9 Tips for Self-editing Your Book

Editing—everyone’s favorite part of the writing process. Ha, I wish. When it comes to editing, a lot of writers sigh, others scream or cry, or chuck their manuscripts out the window. Editing marks the transition between creative freedom and the beginning of the dreaded publishing process for a lot of us. During the first draft, you're figuring your story out, but now you have to clean it up, cut it down, and make it into something someone would actually want to read and something a reader could understand and enjoy. That's where editing comes in, so say farewell to those unnecessary scenes, extra characters, and page after page of pointless dialogue and description. Things are about to go down hill.

1. Take a Break

Before you tackle this big, and probably stressful project, take a break. After you finish the first draft it's important to step back from your book for a couple of weeks. The longer the time period, the better, but if you're like me and can't stand staying away from your story, try 2 weeks to a month. This break will allow you to step back from your work and give you a fresh and clean perspective when you revisit it. Time apart from your story will give you the opportunity to read more and grow as a writer, even if you're not writing anything while on the break.

2. Forget everything you ever thought was good writing

This is something I've learned throughout my many rounds of editing for many different books. You use different parts of your brain for editing than you do for writing so it's really vital when editing to look at your story through the eyes of the reader and to be honest with yourself. What parts of your story are actually needed? Does this scene make sense?

You must forget everything you know and focus on the actual material in front of you, not the story that your head is telling you. What parts of the story are actually on the page vs. what parts are still in your brain? Your reader does not know the parts that are in your brain, they only know what you tell them through your words. This means that when editing you have to force yourself to focus on editing what's on the page, and adding the missed details from your mind into the story.

3. Read through the story

My editing process is a pretty standard one. I know some people do some crazy color-coding cards and giant poster boards and outline after outline after outline, but I try to keep my editing process as simple as possible. The first thing I do after I take my break is read through my story. I read straight through it and highlight all of the things I dislike, want to add to, or need to rewrite/delete. These can stretch anywhere from giant plot holes to typos. If it's wrong, I don't fix it, I just highlight it and come back to it later.

I do it this way because it keeps me going and helps me to avoid distractions. If I'm stopping every two seconds to change a sentence, I'm losing time. This is just the read through. Its purpose is for me to judge the story and see how much work I think it's going to need in the editing stage before I send it to beta readers.

4. Realize what you actually need to improve

This step ties in with steps 2 and 3. When I talk to writers who are in the editing stage, one of the biggest mistakes they make is they don't realize what needs to be improved. They know something is off. The flow of the story isn't right, but they just don't know what's causing the story to be off balance. This is why the previous two steps are so vital.

You have to read through your story before you edit to see the bigger picture and to figure out what you need to focus on. You have to forget what you know about good writing because that sentence on page 3 that you thought was praise worthy probably stinks, and if you did something right, during editing you'll read back over it and cringe, but that's a good thing because it shows you that you've improved.

When editing your story for the first time, focus on the bigger picture. That means your plot and characters. Nothing else matters in the first round of editing. A lot of writers might get hung up on grammar or get overwhelmed by the small things, but you have to focus on editing one thing at a time. That's how you're going to improve your story.

5. Come up with an editing plan and be ruthless

This is the time where you actually start editing. You've read through your story. You know what you need to fix and change and have a list or outline of what the new and improved story is going to look like. Now edit ruthlessly. Cut every filler scene and sentence. Ask yourself what you actually need. Move things around. Try different things. You don't know what's going to work until you try it.

6. Edit again, and again

You thought you were going to edit once and then have your sloppy draft be perfect? Ha! Sadly you must edit a couple more times. I like to edit three times. The first time I focus on plot and character then the second time around I focus on themes and world-building. The third edit is an overall edit and proofread.

7. Proofread and know your grammar

There's nothing more frustrating for beta readers and editors than typos and grammar inconsistencies. It's super helpful to study grammar as you write your book. If you're constantly learning new rules and techniques, you won't have as many errors and typos to fix at the end because you'll have caught them and eliminated them already.

8. Get Beta Readers

Get beta readers! I'll probably be saying it for the rest of my writing days. Have someone read your work before you hire an editor or query it. Doing this will give you a better idea of where your writing stands and how it might measure up to other people who have a similar skill set or write in the same genre as you do. You can learn a lot about your story from other people. Getting beta readers who are invested and interested in reading your work will be very beneficial. My betas have saved me multiple times.

9. Get a professional editor

Based on whether you go the traditional publishing route or self-publish, you may need to hire an editor. If you‘re self-publishing, you will need to hire an editor. If you’re querying your book to agents, you might want to have an editor go over it before you send it out just to clean it up.

There are different kinds of edits you can have done to your book. Some focus on structure and the bigger aspects of your story like plot and characters. Others, like copy editors and proofreaders, focus on grammar and how your paragraphs read. Research some different kinds of editing and figure out what your story really needs. This will help your book seem more professional and will make your story better.

Thank you so much for reading this blog! I’m thinking of writing a blog on publishing vs. self-publishing since that’s something a lot of writers get confused about. If that’s something you’d like to see, let me know in the comments and don’t forget to subscribe to my blog so you don’t miss out!

It‘s been a pleasure writing for you and until next time—stay weird and stay writing. - Lexi