Heroes and Villains












Editing – early lessons learnt from professional editors

edit manuscript

In this blog I want to discuss editing, why it is so important, and when to do it. I also want to draw upon some of my early experiences with professional editors and communication in the business world.

A simple definition of editing from Google is as follows:

Editing is a stage of the writing process in which a writer or editor strives to improve a draft ( and sometimes prepare it for publication) by correcting errors and by making words and sentences clearer, more precise, and more effective.

I think all writers will agree that the quality of a publication depends in part on the effectiveness of the editing process. There is nothing more infuriating than finding errors in a published work, or having a review that disparages your work because of errors. Patricia Fuller explains the importance of editing in an interesting way as follows:

Writing without revising is the literary equivalent of waltzing out of the house in your underwear.

So if we are all agreed about the importance of editing, who should do it? The first stage of the editing process should always be done by the writer before submission to an editor. The second stage of editing should ideally be done by an editor, subject to a final review and edit by the writer.

CJ Webb explains the intensity of the writer’s process as follows:

Edit your manuscript until your fingers bleed and you have memorized every last word. Then when you are certain you are on the verge of insanity… edit one more time.

If a writer cannot use and editor, then he/she should leave the material for a significant period of time (months) before attempting to edit the material, and approach his/her review as if he/she were reviewing someone else’s work. The time gap will help to enforce an element of objectivity over your work. However, if you wish to publish your work I would always recommend the use an editor.

So how should the writer prepare his draft for the editor? Should he wait to complete the first draft before starting to edit, or edit as he/she goes along?

This is one of those areas where writers will have differing views in much the same way as they differ in their attitudes to detailed planning.

There are writers that write a scene, and then edit the same scene the following day before starting a new scene. And at the opposite extreme, there are writers that refuse to edit until the first draft is complete. For example, Natalie Goldberg in Writing Down the Bones says:

Don’t cross out. (That is editing as you write. Even if you write something you didn’t mean to write, leave it.) Don’t worry about spelling, punctuation, grammar. (Don’t even care about staying in the margins and lines on the page.) Lose control. Don’t think. Don’t get logical. Go for the jugular. (If something comes up in your writing that is scary or naked, drive right into it. It probably has lots of energy.)

This is what I would describe as ‘free’ writing. I have tried it in ten minute bursts, and it can be wonderful for developing a scene. But while you might find some gems in the material you will also generate a lot of garbage. I couldn’t bear to endure this approach for a 70-90,000 word first draft. I guess like many writers I am a bit of a perfectionist and leaving something wrong would continue to irritate me until I corrected it. But I can see the merits of Goldberg’s idea of getting the story down in writing as quickly as possible, and not being paralysed by perfectionism. If you’re like me, there is a happy medium somewhere between these extremes.

As W. Somerset Maugham once famously said:

There are three rules of writing a novel. Unfortunately no one knows what they are.

The point I am making is that writers write and revise in many different ways. You need to find out what works for you. The one point writers do agree on is that revision is a vital part of the process.

My first experience of external editors was in the 1980s. In those days I was the editor of a technical newsletter for a global firm of accountants. I was also the author of four technical books published by Euromoney, Tolleys and Farringdon Press. I won’t bore you with the details of the publications. But they were subject to detailed technical review by a large number of technical experts, an internal communications expert and an editor from the publishing industry.

I learnt a very important lesson: there is nothing more permanent that the published word. It follows that any technical publication has to be correct. The more technical eyes that review the material, the better. But technical eyes are not enough. It also has to be clear and concise, and this is where an editor or communications consultant can add value, even if they are unfamiliar with the technical nature of the material.

My first experience of a consultants review was a painful experience. He congratulated me on the excellent quality of my draft, but returned it to me covered in red ink. Any writer that has received his/her manuscript from an editor like this will understand the emotions that this can create. I thought I could write — and all this red ink! But as writers we can learn an enormous amount from this process.

One of the first lessons I learnt was the need to write where possible in the active voice. You have probably heard the same advice. For example, if you say “I slashed my sword across his throat…” It sounds much more effective and in character’s point of view.  Whereas “the villains throat was slashed…” sounds like we are in the author’s head, not the main character’s head.

But there is another reason for using the active voice. It is so much clearer about who is doing what to whom. For example, if I write “It is recommended that…” It is unclear who is recommending the action. It is far more clear to say “The Government recommends that…” 

Many of the lessons I learnt when writing business publication about the importance of consistency, clarity and brevity helped in the transformation from business writer to fiction writer. But there is a world of difference between technical writing and creative writing. In the coming blogs I want to deal with how editing fiction is different from other writing, the grammar rules you can break to write creatively, and some of the editing tools that helped me.

The writing process



Stephen King
Ray Bradbury






Stage 1: Brainstorming ideas.


  1. A character
  3. An antagonist
  4. A storyworld 
  5. An ending





Stage 3: Developing a beat sheet for the main story line


The main turning points would be at least:

  3. The Mid Point – Usually a major revelation or reversal
  5. The  Climax


Stage 4: The Main Scene list or outline


  1. Act 1
  2. Act 2A
  3. Act 2B
  4. Act 3


Stage 5: First Basic Story Draft


Stage 6: The Expanded Draft


Stage 7: The Final Daft




Plot patterns

KARecently I was looking through my blue-ray collection to find a movie to watch with my family. King Arthur: Legend of the sword (2017) caught my eye. The movie directed by Guy Richie, grossed $148m on a budget of $175m, which was pretty much a financial disaster for the producers, and the critics complained it ignored Arhurian legend. But I thought it was still enjoyable. I remembered a comment my son made the first time we first watched it. He said, “You know it’s just a grown-up version of the Lion King plot.”
He was right, of course. The movie, King Arthur, doesn’t follow the normal Arthurian legend. And it’s plot line is almost identical to the Lion King. The king’s brother kills the king to steal the thrown, while the prince runs away to live another day. And when the prince is found, he doesn’t want to be king. That’s pretty much the Lion King plot. Yes, there’s the bit of Arthurian trope thrown in about Excalibur, magic and mages. But strip the story down to the core and you’ll find the Lion King.
But then again the story of an uncle killing his brother to take the crown isn’t new. It’s at least as old as Shakespeare’s ‘Hamlet’. Yes, I know Hamlet had a very different ending because it was a tragedy. But the story premise that sets the story in motion is pretty much the same as the Lion King.
Should we be surprised that these story lines repeat? Probably not. Chris Booker, for example, suggests that all stories are based on just seven basic plot structures. Others have suggested a number up to 33 plots. But that is still a relatively small number of plots.
Take the plot pattern of typical romance story. Boy meets girl, boy and girl fall in love, boy loses girl and then finally wins her heart. It’s a simple formula. Yet the publishing industry produces millions of romance novels each year using it. The plot is the same, but to the readers the stories feel very different.
The point is readers don’t fall in love with a plot. They fall in love with characters and the emotional content of the story. Plot can provide tension and excitement and a reason to care for the plight of our characters. But plot alone is not story. Story is about emotion and what the reader or audience feels. It’s a form of chemistry between the characters and what happens to them that draws an emotional response from us.
Does that mean that plot is unimportant? No, of course not. If nothing happened to our characters, why would we feel any concern for them? We want to see them challenged. We want to see them win against the odds, achieve what they desire, or feel sorry for them if they fail or give up their goal. It’s human nature to empathise with other humans. And our characters, while fictional, are all too human.
But what about the darker stories? Do we empathise with Michael Corleone in the Godfather Part II? Was Michael Corleone evil, or was he only doing what he had to do to survive in a mafia world and protect his own family? In an amoral world were his actions at least understandable and relatable?
And what about those even darker characters from the Horror or Dark Fantasy genre. Why are we so fascinated by them? Does it arouse out curiosity or excite some deep primal need within us? Maybe these stories are a kind of escape valve that allows us to release our own darker emotions. As children we all played out stories of our favourite characters from TV, movies and books. Maybe as adults we’re not that different. We still need the same emotional release and we find it by becoming absorbed in a character of a novel or movie.
When choosing a novel to read I often read the reviews on Amazon or Goodreads. One of the harshest comments a writer can be given is when a reader says they couldn’t connect with the main character. They could have said ‘like’ or ’empathise’ but they use the word ‘connect’.
Connection is what a story is all about, and the craft of the writer is all about making it happen.

Story Drivers








  • To escape from somewhere or some condition.




Story pacing

v1.bTsxMjQ5NjIzMTtqOzE3NjQ5OzEyMDA7MjY1Njs0MDk2One of my favourite sci-fi movies of all time is Ridley Scott’s Blade Runner. For those that haven’t seen this 1982 neo-noir movie, it’s set in a 2019 dystopian world where synthetic humans known as replicants are bioengineered by a powerful corporation to work on off world colonies.  Directed by Ridley Scott and loosely based on Philip Dick’s Do Androids Dream of Electric Sheep, it tells the story of a Blade Runner, Rick Deckard  (played by Harrison Ford) who is assigned to hunt down and terminate a group of rogue replicants who have escaped and returned to Earth.  Although not a huge box office success, the movie achieved a cult status among sci-fi followers.

So when Blade Runner 2049 was released in 2017, I was keen to see if it lived up to the original. Unfortunately, like so many other follow-ups, I was disappointed. Though the critics seemed to love it for its cinematics and dystopian mood, the public didn’t share their view. It didn’t do well at the box office, and I can see why. It wasn’t the  fault of the actors, the cinematics, or the music score. It was just painfully slow. At two hours and 32 minutes it was 35 minutes longer than the original movie, but seemed to contain less action and less plot. Ridley Scott, who served as a producer on Villeneuve’s movie, said he would have cut half an hour. I tend to agree. The movie was like watching paint dry.

Some time ago I wrote a blog about the importance of story pacing. Any story-teller whether novelist of screenwriter needs to be aware of story pacing. There are times when the action in a story needs to accelerate with an adrenaline rush  and other times when the main character needs to become reflective and the audience can relax. The example in my previous bIog gave an example of a movie with perhaps too much action. But I never thought I would see and example of too little action and with such a long running time. The audience might not just relax, but fall asleep.

Would cutting the movie back to two hours have saved the movie? Possibly. Although for me the ending lacked a clear resolution or theme in the same way the original did. The original movie was all about what it means to be human. And in some respects the replicants were more human than the humans. Blade Runner 2049 captured the same dark mood as the original but lacked any theme.

There will always be a risk in trying to build a movie on the success of a previous cult movie. Hollywood loves franchises at the moment, which usually have high box office sales. It works for movies like Pirates of the Caribbean where the follow ups use the same core actors and the audience knows what to expect. But  is it really likely to work for a 35-year-old movie? What’s Hollywood going to try next: Casablanca 2?

Killing one’s darlings

6_00 pmIf you’ve just finished your first draft of your novel, congratulations. Pour yourself a drink of your favourite tipple and celebrate. You’re half-way to completing your project. Yes — I did say half way. The editing process is just as important as the creation of the first draft. If your first draft reads like c**p. Don’t worry, that’s what editing is for. The final version will vastly out-shine the first draft. I promise.

But editing isn’t for the faint-hearted. It’s part of the writing process. Even if you have someone to help, you’ll never be a good writer unless you fully embrace the process. There are three stages of editing: development editing (getting the story right), line editing (getting the English right), and proof reading (getting the nitty-gritty detail right down to that last comma). All these stages are important as part of a process that will result in a polished story.

I’ve just been through this process with my latest novel. And it was more painful than expected. I had to cut 12 scenes, nearly 12,000 words and reassemble the manuscript. And most of the scenes I cut I had edited a dozen times or more.

William Faulkner once said:

“In writing, you must kill all your darlings.”

He was right. You have to be ruthless when you edit. As writers we fall in love with our words, expressions, sentences, paragraphs and scenes. But it is not our view that matters: we must consider the reader. And if he/she wouldn’t understand an expression we want to use we shouldn’t use it. We also create expectations in the reader’s mind about the story we are telling, and we need to deliver against those expectations.

In my case, I had gone through the three stages of editing without realising that there was a major problem with my story, which I should have found at the development stage. A subplot had grown out of control so that it read as a separate story within the story. I told myself it was all about developing the two main characters’ relationship. But I didn’t need twelve scenes to do it. The answer was to cut them.

Of the three stages of editing the most difficult is the development edit. You have to get the story right. One of the best aids to help you get this right is a simple columnar scene list, where you can use different columns to analyse the different elements of the scene to provide an overview of the story design. Which elements you choose to track  is up to you. For example you might choose the following columns for each scene: point of view character,  plot action (what happens), revelations, character development points, relationship development points, tension source, level of tension, sub plot (if any), set-up/payoffs, and word count. The scene list doesn’t have to be complex; it just needs to give you an understanding of what’s happening and when it happens.

I also learned early on in my business career that any form of writing can benefit from being reviewed. I used to write technical material and find the least technical reader I could find to review it. If they found something they didn’t understand, it was obviously unclear. The same is true of writing fiction. But good beta readers are hard to find.

Line editing is difficult process, but there are spellcheckers and software programs like ProWriting Aid and Autocrit to help you find common  problems like repetition and over use of certain words. They won’t do everything you need to do, and they may flag ‘false positives’ where the text is correct. But if you’re serious about becoming a writer you need to study your discipline and brush up on your gramar.

The final stage is proofreading. However much proof reading you do yourself you will never find all those irritating errors. It is one of the few processes that I would recommend you out source. A professional proof reader is worth their weight in gold.

Connecting your story’s hero/heroine







  • She initiates the self destruct sequence on the ship







Story Design — Characterisation

Some very successful writers claim to produce stories without any apparent planning or preparation. Story design must be built into their DNA. Others, which I suggest is the vast majority of writers like me, struggle to find the stories within them through a variety of different processes. Some write by the seat of their pants (pantsers) and discover the story as they go along. Others use varying degrees of planning and plotting to map out their stories before commencing to write.

In a previous blog, I suggested that any  writer, whether you’re a plotter or a pantser, can benefit from understanding the dynamics of their story before they write it. To do this requires you to analyse and understand the five core elements of your story. These are:


Once a writer has identified the five elements, there is still the question of whether the story proposal is a good one or not. If you have a burning desire to write it, I suggest you do. If like me, you have a hundred and one ideas floating in you head and you don’t know which is the best one for you, then you need to perform some kind of appraisal.

In my previous blog, I set out twenty questions to help evaluate a story proposal. The first ten questions were included in that blog. This blog deals with the remaining ten, which are all about the protagonist’s characterisation.


By characterisation I mean those elements of the protagonist’s character that impact on the story design. A protagonist’s character must fit the story, or the story must fit the character.   They are two parts of a jig-saw puzzle that have to fit together.

The first five questions are all about the protagonist’s key characteristics:

  • What are his/her physical attributes Notice that it is only those physical characteristics that affect the story we are concerned about. The writer may well want to record all the physical attributes of each character in a separate file or database in order to ensure consistency in describing characters throughout the narrative, such as hair colour, eye colour, looks, clothes, etc. However, such detailed features don’t normally affect the story. Major features are aspects such as  Age/Sex/Strength.  Imagine what the Hunger Games would look like if Katnis Everdeen was a male, or Harry Potter was an adult female. The story would change and feel very different.
  • What are his/her psychological traits? Are they stoical, easy-going, comical, obstinate, hot-headed, arrogant, over-bearing etc? These will affect how they will react to story events.
  • What skills/strengths and occupation does he/she have? What are they really good at? Are they a James Bond super agent character, or a fish out of water character? Are they clever like Sherlock Holmes, or highly skilled like Katnis Everdeen with her bow and arrows?
  • What is his/her flaw, weakness, or need? All characters have a need and this is usually story related. The character must often learn something about himself or overcome his weakness in order to succeed in the story. However, some flaws are simply quirks that make the character more comical or interesting. For example: Indiana Jones fear of snakes. Both types of flaws help to make the character who they are.
  • What does he/she long for before the story commences? This is unrelated to the plot but may have a significant effect on the story. For example, in Die Hard, John McClane, a NYPD cop, wants to reconcile with his estranged wife, Holly, who’s living and working in Los Angeles. Some writer’s refer to this as the personal goal. The theme of the story is often found in the protagonist’s longing.

Empathy factors

  • What makes the reader want to empathise with the protagonist? Reader’s are more likely to connect with a character if they can empathise with them. Readers generally empathise with protagonists that are highly resourceful in the pursuit of their objectives, even if their characters are not particularly likeable. Other factors that help to build empathy are being funny, clever, an underdog in jeopardy, selfless, and resolute.

Back Story and character Arc

  •  How does the protagonist’s back story affect the story? All characters have a past and a reason for behaving in the way they do. From a writer’s perspective, only that element of back story that is relevant to the story should be brought into the story. It should be introduced sparingly and not at the start of the story.
  •  How does the protagonist change as a result of the story? Obviously for some stories the protagonist goes through an enormous transformation as a result of the events in the story: e.g. Scrooge. Other transformations can be more subtle.

Plot Objective or goal

  • What does the protagonist want and how does it change during the story? This is the desire created by the story catalyst. A problem or opportunity comes into the protagonist’s world and as a result of the new situation, the protagonist must act. This is the plot driver that moves the story forward.  Sometimes the plot objective grows into something bigger.  For example, in ‘Star Wars: A New Hope’, Luke’s initial objective is to take R2D2 and the Death Star plans to Alderaan. Then on the Death Star he changes his plans to rescue Princess Leia. And finally his objective is to destroy the Death Star. Many writer’s refer to this as the protagonist’s ‘goal’ or ‘outer goal’. I don’t particularly like the term ‘goal’ as for me it doesn’t reflect the obsessive nature of the desire behind the goal. Perhaps that’s because goals to me are like New Year’s resolutions — easily abandoned. ‘Want’ is a simpler word and easier to use.


  • How does the protagonist’s relationship with the other key characters impact on the story? The main key characters will have their own plot objectives which may well conflict with those of the protagonist. How the protagonist relates to these key characters will help reveal the protagonist’s true character. The main key characters include:
    • Love interest
    • Main antagonist
    • Mentor
    • Side Kick

In my view, these are the ten most important questions about characterisation when considering story design. Some of them are difficult to answer without thinking more about what the story is about. But that’s their purpose.  Are they the only questions you need ask? Perhaps not. I’ve seen some lists and questionnaires by other writers with over one hundred questions, including the character’s education, family, history etc. These are useful in putting flesh onto the story skeleton and getting to know your character better, but for the purpose of story design I think it’s easier to limit the questions to those relating solely to the ‘big picture’ of the story.

Tell me what you think? Are the twenty questions (including the ten questions in the  previous blog) sufficient to decide whether a story idea is worth pursuing further?

Story Design – Twenty Key Questions

As a new writer one of the most difficult decisions to make is about what to write about. There is plenty of advice from experienced writers out there who say just sit in the chair and write.  And that if you don’t write, you can’t become a writer. But that doesn’t help the newbie author sitting in the chair and staring at a blank screen with a thousand-and-one ideas buzzing through his/her head and wondering which path to take. For me developing and writing a novel takes at least twelve months. That’s a considerable commitment and one which you don’t want to abandon half-way through, because of a failure to plan adequately.

Clearly if you have a story you want to tell that’s just bursting to be told, then write it.  And don’t stop until you finish it. But if you’re like me and have different ideas competing with each other in your head, you need to choose the best. And you’ll only achieve this if you do some work on developing the story design. Notice I’m talking about story design and not outlining. Story design is about the dynamics of the story, not about the structure.

In the previous blog, I introduced the idea of the five core story elements a writer needs to identify before he/she has a story proposition.


To help evaluate a story design I’ve tried to put together a simple blueprint. Part of this blueprint is twenty questions about the story design. Ten of those questions are about the characterisation of the protagonist, which I’ll deal with in the next blog. The other ten questions are about story design and are as follows:

  1. What is the idea at the heart of you story that makes it new and interesting? This is usually expressed as a ‘what if…’ question. It’s probably the most difficult question to answer. The previous blog sets out some of the ways of creating them.
  2. How does the setting affect the story? 
  3. What does the protagonist want that drives the central plot? This is set in  motion by the protagonist’s response to the Catalyst (see 8 below)  in the first Act .
  4. What stands in the protagonist’s way from getting what he/she wants? (Eg. a difficult quest, a difficult mystery/conundrum to solve, natural forces, or other antagonist forces.)
  5. What are the consequences if the protagonist fails to get what he/she wants? Are these stakes big enough?
  6. What is the central dramatic question at the heart of the story that drives the reader’s hopes and fears for the story outcome? Example: Will Katniss Everdeen survive the Hunger Games? Will Luke Skywalker rescue the princess and destroy the Death Star?
  7. How does the story end?
  8. What is the catalyst that sets up the central plot in motion? This is the Big Problem or Opportunity that disturbs the protagonist’s world in the first act. Example: Katniss Everdeen’s sister’s name  is drawn in the Hunger Games lottery.
  9. What is the log line for your story.  Example: (‘Star Wars:A New Hope’) is a (science fiction fantasy) story about (a young farm boy) who teams up with (a Jedi Knight and a mercenary pilot) to (rescue a princess and lead a rag-tag rebellion) in order to stop (the evil forces of the Galactic Empire) from (destroying their world).
  10. What is the underlying theme / moral premise of your story? Example: ‘Even death cannot conquer the power of love’ (Romeo and Juliet).

Once you’ve answered the ten questions there’s probably another question you could ask yourself. Would you want to read this story? If it doesn’t excite you, what chance have other readers of finding it exciting.

As mentioned above, the characterisation of the protagonist is part of the story design. The character has to fit the story, or the story has to fit the character.  In the next blog I’ll deal with the ten elements of the protagonist’s characterisation.

In the meantime, I would welcome any comments on the five core elements or the key questions on story design. No doubt there are many more questions that could be asked about a story that would flesh more detail. I’ve seen some story checklists with a hundred-and-one different questions to answer about a story.  Such checklist may well be useful for assessing the final draft, but are too detailed for the initial stages of story design.  In comparison, the key questions are concerned with whether you have a core story that will work before you outline it, or write it.