Editing? paper or electronic?

[KevinEvans]

Until the day we can produce perfect copy on our first pass,
we need to edit. My wife likes to print the draft copy and hit it with the "Red" pen, I do the same with a word processing program with the text color set to red.

This is not always set in stone, often I use a paper copy too.
So what do you do and why?

Kevin

[Craz]

I electronically send it off to other people (friends and family) for them to do it. Remember, family are like employees; exploit them.

But, seriously, I prefer electronic, just so I can attack it directly.

[Suilan]

Both. After finishing a scene (and while writing it), I reread it on screen several times, revising and polishing. When I finish a chapter I print it out. There are some things you (that is I) notice only when I have a hard-copy, especially something like scene structure or examining if the different arguments/topics in a dialogue proceed logically or if I need to switch them around  -- anything that goes beyond one page.

The polished chapter I then run through the spell-checker. Amazing how many "commited," "pursuade" and "imgaination" one can miss.

My sister read the first draft (back in 1996) and made a lot of useful comments. I read the first draft out aloud to my parents (who listened with friendly expressions on their faces but had no comments to make other than (my father): "I am surprised. It is better than I would have thought.")

Over the years, some of my friends read differents drafts (only one person read two different drafts, first in German, then in English -- while his native language was Dutch.)

Comments from these readers can help, but they have always been more of the kind what they like and dislike about the story, the characters, the setting. Polishing and copy-editing is my job; I would not trust a friend or family member with it (even if any of them were willing, which they most definitely are not.) My husband never read a word I wrote though he is more supportive of my writing than anyone else. He promised to read the novel when it is published. 


P.S. Oh, and I've workshopped 5/6 of the first part of the trilogy at the OWW worshop. The reviews led to A LOT of revision and even some replotting. My opening chapters contain a lot more action and suspense now. With later chapters, the reviews became less and less helpful, because the reviewers had not read the previous chapters, and  the synopsis I posted (if it got read at all) could not make up for it. Still, if my novel ever gets published, I will definitely name my OWW-reviewers in the acknowledgements. I would never have revised the beginning the way I did without their persistent complaints of "Boring! Too much dialogue! I want more action!" "What's happening here? I don't get it! Why is that relevant?" "Who is this man again? Should I know him?" "After 100 pages, I still don't know what your main character wants!"

[the neurovore of Zur-En-Aargh]

I never make hard copies except when submitting something requires it.  They take way too much space and are just too awkward compared to the all-controlling puissance of emacs.

[RMatthewWare]

I don't do a hard copy edit because printing 200 pages of manuscript on my dinky printer is expensive.  The first way I edited was to have two windows up on my computer, one with the first draft, and another blank one to type on.  Now I've figured out MS Word's Track Changes and Review features (version 2007), and I love it.  Whatever I delete gets crossed out in red so I can mark that I'm cutting it, but retain the material if I want it.  Whatever I add get added in red, so I know what I've added.  And I can put comment balloons on the side if I feel like I need to rewrite a section later.  It's a better system than what I had and I've gotten through this revision faster and felt more confident in what I've written.

[Richelle Mead]

I do both.  It usually takes me a while before I'm satisfied with the electronic copy, after all the writing and rewriting.  When I'm satisfied with it, I'll do a clean read of it on the computer, then I print it out and find I notice a lot more things in hard copy.  I mark it up, then it's back to the computer for editing!

[Syntopicon]

I like both.  There is something satisfying about drawing all over my work.

[Murphy's Stunt Double]

I don't do a hard copy edit because printing 200 pages of manuscript on my dinky printer is expensive.  The first way I edited was to have two windows up on my computer, one with the first draft, and another blank one to type on.  Now I've figured out MS Word's Track Changes and Review features (version 2007), and I love it.  Whatever I delete gets crossed out in red so I can mark that I'm cutting it, but retain the material if I want it.  Whatever I add get added in red, so I know what I've added.  And I can put comment balloons on the side if I feel like I need to rewrite a section later.  It's a better system than what I had and I've gotten through this revision faster and felt more confident in what I've written.

OOOO... you are my editing God.... I liiiiiiike!... where do I learn the ways of the Word Track??

Seriously -  I usually print out short runs of 2 - 20 pages in hard copy... there's just something about my eyes that can see a typo on paper, that disregards the same on screen..

But something someone else said too, made good sense... I have a Toshiba Portege, and I do have the capacity to red pen on screen... why haven't I thought of doing that in the past??

[Dom]

I prefer to do hard copy with a pen to make corrections, or mark things, but without a printer, that's difficult.

So I typically read on screen, and edit there.  I don't make use of the Word functions for editing; small line-edits typically are pretty bad if I cut them, so I don't want to save them.  When I cut something that's a paragraph or more, then I cut the paragraph or whatever, open a new document, and save it there.  That way I can go back and mine, if need be.