Rewrites & Revisions are Tough…
Y’all, I’m tired. Working on rewrites and revisions in preparation to publish in October is tough on top of running a business. All I can think about is taking a fat cat nap right now, but I have a stack of pages waiting to be read over and a new chapter waiting to be written.
Not only have several potential clients popped up at Earley Editing, LLC this week, but I launched the Earley Editing Bookish Shop and then had a family emergency. Alas, I still have 10 chapters to book map and it cannot be avoided if I’m going to make the deadline to get it to my editor.
Since I’m deep in revisions, I want to take a moment to talk about a tactic used by many professional developmental editors.
Book mapping.
I book map every project a client sends me for developmental editing. It’s an essential part of the process. But surprisingly, I’ve had a lot of questions about what book mapping is on my socials since posting about my journey online.
Book mapping is a method of writing out the plot, subplots, action and/or themes of a story. This is a method used by developmental editors to keep track of everything that occurs, when, how, and what the effect or consequences are.
This process is pretty daunting and best done with a digital spreadsheet. Each row should display a section of the story. For example, a chapter or scene. You can even include word count to keep track of when things unfold. Each column should outline story aspects that need to be tracked. For example, one column could be dedicated to a specific character’s development (typically the main character), while another can be dedicated to a theme, a subplot, etc. etc. etc. You can basically dedicate a column to anything you want to track! Once this map is filled with your story aspects, you should be able to connect everything in some way. There should be strings connecting certain chapters to certain aspects, and then you should be able to see an arc for each character and subplot, and then an arc for the overall story.
With Heart of Skulls going to a line editor in a couple of months, I’m using the methods I use as an editor to developmental edit my book 🖤
