When I’m writing a novel, or anything else, I already know the subject, the characters, what they think, how they feel and what motivates them. I know the plot, what happened already and what will happen next. Well, sometimes what happens next turns out to be a surprise even for me but that’s another post. The point is that I have all that stuff in my brain but what happens when I go to write it down? I leave stuff out. Sometimes it’s trivial things that the reader can get by without knowing and never notice. But other times I leave out REALLY important things! Stuff that unless readers know it they will be scratching their heads going “what the heck?” The worst part of it is that I don’t realize I’m leaving things out, heck I know those details I just forget to tell the reader. Fortunately along comes the editor (or beta reader) and hits that spot and realizes something is missing. Which leads them to ask, “what the heck?” When that happens, I usually know right away what I left out and will give some defensive mumbo jumbo of why I didn’t tell them everything. They don’t buy it, of course. Thankfully, I use an editor I trust and who has come to expect my half-baked explanations and she just tells me to fix it. Discussion over and I go work on it. So far it’s worked well. I don’t know how anyone can write books without a good editor.
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