Self-editing for authors

[StillStunned]

Isn't the editing stage fun? A new story is laid out before you, and you're the lucky person who gets to read it first! Not only that, you get to make improvements, and the author *has* to listen - because they're you!

Editing is where you go back and polish your sentences and look at the structure and tie it all together. Is it hard work? Personally, I think it's easier than the actual writing, and more enjoyable too. It's where I tweak the sentences to get the rhythm just right, or change a word to capture the mood through sounds.

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? If you want something done properly, as they say, you'd better do it yourself.

Remember that every tip is useful to someone. Nothing is too basic or too complicated. Share whatever editing and proofreading ideas you have that might make the process better or easier for other writers.

 

[StillStunned]

I'll start with paragraph length.

Gone are the days when people would enjoy sinking their teeth into a chunky paragraph that covered an entire page of a paperback novel. We don't have the attention span for it anymore, and besides, let's be honest, quite often we'd skip those bits anyway.

Particularly for online reading, it's important to keep your blocks of text short. With so many people reading on their phones, you don't want them to be scrolling and scrolling and scrolling before they finally see a break.

My personal rule of thumb is 60-90 words per paragraph, and lately it's been veering more to the lower end of the scale.

But it's not just for ease of reading. Short paragraphs keep the action going, if you break them down into logical groupings. One character's thoughts, speech and actions, and break to move to the next character.

Only group actions that belong together. Cause and effect? Try and move the effect to the next paragraph. Pros and cons? Same. Thoughts about multiple other characters? Give them each their own block.

Remember that your readers don't owe you anything, least of all any effort to read your story. Make it as easy and inviting as possible, and they'll be more likely to stick with you until the end.

 

[HordHolm]

I find that two things help me.

Firstly, when I pick up a piece I read back over my most recent additions before continuing to write. It's an odd day that I don't find something to improve before I continue on to the blank page. This often means that when I come to a full edit, a lot of the grunt work (typos, missing punctuation, shifting dialogue around) has already been done and I can focus on larger issues.

Secondly, I make simple notes in italics (so they are easily seen) as I go along. This reminds me about changes I might want to make later while editing but which I don't want to focus on at that moment. When you have the beginnings of 'old man memory' this is very helpful.

 

[Djmac1031]

Great thread idea.

I'll start with a simple one: "... and then..."

Pick one. Never both.

While the rules can get fuzzy sometimes, "and" works best for things that can happen simultaneously...

"He looked at her and smiled."

While "then" would confer the idea of one thing happened, then another:

"He looked at her, then smiled."

Using "Then" would require a comma.

 

[Djmac1031]

Second simple edit tip: "Seemed to"

Man how i hate this. While it can be necessary depending on who's narrating the story, most times I see it used improperly or in a place where it can be eliminated.

Appropriate use:
"My sister seemed to be upset." - 1st person perspective. Hes not 100 sure she is upset, and he can't read her mind.

Inappropriate use:
"Bob entered the hotel room, carrying his luggage. He seemed to struggle with the weight of it."

3rd person narration. Decide. Did he struggle with it? Yes? Then "seemed to" is irrelevant.

Again the rules get fuzzy in some spots. But my suggestion is, any time you can cut it and the sentence still works, cut it.

 

[HordHolm]

Something that is often mentioned, but bears repeating: edit cold. This means leaving the story until any arousal has passed and only then picking it up to edit. It's at that point that I can see if the sex is actually any good, rather than a fever dream stream of consciousness that vomited itself out of my brain the night before. If it still does something for me the next day (or ideally, the next week), then I have something reasonable.

 

[HordHolm]

Second simple edit tip: "Seemed to"

Man how i hate this. While it can be necessary depending on who's narrating the story, most times I see it used improperly or in a place where it can be eliminated.

Appropriate use:
"My sister seemed to be upset." - 1st person perspective. Hes not 100 sure she is upset, and he can't read her mind.

Inappropriate use:
"Bob entered the hotel room, carrying his luggage. He seemed to struggle with the weight of it."

3rd person narration. Decide. Did he struggled with it? Yes? Then "seemed to" is irrelevant.

Again the rules get fuzzy in some spots. But my suggestion is, any time you can cut it and the sentence still works, cut it.

Yep, one of the things I slap myself about (mentally, not physically) when editing.

 

[ElectricBlue]

To catch dumb typos, I regularly change the font, the size, and the colour, which forces the eye to see the text differently, not the way you first typed it. The other way I pick up the typos is to run a simple spell check. I've got a Word knock-off clone which doesn't have a grammar check, which is excellent.

I'll occasionally throw the whole thing into word cloud to look for over-used words, although these days I don't do that so much. It's more a curiosity thing, to check the balance between the characters - if I've got it right, the size of each character's name should be roughly equal. If it's not, then the story is more about one of the characters than the other, and on first pass, I don't always know who.

That's pretty much it. I can spell, my grammar is good, so none of those basics are a concern. Like some of the others up above, my primary focus during edit is the rhythm and flow of the prose, getting the beat of the sentences right.

I'm a stream of consciousness writer - in a good writing session, I can look at it the next day and think, wow, did I just write that. As someone recently commented, my job as a writer is to get out of the way, and let my characters speak for themselves.

 

[MK_Whimsy]

The best thing I have found is to put the story away for a while, then come back a week or two later and reread it with fresh eyes. Though in the past and to my own detriment, I have been terrible at following this simple, reasonable guideline.

 

[Voyeurkenneth]

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.

 

[TheLobster]

A lot of the editing I do is splicing sentences for better flow.

He barged into the room and scanned it, looking for his girlfriend. He found her sitting next to an unknown man, smiling and giggling. He felt his blood boil.

He barged into the room, scanning it quickly. He was looking for his girlfriend, and much to his dismay he found her sitting next to an unknown man. She was smiling and giggling, her hand sometimes touching the guy's arm, and it made his blood boil.

The second version is spliced differently. The full stops and commas are in a different place, some "X and "Y" are replaced with "X, Y-ing" or vice versa, sentences are either split or joined together. You may argue which version is better, but the edited one allows for more expressive phrases to be included and even one additional detail (touching the unknown man's arm) to be slipped in.

To me, the second version flows a bit better and is more evocative to boot. If, during editing, you find that your narration doesn't appear as smooth as you'd like, splicing your sentences like this may help.

 

[Omenainen]

Make different editing passes for different things. For example, if you’re checking your dialogue tagging and that every quote mark has its match, do that and nothing else. I tend to get impressed with my own writing and get sucked into the story, so staying a level “above it” is difficult sometimes.

 

[shelleycat1]

I look for the trivial stuff as a separate activity, because it means I do not have to worry about it, and I see so many stories where they are misused. My examples:
Check every it’s and its,
Check for “. and “, and space”space
Every there and their (I usually do not use these at all).

 

[BobbyBrandt]

Almost every tip given so far equates to the one thing that I find most effective when editing a story:

Patience

Rush the writing if the mood is there. Never rush the editing.

 

[Djmac1031]

DJ's Editing tip # 3 - Look for and cut out redundant information.

A simple example is: If you made a point of her having big tits in paragraph one, we dont need it restated repeatedly through paragraphs two,three and four.

Same with wardrobe. If you state early on the color of his shirt is green, you dont really need to point it out again later unless for some reason that color is important.

A less obvious version, and I'll provide an example from a story i recently tried to read:

"Checking the time, she quickly finished her drink and then closed her eyes to breathe in the myriad scents of the flowers. She let it flow through her body while she took a deep breath and then exhaled slowly to feel the calming sensation permeate through her entire body."

So she let the scent of the flowers "flow through her body," then feels calm "through her entire body."

At the very least, we could cut out "entire body" and it still works and it sounds less repetitive.

Tip #4 - details matter.

Another example from the same story:

"There were few people enjoying the cafe. Besides herself, there was only one other person enjoying the delights of the cafe outside with her."

So were there "few people" in the cafe or "only one other person?" Which is it, plural or singular?

Simple, easy enough things to miss on first screenings. But things that potentially stand out and confuse readers.

edit: and even as I reread this the double use of "cafe" in two sentences jumped out at me. You could literally delete either one those two sentences as they're both conflicting and redundant.

 

[StillStunned]

A tip you'll often hear about editing is "Kill Your Darlings": be ruthless about scrapping parts of your story that keep the plot from moving forward. This, and other tips, combine to people advising you to trim 25-30% of the fat from your story.

But that's not universally true. Particularly if you're a new writer, there's probably a tendency to rush to the end and get all the action down on paper.

So when you're editing, instead of trimming fat, start adding the fluff. Write the details that make your setting feel real, that bring your characters to life. Slow the action down, and describe it like Michael Palin on a train journey across a remote continent. Take your time to seduce your reader so they're properly engaged.

I think that in erotica these little details are generally more important than they are in a mainstream novel. Anything that helps to bring your characters to life in the reader's is good. Let those darlings live.

 

[HordHolm]

A tip you'll often hear about editing is "Kill Your Darlings": be ruthless about scrapping parts of your story that keep the plot moving forward.

I think you mean "keep the plot from moving forward."

 

[StillStunned]

I think you mean "keep the plot from moving forward."

That's what I said! Or at least what I meant. What's wrong with you people, can't you read minds?

*Grumble*

Anyway, I've fixed it.

 

[TheLobster]

Anyway, I've fixed it.

Admit it: you just wanted us to practice our editing chops on your post.

 

[HordHolm]

That's what I said! Or at least what I meant. What's wrong with you people, can't you read minds?

*Grumble*

Anyway, I've fixed it.

Too busy trying to read my wife's mind to worry about anyone else's...

 

[Djmac1031]

That's what I said! Or at least what I meant. What's wrong with you people, can't you read minds?

*Grumble*

Anyway, I've fixed it.

Im sure you were just trying to prove the point that missing words can change the context and meaning of a sentence or paragraph, so it's important to check those things during the editing process.

 

[TheLobster]

Make different editing passes for different things. For example, if you’re checking your dialogue tagging and that every quote mark has its match, do that and nothing else. I tend to get impressed with my own writing and get sucked into the story, so staying a level “above it” is difficult sometimes.

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.

 

[StillStunned]

Actually, I'm on my 13th straight day of professional editing without a break. My mind isn't what it was a fortnight ago.

 

[TheLobster]

"There were few people enjoying the cafe. Besides herself, there was only one other person enjoying the delights of the cafe outside with her."

So were there "few people" in the cafe or "only one other person?" Which is it, plural or singular?

I read that as "few people in the cafe in total, but just one outside, in the outdoor seating area with the MC; the rest is sitting inside".

But even if that's what was meant, the wording is still super awkward. Like, the repetition of "enjoying cafe" is egregious enough, and I'd rephrase the whole thing on that ground alone.

 

[HordHolm]

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.