The Self-Editing Guide
“Editing. It's like dieting; except a lot more violent.” — Leya Delray
Maybe you’ve just finished your first novel, and are running on the high of such a great accomplishment, getting ready—with equal vigor—to begin the process of editing. Or maybe you are long past that phase and are now trudging through the murky middle of your novel, wondering what you were even thinking in writing this work, you’ve now deemed garbage.
To start, I promise it does get better. Editing may seem like an endless dark tunnel, but there is an end. However, it might not come as quickly as you might like. I remember thinking eight drafts ago that my novel was almost finished. You can guess how that thought process worked out for me. But in this post, I'll offer some tips for self-editing that have worked for me!
Self-editing can feel like self-flagellation. Going through your work with a critic’s eye is painful. You basically read through the work you put so much of your soul into and find everything wrong with it. However, here are the tips I’ve found most helpful to keep your spirits high during the self-editing process.
Take a break! You might be eager to start revising your finished story…but resist that urge. You need space from your work. Take two weeks, maybe even more. You will be able to come back to your story with fresh eyes and notice things you wouldn’t have otherwise missed.
Trust your Gut! The feeling of suddenly changing everything you’ve written will be strong. I had the same urge; I felt as though everything I wrote was garbage. But it’s not. You have a strong story. Don’t think about changing your entire story; think of what to change to make your story stronger.
Read your work aloud. You know those moments when something you think sounds completely different when spoken out loud? It is the same thing with writing. Sometimes our writing sounds different in our heads. Taking time to read your work out loud helps you slow down and hear what might not be working.
Break up your work. It can be stressful going through each page and trying to make it perfect. Instead of putting all that pressure on yourself, make it easier by breaking your edits into categories, working from the top of the pyramid down. This is part of the package I give to my writers when I edit their work. In short, it means you go through your work focusing first on plot consistency; granted, you will notice other things to fix as you go. What this keeps you from doing is changing something in Chapter 5 only to realize it doesn’t fit the plot at all, and you have to cut it entirely.
So these are just a few quick tips to get you started and put you in the right mindset for editing your work. There are so many more tips and tricks out there; you will find some things that work for you and some things that don’t. Every writer is unique. But always remember you wrote your story because it was worth writing in the first place, so stick with it and work with it till you’ve made it the best that it can be.