The Importance of Editing

So you've just finished writing your book and now it's all ready to start shipping around to agents and publishers to get shipped out to the masses right?

Well - did you edit it? And no that's not what editors are for. Even Stephen King edits his work before sending it off so yes, you have to as well.

Editing is nothing to stress about especially if you have an easy-to-follow process for getting it done. 

Lucky for you there is one right here. So let's begin. 

(I hope you like your story because you're about to read it so many times you never want to look at it again) 

Gain Distance from Your Work

Did you just finish typing up the final passage of your story? That's amazing for you, but no that doesn't mean it's time to turn back to page one and start editing. 

Your story is still a newborn baby to you, you're too close to the story and you're going to be too protective of it and not quite ready to point out all of the flaws it may have.

Print out your story at home if you have the means or at any sort of copy store where they'll even bind it up nice and pretty for you - then put it out of sight. You don't want to see or even think about it for the next two weeks at least. You need to come back to it with fresh eyes and a red pen ready to mark up and question everything you've written. 

Read for Structure and Flow

There are two simple ways to do this, and this is where you're going to pick up all those funny little things that auto-correct have changed for you - unless you were talking about ducks this time. 

Read your story out loud or plug it into one of those text-to-speech generators and listen carefully. You're looking for those sentences that come out clunky or abrupt transitions. This is also when you find out that you've used the word giggled fifteen times on one page and even you're annoyed by it.  

Check for Clarity and Consistency

Here is where you trim the fat and get to the point in those places where you've rambled on about how the trees look for three whole pages or you realize you had said your characters were going to Mnt Doom and somewhere along the line you started calling in Mnt Sunshine after chapter ten by mistake. It happens, we write it in chunks and spare moments so infrequently that we mess up on our details. I recently had a story where I didn't realize I had changed the main character's name a few chapters in until I headed it off to a beta reader who asked me, "Who the heck is Elizabeth, and why did Darcy disappear without a trace." 

Well - she wasn't quite as nice as that, but that's what you get handing things off to writing friends who don't hold back their punches. She only had my story in hand less than an hour or so before I got the phone call and had to hold it as far from my head as a could. 

Polish Your Grammar and Mechanics

This dreaded editing stage is known as line-by-line edits.

You're not reading your story to read the story, you've already done that a dozen times now that you don't even want to be looking at the story. You are as it's called going line by line in each paragraph and looking for grammar mistakes like your high school English teacher. Punctuations, verb tense, sentence structure. 

Use a sheet of paper to block off the page as you read so your eyes don't skip ahead. Reading line-by-line can take a bit to get used to since your eyes want to just keep moving through the text. 

Seek Feedback and Revise

All those lovely edits you've just done have made it a whole new story, now is the time to hand it off to some beta readers, or honest writing friends and await their feedback. Tell them to be viciously honest -  better them than your review page after your release when it's too late to pull it back from the hands of your readers. 

You don't have to implement everything they suggest but try to take some of their suggestions to heart when it can have a clear benefit to you. If all of your beta readers feel that the plot is lost after a few chapters you need to listen to this. Feedback and constructive criticism can be hard to take, but just remember it's coming from a place of love. They're not out here to just rip your story to shreds because they feel like it. 

Conclusion

Writing a novel is an incredible feat - but editing is where the magic comes in. You're going to hate it, but the result is going to be momentously rewarding - for a little while at least because unfortunately unless you are a professional editor when you send out that story edited to the very best of your ability - it's still going to come back with more red marks for you to fix. 

Don't even think of looking at this like you didn't do a good enough job, it just simply means that someone else is doing theirs better. Don't get discouraged, even the most seasoned and brilliant authors you see on the shelves go through this and there's no shame in it. 

Just keep reading, and keep improving your story. It all gets better with practice. 

With love, 

B.K. xo

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