Adjusting the order of subsections

In part of Chapter 7, the draft had twelve subsections designed to help the reader get a better handle on mortification. Whenever I come upon a list of any significant length like this, red flags go up, because in my experience such sections can nearly always be improved by reordering and/or the introduction of subcategories.

I began by writing out the headings on a pad, not even reading (for this pass) any of the associated text. First I labeled each heading as being more in the nature of attitude/knowledge, or more in the nature of practice/application. Then within those categories I tried to put the items into some sort of logical and helpful progression. The result is shown below, original order on the left and new on the right.

I will not be surprised if line editing results in some further changes; Brian has wondered if this might be an area where consolidation or elimination of some categories could help shorten the chapter.

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Wordsmithing, Part 2: Introduction to Chapter 7

Here's another effort at succinctly representing edits without providing a confusing amount of detail. Toward that end, I'm also leaving out some minor edits to a few paragraphs.

Key:

Blue text is Brian's draft

Orange text represents my current edit (which may change even before it goes back to Brian for his review)

Grey highlight means text was deleted

Yellow highlight means text was moved aside and may appear elsewhere in the chapter.

I thought the idea of sin as a wild animal was worth unpacking a little, offering the reader a longer and more interesting introduction while extending and deepening the teaching content. As with other edit samples I have shared in this blog, some of what appears as "my" text are Brian's ideas moved forward from later in the chapter. Any or all of what appears below may change after Brian sees it.

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Revise? Or advise?

Somehow I am still surprised at how the process of line editing can cause me to go back and revisit the work at a higher level.

When I posted an excerpt from Chapter 6 on Holiness, after having read through it, I thought it was in fairly solid shape. But once again — by now I should know to stop predicting these things — when I settled into the editing process I realized that additional changes were probably in order.

This is not Brian's fault. Writing anything of any substance is a process of continual reworking. I once read  that in a reasonably well-written book the average sentence will have been redone seven times. That sounds about right. If anything, it's conservative. As I recall, Josh Harris once told me he rewrote the opening chapter to I Kissed Dating Goodbye 12 times. Of the 12 or 15 complete books I have edited, only two did not need substantial work, and one of these still needed to have several chapters shuffled around.

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A Very Invigorating and Enjoyable Experience

Yesterday I spent six or seven hours working through the edits and rewrites Kevin recommended for chapters two and three. It was exciting for me to see how Kevin's suggestions helped me reshape content (especially in chapter three, which is more theologically dense than most of the other chapters) in ways that will make it more accessible to the reader.

Kevin had already moved some stuff around to clarify the flow of thought (see the elusive goal of linearity). But this, along with some of his suggested rewrites, helped me see ways to make the chapter even better by (i) simplifying an overly technical section of the chapter that needlessly introduced new theological concepts and (ii) making the final 1/4 of the chapter more concrete in application.

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Excerpt on Holiness from draft of Chapter 6

Here is the first lengthy excerpt from the book. Having moved (for now) beyond the introductory chapters that are so important for setting up the rest of the book, the work is going much more smoothly on the editorial side. This is also causing the progress meter (left sidebar) to rise much faster. Remember that your chances to preorder Brian's book for $5.00 ends when the meter tops 30% (details in right sidebar). As you read the following excerpt you will see that Brian does a fine job of bringing Scripture directly to bear in ways that bring fresh illumination.

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Novelist Flannery O’Connor once said, “To the hard of hearing you shout, and for the almost blind you draw large and startling figures.” She did this in her fiction, often ending her stories with unusual, even shocking, twists that force the moral of the story upon her readers.

Our gracious God knows we are almost blind and hard of hearing. And in Scripture, he shouts and draws large, startling pictures to help us understand his holy nature and the character he wishes to form in us. Let’s take a brief survey of these pictures of holiness in Scripture.

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Visual Aids: TOC, Document Map view, mind maps

There are three main visual tools I use to help me grasp the big picture of a book and track its progress.

First is the Table of Contents, a few working versions of which I have already reproduced in this blog. (Click the TOC tag to see those.) Mostly I use this as an easy way to scan chapter headlines and keep in mind the overall flow of the book. For the first two-thirds of the editing process I usually keep a hard copy of the original draft of the TOC close at hand for reference and note taking.

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An exchange about chapter four

Brian,

This chapter can be extremely helpful to the reader. But the first part — generally speaking, everything before the “living in sync with the gospel” section — seems to suffer from issues of labeling and reader expectations. Prior to diving in to begin a close edit, I'm sharing these thoughts to see if you wanted to comment or perhaps even undertake some rewriting.

Here are some questions and observations that the early part of this chapter raises for me on behalf of the reader.

As your target reader, the typical Christian in a good church, you ought not to assume I am significantly different from the average American. Greatest country in the world, cradle of opportunity, and all that good stuff being true, there are also the downsides. I want to be spoon-fed. On average I am intellectually lazy, materially spoiled (yet feeling entitled to more), chronically overscheduled and/or poor at personal time management, and I am constantly being trained by the culture to expect things to be even more clear and simple, and even more quick and convenient, than they were just six months ago. You can either meet me where I am or miss the opportunity to reach me.

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