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Welcome back to my monster guide to self editing! If you missed part one, Story Editing for Fiction Authors: Self-Editing Part One, make sure to go and read it before reading this post. It’s vital that you complete your story-level editing before editing at sentence level to avoid editing work that may never make it to the finished book.
The main benefit of self-editing is that the more care and attention you put into writing your book, the more polished and professional your final book will be. A well edited book is immersive and enjoyable to read, allowing your readers to get lost in the story and not distracted by the words on the page.
As well as producing a better book, self editing improves your writing as, over time, you learn from your mistakes. It could even lead to requiring less professional editing, saving you some money.
First, make sure you complete a story-level edit, as explained in part one. Then it's time to revise your book at sentence level. Sentence-level editing is about improving readability and making sure your readers stay engrossed in your story, not fiddling with grammar and punctuation.
Look out for things such as:
Purple prose is writing that is ‘writing for the sake of writing’. It might be long sentences of description full of unnecessary adjectives and adverbs, the use of fancy words, or even writing that is so complicated it loses all meaning. It can be a case of an author trying to sound cleverer or more literary, or taking “show, don’t tell” a step too far.
During your line-level edit, make sure all your words add to your story in some way. Do your descriptions paint an immersive picture or are you just waffling on? Does it look like you went a bit overboard with a thesaurus? Will your readers understand what you’re trying to say?
There is nothing wrong with descriptive writing, just make sure you’re not accidentally over-complicating things or making your writing boring.
This is something I see quite a lot, and is basically a case of over-telling. It might be that you describe the events of a scene that you’ve already shown, your characters keep having the same thoughts about a person or situation, or you “tell” your readers information that they can pick up for themselves from the events that you show them. Yes, it’s important to make sure your readers have all the necessary information, and they might not pick up on every little clue and tease you sprinkle through your story, but always ask yourself if your readers might be thinking “I know this already.”
Anatomy-based action is another common redundancy also related to over-telling.For example, in a sentence such as “Bob blinked his eyes” your readers know it’s his eyes blinking. Nothing else is going to be. By removing “his eyes” not only are you deleting redundant writing, you’re making sure your readers are focused on what Bob is doing, not what part of him is doing it, thereby keeping them involved in the story. Are you over-describing the actions of your character’s body parts? Ask yourself if you’re stating the obvious when describing character movement.
Well-written dialogue is the perfect way to show your characters' personality traits, behaviour, and how they interact with others. Badly-written dialogue can be awkward and dull. When reviewing your dialogue make sure that all your characters' conversations are relevant to the story in some way.
Don't use dialogue to introduce your readers to plot points if it means your characters end up having weird, forced-sounding conversations.
Delete the boring chit chat; even though it's realistic, it slows down the pacing and takes the attention away from events that are relevant to the story.
Take time to review your use of dialogue tags. Generally, “said” is the preferred dialogue tag as it is unobtrusive and doesn’t distract your readers. If you’re using more descriptive tags, consider if you really need them or if you need to improve the dialogue itself or use action beats to better show the mood of your characters.
Filter words are redundant words that describe what your POV character is doing in situations when it’s obvious from the action in the scene.
For example, “Jason wandered through his garden. He noticed that the tomatoes in the greenhouse were just starting to grow”. If your chapter is in Jason’s POV and you describe the tomatoes growing, your readers know he’s noticed them because he has described them. You don’t need to tell them.
When you remove the filter word, you end up with “Jason wandered through his garden. The tomatoes in the greenhouse were just starting to grow”.
By removing the filter word, the sentence is focusing on what Jason is noticing, instead of the fact that Jason is doing noticing. Filter words create distance between your readers and your story by reminding them they are observing a character, instead of allowing your readers to directly experience what your characters are experiencing.
Are you using filter words too much? A simple way to find out is to search your novel for words such as saw, thought, wondered, felt or heard.
Adverbs have got a bad name for themselves when it comes to writing. You may have even seen some advice that tells you to ban them completely from your novel. I wouldn’t suggest a blanket ban; they do have a place, and sometimes an adverb does a better job at accurately saying what it is you want to say than a verb that doesn’t quite have the correct meaning.
However, a lot of the time adverbs are extra clutter that you can banish to end up with stronger, more immersive, and better paced writing. Remove redundant adverbs in situations such as when a stronger verb would do a better job, when you’re using them to basically repeat what a verb is already saying, or when you’re using them with dialogue that already accurately portrays the mood or behaviour of your characters.
It’s quite likely you already know you should use active voice instead of passive voice. But, what does it mean? What’s the difference between the two? Why is passive voice bad?
Active voice is when the subject of the sentence is doing the action. For example, “The author wrote an excellent novel”.
In passive voice, the action is being done to the subject. For example, “An excellent novel was written by the author”.
A good clue for recognising that you’re writing in passive voice is the use of the past tense and the verb “to be”.
Generally, active voice is considered better because it’s clearer and more direct, and the writing is more action oriented and interesting because it places the attention on a subject that is doing something.
However, like most writing “rules”, passive voice isn’t always bad; sometimes the person doing the action is irrelevant or unknown, and in these cases, passive voice works better than forcing yourself to use active voice and inadvertently changing the meaning or emphasis of the sentence.
Have you used active voice where you can and where it’s best for the information and energy you’re trying to get across?
I know I said now is not the time to be fiddling with grammar and punctuation, but seeing as you're reading through your story, you may as well look out for things like ambiguity, incorrect verb tenses, missing, extra or incorrect words, and errant apostrophes. However, if you find yourself doing a lot of line editing and rewriting, leave the grammar and punctuation check for a later editing pass.
When you've finished your self-editing, it's time to get new eyes on your book and get feedback from beta readers. Find out how beta readers can help you in A Guide to Beta Readers for Self-Publishing Authors.
Editing Evaluation: Get a thorough line and copy edit of the first 10,000 words of your novel plus a detailed, actionable report to help you find and correct recurring editing issues in your manuscript. An editing evaluation is for you if you need help getting unstuck with your self editing or just want some personalised guidance on improving your writing skills. Find out more about story evaluations here.
Line and Copy Edit: A full line and copy edit of your manuscript where I focus on story immersion and readability, looking out for things like weak verbs and adverbs, filter words, overused words and phrases, the balance of show vs. tell, dialogue issues, and of course, spelling, grammar, and punctuation. This is for you if you've finished all your self editing and are ready to move on to the next step toward publishing your novel. Find out more about line and copyediting here.
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