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‘If it sounds like writing, I rewrite it.’ – Elmore Leonard   Back in my early twenties, before I began working in publishing, I’d never heard the word ‘overwriting’. Place an overwritten manuscript in front of me and I’d likely have thought about all the classic literature I’d read/studied and decided it was really quite beautifully written.
I had a lot to learn. A lot more books to read, and edit. Thousands of hours developing my eye as a book editor. Courses on writing and editing. My own journey as an author. Fast-forward to today, with more than 20 years of experience informing my edits, I so easily recognise overwriting in manuscripts. And I do my best to guide authors away from that overwriting. The first step is to help the author understand what overwriting is. Do we write the king or the King, professor or Professor, detective inspector or Detective Inspector?  When I copy-edit books, Capital Letters jump out at me as if they’re bold and underlined. Straightaway, I ask, Is the capitalisation essential here? Often in the case of ranks and titles, the answer is, No. Spotting unnecessary capitalsTake a look at the following passage:
Captain Henglebing threw down his sword. The Soldier must be mistaken! The Lieutenant had said that the King was dead, and his Queen with him; that one of the Night Watchmen – that idiot Sergeant Bongalong – had caved in their skulls with a battleaxe stolen from Lord Lunderwig. The Captain sank to his knees in horror. That blasted Sergeant. And that stupid Lord for having a battleaxe on his person in the first place in the middle of King Rupert’s birthday ball. Now the King and Queen were dead. Dead! And he would never have his wicked way with the Queen, which was a shame, because he was rather tiring of Princess Gertrude. The Princess was pretty, right enough, but that wart on the end of her nose was rather off-putting… Setting aside for a moment the dubious quality of the tale itself, consider the capitalisation in the passage. We have:
… all crammed into one 130-word paragraph. That’s a lot of words with initial caps. Imagine a whole book styled in this way; it would be a pretty laborious read. |
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‘If there’s a book that you want to read, but it hasn’t been written yet, then you must write it.’ – Toni Morrison Recent postsCategories
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