Self-editing for authors

[TheLobster]

My pet-peeve is off of. As in "he jumped off of the bed" the 'of' is unnecessary. It's just "he jumped off the bed". You never need the of.

Isn't that dialectical? Americans usually include the "of", Brits and the rest of their colonies don't.

 

[AgentDoiron]

Isn't that dialectical? Americans usually include the "of", Brits and the rest of their colonies don't.

Is the use of irregardless dialectical or an error? Similarly, is the use of literally when you mean figuratively an error?
Personally, I see all three as errors, but it isn't like I'm marking essays. It bugs me because it pulls me out of a story, leaving me focused on word choices instead of the scene the author is trying to convey.

 

[HordHolm]

"Jump off of" can be regarded as correct, actually: "Jump off" is the phrasal verb, followed by the preposition "of" indicating the location of the action. Of course, it could be argued that the phrasal verb already contains a preposition. But then, we could then point to other phrasal verbs which are then followed by a preposition, viz. "Look something up in a dictionary", or "Look up to someone", etc, where the second preposition (the one which is not a constituent of the phrasal verb) indicates the location of the action. My wife has also just pointed out that to say someone "jumps out of bed" is perfectly usual British English, and only uses a different phrasal verb.

It is, in fact, another example of the Americans using a more correct form of English (or at the least, an older form). We can see this with forms such as 'got - gotten', which is regarded as a mistake in modern British English, despite the fact that British English happily uses 'forgotten' as the past participle.

OTOH, I understand why the 'of' got dropped - there is the issue of the smoothness of pronunciation. Nevertheless, from a grammatical standpoint the US English version is correct.

 

[LargoKitt]

Something bought to mind by the omission @StillStunned made in his post upthread is the over-reliance on spelling and grammar checkers in Word. Most people write in Word, and TBH there are many things I dislike about it (my main 'steam-out-of-the-ears' issue is its habit of resetting to US English no matter how many times I tell it I want British English as default). Anyway... Word will highlight spelling and grammar errors, but will often not notice an omission/incorrect spelling, because what it is reading is grammatically correct/correct spelling, even if it is completely the opposite of what is intended. It is easy to skim a document looking for those red and blue wavy lines, but if you restrict your editing to that, be prepared to miss some massive errors.

To catch spelling errors reliably, read your text backward. You can skim pretty fast. Of course, most built in spell-checkers put a line under the misspelled word.

 

[StillStunned]

(my main 'steam-out-of-the-ears' issue is its habit of resetting to US English no matter how many times I tell it I want British English as default).

Try switching off the "Detect language automatically" option.

 

[HordHolm]

Try switching off the "Detect language automatically" option.

Tried that - it seems determined to forget I've done it.

 

[StillStunned]

Tried that - it seems determined to forget I've done it.

Frustrating. Do you have "Current document" selected, and then clicked "Set As Default"?

 

[HordHolm]

Frustrating. Do you have "Current document" selected, and then clicked "Set As Default"?

Yes. I usually remember to reset it every time I open a document, but on the odd occasion I forget (usually when I'm working on a paper I'm correcting for somebody) I get some real facepalm moments.

 

[LargoKitt]

Tried that - it seems determined to forget I've done it.

May help: Make sure your 'Siri' or other built-in 'helper' is set to British English.

 

[syn4321]

I think my main personal tip/approach is to pass through a story editing it at least a few more times top to bottom AFTER thinking it is done. You will probably continue to find ways to improve it. LOTS of editing passes. Constantly think about what you might throw out and not just what to add. Each pass should be at least a day apart. I probably edit every story at least a dozen times beginning to end before publishing.

 

[Jalibar62]

Many of us have sung the praises of text to speech (TTS) / Read Aloud (onMicrosoft Word) / Speak Page (on Apple).

I like to have a notebook handy when doing a TTS trench run, noting edits as I listen, all the way through the end.

Concur. Read Aloud is the single biggest aid to my self-editing.

 

[ArdentHemingway]

Re-read it after it has sat for a few months or years. I usually take a long time to finish something if I ever finish at all.

And just yesterday I re-read something I published two years ago and realized I had a confusing sentence. It's a bit of dialogue I had to think a while before I remembered which character said it.

 

[ElsieDDD]

In general, I'd divide your editing passes into at least two groups.

First ones are just "reading through it," as if you were your own beta reader. This is where you check for inconsistencies, see how the text flows from paragraph to paragraph (i.e., check the stitches between your writing outbursts), whether the characters behave the way you want them to, and so on. You simply read the story as is; fixing trivial mistakes at this point isn't forbidden, of course, but it is not the main objective.

Then, once you are satisfied with the high level structure, make a few purely editing passes. If you use TTS, you might need just one. This is where you fix typos and punctuation, and potential reflow some particularly awkward phrasing that you glossed over previously.

I typically do one final skim through the Preview feature in Lit, too, mostly to catch formatting issues and to double-check the places I fixed more extensively during the previous editing pass.

Newer writer here, can you please educate me about the preview feature on Lit? I’m learning this site is a lot bigger than I initially anticipated. I’m looking forward to learning a lot!

 

[Djmac1031]

Newer writer here, can you please educate me about the preview feature on Lit? I’m learning this site is a lot bigger than I initially anticipated. I’m looking forward to learning a lot!

Before you submit your story, the page will offer you a Preview And Submit button.

By clicking, it allows you to see what your story will look like once officially published. This gives you the chance to double check any formatting issues or HTML problems before hitting the final Submit button.

 

[TheWritingGroup]

By clicking, it gives you a rough idea what it will look like when published. It varies somewhat, and you don't get page breaks at all. It's useful, but not perfect.

 

[dirk2024]

Newer writer here, can you please educate me about the preview feature on Lit? I’m learning this site is a lot bigger than I initially anticipated. I’m looking forward to learning a lot!

And along with what the posters below said, if you find out during your preview that your story needs more edits, you can simply click on "Save Draft" and make your edits. I sometimes go through this process many times, saving edits as I go along.

 

[old_prof]

Newer writer here, can you please educate me about the preview feature on Lit? I’m learning this site is a lot bigger than I initially anticipated. I’m looking forward to learning a lot!

I going to do some self promotion here for my how to. How To Be An Author at Literotica. I hope you find it helpful

 

[bi_cathy]

I think my main personal tip/approach is to pass through a story editing it at least a few more times top to bottom AFTER thinking it is done. You will probably continue to find ways to improve it. LOTS of editing passes. Constantly think about what you might throw out and not just what to add. Each pass should be at least a day apart. I probably edit every story at least a dozen times beginning to end before publishing.

YES. To all of this. At least in the way I work. I usually write in bursts of inspiration, often without too much of a plan other than the consuming need to get a feeling or a moment out of my head and into words. And then I read and re-read and re-read many times. Many re-reads/self-editing bouts happen throughout the writing process, others include full re-reads beginning-to-end. I find that they help me tie scenes or moments together, improve flow, move bits from one section to another, but most importantly, I see links I hadn't thought of before or opportunities I hadn't imagined.

Sometimes, it's the chance to preface a scene or moment before it happens, laying down the groundwork for it; other times it's a way to give the character more depth across the story. Sometimes a quirk or scene or trait I introduced later while writing deserves to be woven in again from the start. Other times, it's something I mentioned early on that gets forgotten across multiple months of writing.

My stories are richer and feel more complete to me because of this obsessive re-reading and editing (and obviously because of actually getting feedback from beta-readers / editors).

 

[Duleigh]

So, given how difficult it is to find a volunteer editor, how about we collect all our tips for becoming better editors of our own work?

Ignore the list of volunteer editors. I have no idea why it exists, I have personally reached out to nearly 100 volunteer editors and few of them even answered my request. The ones that answered said no, and one said no, but offered to sell me pictures of her tits.

If you're lucky and you have a reader that routinely reaches out to you, ask them if they would like to help. I have been blessed by a beta/editor that is amazing!

Other than that - my TOP tip is to use Read Aloud in MS Word. Have it read a few paragraphs to you, and when you're done, have it read your document cover to cover. It's the best help I've found (Other than ProWritingAid)