Edit Your Shit, Part One: The Copy-Edit

Like I said on Monday (Welcome to Editordome), its best to attack your edits like
its a layer cake:
First layer: the icing. Attack the surface elements. Edit for spelling, grammar,
punctuation.
Second layer: the cake. Time to start attacking the content. The plot, the pacing, the
characters, the dialogue. The cake itself has lots of sub-icing layers, so address each in
turn.
Third layer: the context. Hey, food is about place and time just as much as it is about
recipe. Eating a slice of wedding cake on someones lovely wedding day is going to feel
a lot different than wedding cake eaten on Death Row in a Maximum Security Prison.
And thats what were talking about feel. Its time to do a pass to see how it feels.
How do the themes stack up? The motifs? The mood?
Lets talk about that first layer. The icing. The copy-edit.
I generally do a quick first copy-edit just to clean up the draft, then do my deeper cuts
before returning to a final copy-edit. Reason I like to copy-edit up front is because it
attends to my nit-picky need, and if I do a content edit first, Ill be tripped up at the
starting line by typos and wayward commas. Ill fall down before the race even begins,
like an obsessive-compulsive forced to pick up each grain of spilled rice.
Your mileage may of course vary.
Time to help identify those things youre going to look for in a copy-edit. Time to put
on our roach-stomping shoes and do a roach-stomping dance. Stomp stomp stomp,
squish squish squish.

Spelling
Time to look for typos and misspellings, but also for homonyms you typed toad, but
meant toed. Through/threw, led/lead, and so on and so forth.
Pro-tip? Tell spell check to go fuck itself. Think of the spell-checker as SkyNet last
thing you want to do is make that mad robot active because his first order of business
will be to eradicate all life inside your manuscript. It is very easy for you to mess
something up and accidentally write over the name of your magical unicorn fantasy
town (Unitopia!) with some fucked-up corrected spelling (Uterus!). I use the spellchecker to highlight words that look off, but I dont let the robot do it. I do it. Manually.
Using my human reason. I might right-click on a word, make sure I get the proper
spelling from a list, but some words are meant to be misspelled (proper names, local
color, etc).

General Grammar

You need to understand grammar. You dont need to be consumed by it its not
important that you know the technical name for the mistakes youre making necessarily,
but its damn sure important for you to know when something looks off. (And often the
way to tell if something looks off is if it sounds off remember, read everything aloud.
Or youll make Word Jesus cut out his tongue and slap you with it.)
Dont overdo the commas. Watch your subject-verb agreements, your pronounantecedent agreements, your plural-versus-possessive, and so forth. I could spend a
hundred posts talking about all the grammatical fiddly bits, but I dont have to do that
because God Gave Us Grammar Girl. If youre not occasionally flitting over to her
site just to bone up, then here, let me hold out the flat of my hand now, grab my
wrist, and jerk my arm toward your face so that youre making me slap you.

Awkwardness
Its like this:
Every sentence is a path to the next sentence. Your goal is to move the reader forward
a) without leaving them confused
and
b) still feeling like it was a compelling sentence.
You must walk the line between clarity and complexity.
If the only thing we cared about was clarity every story would read like a Dick and Jane
book. The reader likes rhythm in her sentences, though: she likes the way it sounds, she
likes the flow of language and how it carries information as much as the information it
carries. But if all we concerned ourselves with was that complexity, a Stephen King
novel would read like a 900-page e.e. cummings poem. And hey, I like e.e.s poetry, but
were not writing poetry, are we? Were writing a novel.
Writers tend toward over-complicating a sentence than they do toward simplification,
however. This results in one of my most frequently given notes whenever Im
developing someones work, and that note is in big, red, capital letters AWK. It
means awkward, which in turn means, I dont know what the fuck youre saying.
Youve thrown too many ingredients into the soup and now it tastes like murky gruel.
Youll find sentences like these most often when you read aloud. Ask yourself, What
the hell am I trying to say, here? Every additional word, every additional comma, every
additional idea you pack into a sentence means youre creating a series of speedbumps
and potholes for the reader as they travel through your narrative. Worst thing in the
world is to have a reader get caught on a sentence and stop there like they blew a tire. I
read a bad sentence and I cant stop reading it its like Im tonguing a broken tooth
even though I know it hurts.

Because writers have a tendency toward florid language and complex constructions, I
advise you to err on the side of simplicity. During your edit, youll need to find all the
awkward bits and straighten them out.
Ultimately, Id rather you be clear than complicated. Your prose can be as beautiful as a
butterfly made of unicorn wishes, but if nobody knows what the fuck youre talking
about, then nobody will care.

Word Choice
Watch your word choice. Once more, err on the side of simplicity. Mean what you say
and say what you mean. Words that are complicated or clunky (or just plain mean
something different than you hoped) are like rusty nails poking out of a barn wall. Dont
let the reader get caught on them.
Dont use pretentious smart people words. Dont say puissance when you mean
strength. Dont say perspicacity if you mean intelligence, or insight. Im not
saying to dumb your language down but every sentence neednt be a midterm exam
for the reader, okay? If you have the reader running for a dictionary every five minutes,
youre going to lose most of them.
This, by the way, lies at the heart of why a lot of writing advice will tell you avoid
Thesauruses. I fucking love the Thesaurus, though, just not for the reason you think.
See, I have a brain like a sieve, and sometimes, I cant quite think of the word I mean to
use. I dont turn to the Thesaurus to complicate my language. I turn there to remember
words that my brain has forgotten, because my brain is a total asshole.
You see a fancy word come sauntering through those saloon doors?
You shoot em dead between his eyes, right below his fancy page boy haircut.

Fragments
Sentence fragments often break flow and hamper rhythm. Not saying you cant use
them while theyre technically a no-no, they can be used to good effect when used
sparingly. Best way to know if a fragment works is drum roll, please read it aloud.
Youll hear if it flows or slows.

Junk Language
This is one of my writing crutches, and I see it all the time in the writing of others: junk
language.
A little junky language can stylistically lend itself toward a conversational tone, but
your best bet remains to chop it off at the knees. Ultimately, very, perhaps, maybe,
kinda, sorta, just, really, sometimes, and so forth. Junk language muddies the waters and
slows the flow. Cut those words and find yourself with a better, clearer sentence.

Also, youll end up with a more confident sentence. Writers must be assertive. Wimpy
language is for wimpy writers. If you want your prose to be a limp noodle, hey, thats on
you.
And yes, those truly astute among you will notice that I use junk language here at
terribleminds all the damn time. I know. Dont be that guy. You dont need to tell
me. Be advised, however: These are my blog posts, buddy. If I hand you a novel to edit,
I hope youll chop my work to bits. If I hand you a free blog post, I hope youll refrain
from picking nit lest I be forced to collapse your trachea.

Tense Issues
If you hop from project to project, its easy to jump the track and move your tenses
around. Past to present, present to past. Watch for it. Fix it. What else is there to say?

POV Issues
So too with issues where youre screwing up your point-of-view. A first-person limited
shouldnt suddenly leap into third-person omniscient. If you dont know what these
things mean well, time to learn.

Word Redundancies
Another crutch of mine: you get caught on a word and use it like, seventeen times in a
single paragraph. Youll catch these most easily (surprise surprise) when your read your
work aloud.

Adverbs
I am not necessarily of the camp that says All Adverbs Are Bad And Need To Be
Drowned In A Washtub. Ill just say that 90% of them are crap. And 100% of adverbs
attached to dialogue tags are crap.
I love adverbs! Tommy said enthusiastically!
No.
I love adverbs! Tommy exclaimed, or Tommy enthused, or even better? The
exclamation point and use of the word love are all the information we need to indicate
that Tommy gets a word-boner for adverbs.
Hell, you should probably just ditch the exclamation point.
And since were talking about it, said is nine times out of ten the only dialogue tag
you need (if you even need one). Asked is another good, simple one. Dont stray too
far from these two.

Passive Constructions

Passivity in language is as appealing as wet bread. And not bread sodden with delicious
gravy. Im talking about like when you have a sandwich, but then you also have some
steamed vegetables, and the veggie water (aka veggie urine) runs down the plate and
soaks the bottom of the bread and now its just this swampy sandwich? Egh. Puke.
Baaaaarf.
Note that I didnt say, The bottom of the bread is soaked by the veggie urine that runs
down the plate.
John is not killed by Mary; Mary kills John.
Im not one of those people who thinks that the to be verb kills sentences (is, was,
will be), but I do agree that minimizing its use will lead to more evocative, active
sentences.
He was sitting in the corner is fine.
He sat in the corner is a lot better.
In fact, the to be construction often lends itself more toward telling than showing, and
the latter is always preferable. Scooter was a cowboy, well, okay. But Id much rather
you devote a couple more words toward showing me that hes a cowboy. Lead me to
water, but dont force me to drink.
Also, and this continues to be my crusade, anytime you see the construction there is,
bury a hatchet in its brain before it bites you and spreads its virulent disease. You can,
99% of the time, say it a helluva lot better if you ditch there is and create a more
active sentence.
Trust me. Try it out. Youll see.

Metaphors That Just Dont Make Any Goddamn Sense

I love metaphors. I would make love to metaphors all day long if it were legal in this
state. Its part of why I adore this blog: I can frolic in fields of swaying metaphors all
day long.
But in your novel, youd better keep an eye on them before they get out of hand. Im not
saying dont use them. You can make killer literary hay out of those metaphors. You
look at an author like Joe Lansdale, well, that guys the king of of batshit metaphors.
And they always work, even when they dont.
You dont have that luxury.
If a metaphor doesnt really make as much sense as you thought it did when you wrote
it and a solution isnt close at hand, just chop its head off and kick it in a ditch. A broken
metaphor (That pony was as ugly as a three-dollar swing-set!) does to the reader the
same thing Ive been talking about this whole post: it stops them from reading. They
must pause. They must consider. They will scratch their head and mumble.

And then theyll put your book down.

When In Doubt, Execute

Final comment: when you read over something and youre like, Ehhh, I dunno, maybe
it can stay? No. It cant. If justification doesnt come easy, then edit that fucker into
oblivion.

Edit Your Shit, Part Two: Editing For

Content

See that pocketwatch up there? Thing about a pocketwatch or any watch, really is
that it has lots and lots of fiddly bits. Gears and rivets and flywheels and fan belts and
pulleys and ferrets and flux capacitors.
Think of your novel like that pocketwatch. It contains an infinity of such fiddly bits, and
were you to try to diagnose the problems with your text in one fell swoop, youd end up
like me, right now, staring into the bowels of a pocketwatch with a slack-jawed look. I
wouldnt even know where to begin. You could only ask, How does it all work?
moments before urinating yourself and falling down some stairs.
Today, its time to talk about editing your novel for content. Last time, we talked about
how to copy-edit your shit, but now its time to focus on the meatier, chunkier bits.
(Chunkier Bits was my nickname amongst the Freemasons, by the way. You cant call
me that, though, because youre not a Level 32 Masonic Windwalker.) Copy-editing is
something you can do in a single pass. But were you to ask me, Id suggest that a
content edit requires a lot more time and perspective. Below, Ill talk about the areas of
content youll want to address, and it might be of value to you to address each area in its
own pass. Read and edit for character, then read and edit for plot, then read and edit for
sex scenes and secret codes and McDonalds menus and whatever else it is you shoved
into your manuscript.
You try to do it all at once, youre going to end up staring into the guts of a
pocketwatch.

Hypnotized by all that damn ticking.

Descriptive Language
Writers love to describe shit. Some writers like, say, HP Lovecraft could spend
three pages talking about the insane geometry of a fucking Sports Illustrated football
phone.
Description is good. Description is necessary. But when youre editing for descriptive
content, youll want to keep a handful of things in mind.
First, some things dont need description. You dont need to describe everything. When
I say Sports Illustrated football phone, thats it. I just described it. If you spend a
paragraph describing its texture, its ring, its smell (Cheetos and stale beer and
flopsweat), youve probably gone too far. Description is like a strong spice a little
goes a long way. A pinch here, a dusting there.
Second, the reader likes to do some work. Reading is about imagination: about filling in
blanks. You dont need to spell everything out. Find a few significant descriptors, and
let the audience do the rest.
Third, show, dont tell. This little nugget of advice is actually a lot harder to get your
hands around than it initially seems along with Write What You Know, you can get
a lot of mileage just trying to figure out what the fuck it means. For now, assume this:
Bob was angry, is telling us. Instead, show us hes angry: Bobs hands balled up into
fists, and a trio of veins popped out on his forehead.

Dialogue
My opinion? In terms of flow, dialogue is the most important part of your book. I dont
know if its because of the Internet or because of the way readers have always read, but
have you ever seen the little Internet acronym tl;dr? It stands for Too Long, Didnt
Read.
Here, then, is what readers will do: when they see dialogue on the page, their eyes will
gravitate roaming like drunken hobos toward the dialogue. If the dialogue is
separated by big blocks of text, you can bet that readers wont even look at those blocks.
Theyll skip it (tl;dr) and head straight for the dialogue.
Hence, dialogue requires in terms of keeping people reading major attention.
Some things to keep in mind about dialogue:
First, beware of dialogue that is on the nose. Characters dont say exactly what
theyre thinking or feeling, and further dont say exactly those things that the author
needs to communicate a character who spills out major plot exposition (the dreaded
info-dump) or soliloquizes about what hes feeling is no good. Pull back on that. Dont
let subtext become text.

Second, watch for dialogue that just plain isnt necessary. Ive read advice that exhorts
the writer to go listen to how people speak, and theres absolutely value in that. But
dont mimic real dialogue exactly the way people talk in real life versus the way they
speak in novels is a thousand miles apart. Most conversations between actual humans?
Incredibly boring to all but those participating. How are you? Fine. Hows Bob?
Hes good. He set up our pool for the season. Oh, great. You guys have such great
pool parties. I know, right? OH MY GOD GUN IN MY MOUTH SHUT UP. Plus,
the mechanics of actual IRL dialogue are clumsy and clunky: like, um, fine, malaprop,
like, um, you know, dude, like, um, yeah. Wrap your brain around this: Good dialogue in
a novel is a perfectly imperfect simulation of the real thing. Ive said it before and Ill
say it again: in all parts of your novel youre seeking truth over fact. You want
authenticity, not reality. Two very different things.
Third, watch for dialogue that goes on too long. Dialogue should snap, crackle, pop, and
kick you in the junk drawer with its snappy hop-to kick-ass awesomeness. Dialogue
should earn a lot of tweaking.

Character
I could do a thousand posts on character alone. I could become lost in a labyrinth of
such posts, feeling along the walls, fighting minotaurs, searching for treasure.
For now, Ill say these things:
First, dont be afraid to a) add characters and b) subtract characters in a draft. You will
find that some characters are just a drag on the story and have no place. This character,
Morty Sprinkles, is here just because I like jaunty showtune-singing fishermen, but as it
turns out he does not belong in this dark science-fiction melodrama set on the dark side
of the moon. (Another good metric for determining a characters usefulness is asking,
Do I care about this character? If the answer is no, then behead him and kick the poor
bastard into a drainage ditch.) Alternately you may discover the need for a Ninja
Manicurist, a Space-Time Consultant, a Hooker-With-A-Heart-Of-Chrome so, do
that. Inject them in. Be flexible.
Second, repeat after me: consistency, consistency, consistency. Characters should remain
consistent both in action and in detail. A morally-ambiguous self-centered bureaucrat
should not suddenly spend a chapter feeding orphans yes, such turns of character are
sometimes critical, but they shouldnt be sharp turns, and such contrasts should be
believable and serve a purpose. Further, make sure basic details remain consistent: if
Bobo talks about not knowing how to use a gun on p. 35 but on page 167 is a crack-shot
sharpshooter who can fire a bullet up the urethra of a pelican, well, oops.
Finally, take a piece of notebook paper, a spreadsheet, an iPad notes app, or a swatch of
skin filleted from that neighbor you totally fucking axe-murdered and start identifying
certain elements of your characters: identify their wants, needs and fears. Identify their
character arcs (bare minimum a description of A -> B, where A might be Addicted to
huffing freon and B might be Saves self from freon addiction but at the cost of
losing his freon-addicted pain-slut, Jenny). Note too a few things you think are
important about the character what do you like about them? What do you think
readers will like? Now, once you have all your notes, go back through the draft. Make

sure the story reflects your desires for the character. Look for conflicts (and, duh, fix
em). If you edit on the screen, frequent use of highlighting, text color and comment
bubbles go a long way toward helping you chart the course of your characters.

Plot
Novelists tend to fall into two camps: pantsers and plotters. I am a pantser at heart
because I am a lazy asshole, but I am now a plotter in reality because I am also a raging
control freak. I know the power that a good outline brings to the table (and I also know
that for a novelist they are sometimes necessary Abaddon required an outline for my
upcoming novel Double Dead even before I wrote the thing).
No right or wrong way on this some novelists have a great instinct with the pantsing
where others dont. (Stephen King is a pantser, and it shows: half his books culminate in
ludicrous, deux-ex-type conclusions because he didnt know where the hell he was
going; the man got lost in the woods.) Some novelists cant make hay out of an outline,
and thats okay.
Where am I going with this, exactly?
Okay, fine, you didnt write an outline before you penned the novel. No problem. My
suggestion is, however, to do one now. After the fact. Should be a lot easier, right?
Youve already written the thing, so its just a matter of transcription. While youre
jotting it down, take a little time to separate out the sub-plots and any relevant details.
(If youve not seen JK Rowlings Harry Potter plot spreadsheet, do so now.)
Why are we doing this? Because now that its on paper, you can see if it makes sense. If
it feels satisfying. Do all the mechanical bits work? Does the plot hopefully not rely on
giant plotholes, deux ex machinas, or utter inconsistencies? Youll know. Once you strip
it down like that youll see the bullshit and, if youre a good enough writer, youll be
able to call yourself on your own bullshit.
Seriously: if you dont outline before you write the book, outline it after. Youll thank
me.

Structure
This is married to plot, but I feel like it bears a mention: I once wrote a post called The
House That Structure Built, and if you click it youll see that its all about identifying
the structural components of your story beats, scenes, sequences, acts,
beginning/middle/end, and so forth. Now that youve gone back and done an outline of
your work after the fact, you might find value in highlighting those structural bits the
act turns, the cumulative sequences, and so forth.

To Sum Up
Obviously, this post only scrapes the surface of what you can (and should) do in a
content edit. So, to sum up, let me suggest that you should attend to these five areas
when drafting any part of your story:

Consistency: Easy enough. Does everything remain consistent?

Believability: Will the reader believe what shes reading?
Authenticity: Does the story stay true to itself (if not exactly to reality)?
Expendability: Can this get cut? Is it boring? Not awesome enough? Redundant? Then
kill it.
General Awesomeness: Readers want to be satisfied. Actually, they want more than
satisfaction they want transcendent moments, they want kick-ass protagonists and
diabolical antagonists and powerful twists and tortuous plots and well, they want
general awesomeness. Any time you can punch this up, looking for ways to kick the
story into high gear do so.

Edit Your Shit, Part Three: The

Contextual Edit

If you were to print out your manuscript, it would seem that your story was neatly
bordered by the pages in frame it like an apparition trapped in a box by intrepid
ghostbusters, it feels contained.
Bzzt. Wrongo.
Your manuscript is like a cell phone. It emits invisible voodoo. Wonder why you have
some kind of testicular buboes? Why your infant was born with a lashing leathery tail?
Why the African violet sitting on your desk is suddenly able to catch flies in mid-flight?
Because your cell phone exudes electromagnetic whooziwhatsit. The device is not
contained by the electronics in your hand; it goes well-beyond that.
And so does your manuscript.
I dont mean to suggest that your novel will mysteriously give you butt cancer or
something (though at times the edit might make you feel that way, am I right?); I only
mean that youre wrong if you think your manuscript isnt surrounded by a hazy
invisible cloud if context and possibility.
Some of this, you cant control. When I first bought Tenacious Ds first album, I listened
to that album in the middle of autumn just as the air turned crisp and the leaves lost their
green, and I most frequently listened to it in my car on the way to a job I hated. So,
whenever I listen to that album, that context is there for me I can almost smell the
burning leaves, I can feel the nippy chill, I can sense in my gut that feeling of middlefinger-flavored defiance born of having to travel daily to a job you despise. Tenacious D
did not intend for that to be the context, just as Lloyd Alexander probably never figured
that Id associate all of the Prydain Chronicles with the beach because, hey, thats
where I read each and every one of those books.
Ah-ha, but some elements of context, you do control.

Now, normally Id go on at pretentious length about theme and mood and arcs and story
versus plot and *wank snaaarrrgh spitfroth.* But lets just jettison that nonsense right
now and zero in on three questions you should ask yourself at this point. Ready?

#1: What The Hell Am I Trying To Do?

You gotta have goals.
Maybe you had some goals in mind when you sat down at the desk with the intention of
writing this book. Maybe you did and they changed, or maybe you didnt and you went
ahead and wrote anyway. Whatever too late to worry about where your head was at
before you began, but now? The chickens have come home to roost. And these chickens
are very annoying. They will peck your shit. They will make that irritating brrawww
brrraw brraaaaaw noise as they follow you around hoping youll throw them some
meager seed. They will defecate on your car until you attend to them. (Translation: until
you shoot them.)
It is time to determine your goals for this book.
What are you hoping to accomplish? Okay, yes, you want to tell a good story. Fine. We
already know that. You want more than that. Even if you dont know that you want
more, trust me: you do.
I want to tell a raucous adventure story but with literary trappings.
I want to entertain without being preachy straight-up pulp genre awesome.
I want to write a radical environmentalist screed cloaked in the garb of a mystery
novel.
I want to make the words CYBORG ESKIMO EROTICA a household fixture.
Fine. Yes. Whatever.
But you need to identify your purpose. One or several. So, do so now.
Write that shit down.

#2: What The Crap Am I Trying To Say?

What is your novel about?
No, no, stop right there. I hear what youre about to say. Its about a girl who meets a
boy and theyre both from separate warring ninja clans and, fwappity-fwappityfwappity. No! No. Thats not what I asked you. I didnt ask you to recite the plot to me.
I dont want the pitch.
Imagine were both blitzed out of our gourds on high-grade hallucinogens. Imagine that
Im nose-to-nose with you, wreathed in bad-ass spectral visions of dragons and UFC

fighters and rose petals and shit, and I breathily ask you, No, man, what is your novel
about?
I want you to dig deep. I dont want a recitation of plot. I want an examination of
meaning, of message, of intent. For Gods sakes, man, what are you trying to say?
The Hunger Games might be about Katniss the girl from District 12, but its about
the effects of war on children. Its about envisioning a ruined world. Its about the
corruption of wealth and power held in the hands of a callous minority. Suzanne Colling
is saying something with those books.
Most authors are. Not all of them. But most. And Id encourage you to be one of the
ones who is.
Identify it. Ask yourself what youre really trying to say through this story.
Write that shit down.

#3: How The Fuck Are People Supposed To Feel?

Simple enough: how do you want people to feel when theyre reading your book?
Excited? Comforted? Enraged? Bored? (Hopefully not that one.)
Doesnt have to be a single word. Write down as many as you see fit. Id stop at, say,
five, just to keep your sanity at an even level were trying to make this a manageable
process, not rouse some many-headed hydra from slumber. As the saying goes, dont let
more snakes out of the bag than youre able to kill.
Identify the feelings and moods you want to prevail.
You know the drill: write that shit down.

Now? Chart That Shit

You might be saying, Well, now what? I wrote this stuff down. I took your damnable
test, Wendig. What in the Jiminy Jack Jesus do I do with this information?
You need to chart it out.
Open your manuscript and with it, a notebook. Or a spreadsheet. Or a notes app on your
iPad.
Now, give your Work In Process a good solid read-through with an eye toward those
three questions (and their accordant answers) above. Whenever you find a piece of the
story that is relevant to your answers highlight it and mark down the page and any
comments.
When youre tracking your goals, look for those places where you feel the manuscript
really nails the goal. This spot right here? It totally fulfills my goal of being an exciting
book that challenges expectations surrounding leprechaun pornography.

Ah-ha. But you also want to look for places that defy your goals any time you
discover a paragraph (or a character, or a whole chapter) that seems at cross-purposes,
note it. Maybe thats a piece youll have to lose or, maybe, if you find too many of
these, you might want to readjust your goals and modify your thinking. Maybe the book
is good the way it is, and your intentions were askew.
When youre tracking what the book is about, go chapter by chapter and highlight those
places that reinforce what youre trying to say (which, lets be honest, is really your
theme). Also write down those instances when you seem to be saying something else
or when a different character offers a variant perspective. This is okay; nothing to worry
about. A novel probably shouldnt be a hammer when it comes to message or theme
because then it ends up as one of those books. In fact, charting this stuff is one good
way to discover if a) youre not hitting on it enough or b) if youre hitting on it too
damn hard.
(Usually the ending is where youll want to reinforce what the whole thing is about
either by confirming what youve been saying all along or by subverting it and changing
the message. But the ending is where the reader expects you to, with some authority,
draw both narrative and thematic conclusions.)
In terms of tracking mood, just go chapter by chapter and identify the prevailing mood
of the chapter. Dont anticipate how you want people to feel try to identify how you
feel as you read it. (If the answer is always, I have to pee, then you should probably
pee. And you should probably reevaluate your fluid intake and the excitement level of
your book.) If the truth of the mood doesnt line up with how you really wanted people
to feel, then, uhhh oops. Its either time to go back and fix that, or deal with the book
that you wrote. (I say fix: make it the book you want rather than the book it became. Get
control of your text.)
Believe it or not, you can even graph this stuff if you want. Simply by charting on a line
graph the pages where these elements come into play, you can see if the story has any
gaps maybe the first and third act are heavy on your message, but in the second it
gets a little ehhh, wifty. It wavers and wobbles, or the message just plain goes dark.
Thats telling, isnt it? Doesnt it tell you that the second act is a little weak in that
department and that maybe it operates as a thematic island, disconnected from the larger
meaning?
Further, when you have readers attending to the work, see if theyd be willing to check
on these three questions for you, too. Itll help you see what goals, messages and moods
they got from the work.

How Much Does Any Of This Matter?

It only matters as much as you want it to. This third tier of editing editing for context
is a bit more advanced, and some writers dont believe they should be the arbiters of
such information. Theyre content to let it grow into the work organically without any
overt work on their behalf.
I will say that I understand if you dont want to put this kind of work in before you
write. But even if you ascribe to the organic theory, then it should be safe to assume

that now that the story is written those components should have organically grown the
fuck into your work already thus, now is a good goddamn time to rub your eyes and
take a long hard look at the work you put forth.
Failing to do that, well Id argue that this is a bit limp in terms of confidence and
authority, and personally Id suggest that if youre not doing any blue-sky big
thinking in terms of your novel than youre probably lazy, unassertive, or both. Then
again, Im also a raging control freak with a heart like a blackened walnut, so you
should probably take all the nonsense I spew with not just a grain of salt but an entire
salt lick.