A guide to line editing

Line editing is the process of going over your writing sentence by sentence to make sure your prose is polished and working well to keep your reader captivated. We’ll go over some quick ways to make your prose feel more Immediate. These tips are useful for any chapter you’re working on, not just the first, so be sure to come back to this in the future. 

Line Editing

Creating Tension with Description

We've talked about using Specific Detail to give hints about character and worldbuilding. You can also use descriptive detail to build narrative tension for your reader that will keep them engaged. Description isn’t just giving the reader a picture in their mind of what’s going on, it’s cueing them to the emotional landscape of the story. Your description, even if it’s not Specific Detail, should help further the emotion and tension of the scene, and thus increase Immediacy by contributing to the narrative tension of the scene. 

Let’s compare two descriptions of a sunset:

Low red clouds hung like bloody slashes across the horizon, promising a swift nightfall. 

vs. 

The last rays of the sun bathed the shore in a final kiss of gold. 

In the first example the word choice and comparison to “bloody slashes” sets the mood of the scene, and the “swift nightfall” feels ominous, almost deadly. In the second, the emphasis on the “kiss of gold” makes everything seem peaceful and beautiful, almost like the world is being tucked into bed. One sentence here is setting the mood for two very different stories and creating different feelings and expectations for the reader. You can use this to either set up reader expectations (for example, by using the bloody clouds to set the mood for a murder), or subvert them (for example, by introducing something shattering and violent into the peaceful scene)

Exercise: Describe the setting of a scene in your opening chapter. Try to match the mood of the scene, without actually describing the events in the scene. How much emotion can you evoke using only the setting? Now that you’ve got that description, are there any parts of it you can incorporate into your scene? 

Exposition

We covered this in the first module, but just as a reminder: exposition really slows down your prose and prevents it from feeling Immediate. Exposition is when you explain or summarize things for the reader. It’s a necessary part of storytelling–without it, there would be way too much detail to sort through. However, exposition should be kept to a minimum, especially in the first chapter. Anything you want the reader to connect to, remember, or care about should be demonstrated through the narration using action and Specific Detail, and anything you want to skim over can be put in exposition. For instance, a step by step walkthrough of the main character’s morning routine is not usually necessary information for the story, and we don’t need every detail of it. If it’s important for the reader to know that the protagonist ate breakfast, you can just say she did without bringing us through the whole process of pouring cereal and making coffee. 

When you’re line editing, look at the places where you explain things to the reader. Is this something you want them to hang on to? Is it important to the story? If yes, then consider putting it in the story in a more detailed and narrative way. If it’s not important at all, consider taking it out. Extraneous information can really slow down your story, so keep it focused on bringing the reader into the most important information in the story through emotionally compelling action and illustrative Specific Details.  

Relevance 

When you’re line editing, make sure everything you’re describing to the reader is relevant to the scene or moment at hand. Describing things is a way of directing the reader’s attention, and Immediacy is about hooking that attention quickly and thoroughly. Make sure that all the information you give your reader is important, because the reader is going to assume you’re conveying this information for an important reason.  If you’ve directed their attention to something, it should be relevant to the story either now or in the future. Adding in information that isn’t relevant to the scene at hand can really slow down your story, and it can create confusion for the reader, since they can get hung up on details or end up waiting for a payoff that never comes. 

When you’re line editing, ask yourself “Is it important that the reader learns this now?” Each sentence should ideally advance the plot or expand our knowledge of the character or world.  

Filtering

Filtering or filter words, is the practice of narrating a character’s perception. It uses words like “saw,” “perceived,” “heard,” “felt,” “noticed,” to draw attention to the fact that the character is experiencing the action. 

It’s called filtering because the action is being “filtered” through the character’s perception. 

Generally, it’s a good idea to stay away from filtering. Filtering adds bulk to your prose, and distances the reader from the story. Because it draws attention to the character’s perception, it highlights the fact that the reader is not actually experiencing the action themselves. It means the reader’s access to the action is less immediate and immersive than it would be without the filtering.  Reducing filtering makes your prose feel more Immediate. To create greater immersion and Immediacy for your reader, go through your text and remove perception verbs like saw, felt, heard, noticed, etc.

Tense 

Most fiction writing in English uses past tense. This is a great choice for your story, because most readers are going to be familiar with it. It “disappears” and allows the reader to immerse themselves in the story. 

Some writers like to use present tense in their stories. This can be a great choice for stories that are super fast paced. Done well, present tense can make a story feel absolutely edge-of-your-seat gripping (The Hunger Games is a great example of this). However, present tense also comes with its own pitfalls. Because it’s so Immediate, a lot of writers who are newer to present tense slip into bad habits to try to temper some of that immediacy.

Most notable of these is overreliance on what is called Present continuous tense, where the main verb is modified by a form of  the verb “to be.” 

The problem here is that present continuous adds extra words to the action. It doesn’t disappear from the reader’s eye the way simple past does, and it doesn’t have the Immediate punch of simple present. As a result, the actions (the verbs!) feel muffled by the narration. If you’re writing in present tense, go through and make sure you’re not relying on present continuous. If you are, that might be an indication that switching back to past tense might be a good idea. 

Keep in mind: Immediacy isn’t a matter of past vs. present tense, it’s a matter of using your chosen tense well. Simple past prose with punchy verbs is going to feel much more Immediate than present tense prose with lots of continuous present.