Starting out with Self-editing
You’ve plotted your novel and developed your characters and you’ve finished your manuscript. Perhaps you followed a linear process from outline to the full draft, or maybe your journey to a completed manuscript resembled a serpentine adventure to get the boy and win the HFN. This stage is like the first kiss in a new romance, or the discovery of a treasure map before the adventure really kicks off.
What do you do once the heady rush of that first kiss begins to fade?
The first step is to put away that manuscript and let it rest. Turn your eyes to a new project, your toppling to-be-read stacks, or get outside and brush off your neglected exercise skills. Or if editing is new to you, learn about editing and brush up on things like grammar. Writing and editing are two different skills after all.
After a week or two, or a month or ten, you’ll be ready to look at your manuscript with fresh eyes. This is important for two reasons. The first being that when you’re too deep into your story, you’ll skim over and miss important details. The second being that editing requires a different mindset to writing, and it takes time to switch. You cannot do both at the same time.
Now the real frustration fun begins.
On my writer’s bookshelf I’ve got three editing books that I return to during this first self-edit.
Self-editing for Self-publishers by Richard Bradburn (2020) offers a clear process broken down into three stages of editing. I find the layout of this book easy to follow as it cuts through the sometimes overwhelming editing advice that can drown writers, particularly writers starting out. Editing is complex but we can navigate it successfully.
This book is valuable as a broad guide through the three stages.
First, take an overview which involves reading through the whole book, from beginning to end, like a reader would. I like to read aloud and note anything I stumble on or think of and mark it in track changes to return to later. Then summarise, and write a synopsis, of the book.
Second, look at the big picture, the story’s structure, including the plot and plot problems, pacing, characters, point of view, tense, showing and telling.
Third, focus on the details of dialogue, punctuation, sentence construction.
Self-editing for Fiction Writers: how to edit yourself into print by Renni Browne and Dave King (2004) is handy to refer to when I find problem areas during steps two (big picture look) and three (detailed look). The checklists and exercises have been helpful when I’ve been really stuck on something, especially when I first began learning to edit my own work or respond to critical feedback from competition judges and my writing groups. My copy is heavily highlighted in the dialogue section as I had a lot of work to do in that area, particularly in one of my first manuscripts. And it’s still difficult for me to get right.
Australian Handbook for Writers and Editors by Margaret McKenzie (2011) has been a very helpful reference for the principles and practise of grammar and to understand current Australian conventions. As a life-long reader and teacher, I have an intuitive grasp of grammar, but because I’ve read lots of older classics that followed older English conventions and also read many American works with American conventions, they often end up muddled together in my writing. It’s taken a decent amount of work to keep my grammar and punctuation clear, and this reference along with working with an Australian editor has helped tremendously. Although, I imagine in my blog posts you might glimpse some strange punctuation and grammar die-hard habits still sneaking through on occasion. Plus messy sentences.
I hope this helps, writing friends. Happy editing!
