid of it" always a conundrum I’m fortunate to not have had any major
plot hole issues in Olexia Legends the series so far first book or second book but I definitely
get opinions from both my critique partners and my alpha readers when I come across something
like this because I don't want to make changes too fast uh when it comes to deciding to make changes
for a plot holder problem I always try and take a lot of time to think about it and figure out what
kind of things this change might affect in other parts of the story I also like to talk it out with
somebody do a lot of free writing and just kind of getting all the ideas out there that I can for how
to maybe solve an issue so I can kind of pull the best ideas that I can find together. Number two is
actually a question it is "how do I know when I’m done with my developmental edits?" so I know I’m
done with my developmental edits when I run out of stuff to do on my checklist for me it's kind
of an ongoing process so I don't really consider my developmental edits done until after my CP has
kind of given me a "sanity check" um I don't know yeah I just I don't consider my developmental that
is totally done until after that but and there's a lot of space in between you know what counts
exactly as your developmental editing phase versus what counts as your line editing phase because to
me I’m doing kind of a lot of different editing stages at once in one project and this might be
kind of an annoying answer it definitely is an annoying answer but most of the time you just
know when you are done working through these big chapter by chapter problems and you don't
have any other developmentally problematic issues to fix then you're done. "Big rewrites hate them
but love them my development edits usually focus on pacing" yeah I totally get that
big changes are usually really enjoyable to me too I love improving things and just adjusting
things and just changing stuff around but at the same time it's super frustrating sometimes
because I feel like all the time that I spent writing it originally was kind of lost time so
it's also daunting to make huge changes it can kind of be a love-hate relationship at
times too because you know you're doing good changes but also at the same time you're like
having to tear apart something that you spent all that time making but it's for the better so
pacing two for sure I am a huge underwriter so I always am having the problem of adding more things
in my action scenes yeah my action scenes and my internal monologue were like barely existent I’m
always uh doing my developmental edits going back and adding just tons and tons of stuff there so I
have something to work with it's uh it's a problem for me sure overwriters have the opposite problem
or they're just having to cut things all over the place and you feel like
you don't know what to cut or you don't know I don't know I don't always know where to add to
but I’m getting better at recognizing that. Okay so the last one is "how long to edit your work in
progress so my developmental edits?" for Olexia Legends 2 took me about 85 days um mid May to
late July of this year it has actually been almost spot on exactly how long I thought it would take
me the second round of edits not so much we'll see how many extra months those are going to take
it is looking like extra months plural at this point so stay tuned [beep]
[BLOOPERS]
grammar and punctuation you're more you're more focusing hah, focusing.
You're more you're more [blah!] you're more [laugh]
you're more focusing on things like character blocks and fiction [laughing from behind camera]
what's the character block? [off camera] I don't know!
if you'd like to dive into my world of Olexia you can start with a free short story Age of
the Gods over on my website sydneyfaith.com I will link it down below it's totally free
all you gotta do is sign up all right that's all I got for you um thank you so much for
watching please consider subscribing if you did enjoy it and I’ll see you later so bye!