“Be aware of your surroundings.”
Nyssa is always aware of what is going on around her, even when she is sleeping. Akitas are excellent guard dogs and she is no exception. She is also maddeningly NOSY—I call her Nosy Nyssa when we have to pause in our walk for her to watch the neighbor wheel his trash barrel to the end of his drive, or watch someone else back out of their garage. She also loves to follow and bark at my nephew when he walks down to the barn, EVERY time.
Though her being nosy means she often gets sidetracked by details, it also indicates that she takes in all that is in her vicinity and she sees the big picture around her.
Nyssa’s attention can be likened to the mindset I slip into when I’m working on a developmental edit.
It can be easy to get involved with the small details in a manuscript, but my awareness has to be about the larger elements of the story—character, pace, story arc, continuity, to name a few. Punctuation doesn’t really matter if the protagonist is a flat Mary-Sue that readers can’t care about.
The focus becomes which of these larger parts can benefit from some improvement and how that affects the other pieces of the narrative. If I suggest changes to one element, what other parts will the author need to work on to make those changes work, and what does that do to the overall story?
A developmental edit could be compared to a ball of yarn, but I think pieces of a larger picture or the layers of an onion are more accurate portrayals. The smaller parts make up the whole, and the whole is made of smaller parts. Right?
Like Nyssa, I may see the details, but ultimately I concentrate on the environment they are in to ensure it is the best it can be. Then the details usually fall into place for the author on their own.
Just like the neighbor who walks back up his driveway is of no consequence to Nyssa anymore. She understood the big picture, and the detail took care of itself.
Have a great week! Woof woof rooooooo! 🐕🦺
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The Sun, a Book, and a Dog 