The Truth About Editing

Today I wanted to write up a quick bit on the editing and revision process.

In my experience, many visual novels are clearly not edited to an extensive degree. You can tell by plot inconsistencies or copious typos that there just wasn't a lot of time spent on revision. Sprocket and I, however, come from a background of writing traditional novels and short stories. We're very used to spending an extended time on revisions and edits. 

And we've taken this approach with Changeling to ensure the best possible story ends up in the final game.

While beta reading is a massively important part of the process (believe me, beta readers WILL find things you missed or thought you'd fixed!) I'm going to focus a bit on what our revision process looks like.

There are three main types of revision: macro/structural editing, line editing, micro/copy editing. Most of the time you're doing these all at the same time but often you are focusing on one thing specifically.

Macro Editing/Structural Editing

As the name would suggest, this stage of editing looks at the big picture. During these sorts of revisions you are looking for major issues with the story and are making significant changes to plot, characterization, story, etc. 

Macro editing is often really time consuming because it involves a lot of rewriting and restructuring. 

In Changeling, all the routes had massive structural changes to them but some were definitely bigger than others. William, for instance, didn't actually have too many major changes – just a few additional scenes or deleted scenes.

Elliot, on the other hand, was re-written twice. And these rewrites included massive changes. I think, at some point in the future, I'm going to talk about the changes the different routes went through – but after the content is released so we don’t have to worry about spoilers! 

I feel like structural editing is a really important part of the process because it requires you to be very critical of your writing and seriously consider ways to improve the story. For instance, Corvin's initial route felt very flat and rushed. I realized that the romance felt a little shallow because Corvin and Nora were lacking critical interactions to make it feel like they were truly developing feelings for each other.

I ended up adding an entire chapter at the beginning of the story to create a bit more foundation for where their relationship is at the start of the story. And later, added several scenes to allow them to interact with one another in a more personal way. In fact, one of my favorite interactions between the two of them was added during this process. 

By the same token, I removed several scenes as well – scenes that felt out of place or didn't add to the story.

During structural editing, it's really important to gauge the amount of 'fluff' – IE non-essential content – the story has. And you have to get rid of it. Every scene should have a purpose and you should know exactly what the goal of each moment is whether it's a simple transition from one event to the next, or a critical moment for story or character development. This is a really important process for not only fleshing out areas that are flat or rushed, but also paring down areas that are fluffy and non-essential. 

Line Editing

Honestly, this is my favorite stage of revision because, for me, this is usually when I add in the jokes, humor, and fun one-liners. 

Line editing looks at the content itself and the language usage at the paragraph level. You're not looking for typos and grammatical errors necessarily – you're looking more at voice and writing style.

A lot of the line edit process is looking at things like words that are overused (like…"a bit" – I use this phrase WAY too much.) You look for redundancies which can be a big problem in a branching storyline where it's difficult to remember what information has already been given to the player. 

You look for areas where dialogue can be tightened up or improved (such as by adding humor or wit), or areas where the narrative is meandering and confusing. You also look for places where you can trim down extraneous words or phrases. Many writers overuse articles and prepositions like "that" and "of." 

For me, this process is largely about improving flow and tone. 

Though it still involves a critical eye, it's just generally more "fun" for me because it lets me play with language a little more. When you're first writing a story, you tend to focus more on just getting the story out there and events set up in the right order. 

During this stage, you can really bring life to areas that are flat, dull or dragging – so, like the macro editing stage, this is a really critical part of the revision process.

Micro Editing/Copy Editing

This is (at least for me) the most boring and difficult part of the revision process. This really involves combing through the script to find small errors like missing commas and apostrophes, misspellings and the like.

You look for inconsistencies in punctuation like hyphens or inconsistencies in capitalization. 

You do also keep an eye on internal continuity but for the most part, this level of editing is the final stage geared toward catching small errors. In my opinion, this is the most difficult stage for a writer to handle on their own. 

Our brains and eyes get so used to our writing that we tend to not see the small issues. We can read over the same sentence ten times in a row and not catch a missing word or comma. I think that, by far, most of our micro-edits have come from our beta readers who are pretty eagle-eyed when it comes to finding errors. 

In my experience, you don't stop fixing mistakes…ever. There's nearly always something to be fixed at the micro level. Though certainly the time for major changes comes and goes, tightening dialogue or fixing grammar is something that happens up to publication and even beyond. 

It's a process that far too many writers skip on or, at the very least, skimp on. But it is, to Sprocket and I, one of the most critical parts of the creative process.

Anyway, I hope this gave you guys some insight into how editing works, the types of editing Changeling has gone through and why we're seemingly never NOT editing.