28 June 2011

revision: a watch list

I got some good advice about revision recently: create a watch list. What is a watch list in this context, you ask? Well, I'll tell you. :) A watch list is where an author examines his/her work and makes a note of their own common mistakes or repeats, writes them down, and then corrects them during the revision process. For example, my characters seem to smile or grin several times a page. Logically I know it's a bad idea to repeat actions on the same page, but when I go back and look: there they are. During revision, then, I need to get rid of most of those. As another example, I have a critique partner who always uses waive instead of wave. (Of course, spell-check doesn't catch this!)

How about you? Do you have anything you need to watch out for?

Do you have any revision tips?

2 comments:

Martin Willoughby said...

I'd never even heard of it, but it sounds like a great idea.

Unknown said...

and, and then... but You'll be surprised, honestly you will, if you perform this exercise on your WIP. Run each word in turn through the 'find' function and see how your ms is peppered with them.

http://www.annemini.com/?p=15283