Line Editing Exercising

Michelle Seaton describes the idea. I sometimes play around with it in the winter months, and I know both editors and writers will benefit from this exercise.

Seaton suggests finding some dime-store pulp. That is good fodder indeed, if fiction is your thing. A lot of wacky stuff exists from the 1950s and 60s, for example. The more outrageous, the better. For those who work more with non-fiction, old science and tech volumes from the early 19th century are just as good, as are monographs of people and places from the same period.

The game is to cut words, or change them, adjust sentence structure, and so on until get something you think can actually sell or make a difference in the modern day.

To avoid going full-blown ghostwriter, imagine the author is difficult to work with—overly protective of their writing, or what have you—but the publisher (your employer) has insisted you smooth out the manuscript. Approaching it this way helps keep from straying into complete creativity. You want to make sure the exercise is editing practice; the goal being to make the text ‘better’ while respecting the author’s voice and style.

Give the two versions to a literary-minded friend, without identifying the source material, and see what they have to say. Resulting conversations are generally fun and worthwhile.