If you want less pain the next time you work on a novel, you have to learn lessons from the edit. I’ve learned lessons in plenty editing my new Young Adult, fantasy-adventure novel. This includes more than just fixing words on the page.
Yes, I’ve made thousands of edits in this 74,000 word manuscript and I’m learning to write better prose all the time. It’s also about the process of editing; better tools, better techniques. Setting the bar higher for the quality of the finished manuscript.
Let’s go.
1. Take a Break
The first step in self-editing is take a break. Put the manuscript aside for a while, get some distance. Return to it as a reader, not as the author. You’ll be surprised how it reads after some time away. Patterns, cliches, ticks become apparent with a little objective distance.
Next, create some kind of schedule that includes regular breaks. You can’t edit thousands of words for hours and days on end. Not if you want focus and quality. Edit scenes or chapters at a time. Step away from the manuscript for a while before returning to edit with fresh eyes. Fatigue and over-familiarity dull the critical edge.
On to practical edits…
2. The Big Picture
At the start, focus on the “big picture” elements of the story, such as plot, character development, structure, and overall emotional journey. This is the Developmental Edit. There’s no point combing through the prose line by line until the Big Picture works. Don’t tinker with prose, examine the shape, the pacing, the character arcs. Story is everything. When you know that the story works, you ask does this chapter, scene, paragraph, and sentence add value? Does it belong?
3. Fresh eyes
It’s difficult to edit your own work; for one thing, you’re too close to it. For another, you read what you expect to see, not what’s there on the page. You need readers – alpha, beta, or whatever stage you can get – who never read a word of your manuscript before.
Readers with no prior knowledge will formulate original opinions and perspectives on the manuscript. They will spot errors, omissions and inconsistencies that you, the author, never will. They’ll pick apart your plot and characters, some in broad impressions, some in minute detail. All these are valid.
You can decide what to do based on actual reader feedback.
4. Read Aloud
Reading aloud reveals poor prose, poor dialog, pacing issues. Hearing is a different medium to seeing words on the page. You don’t hear the punctuation or the formatting. By ear, clarity must be king. Does it flow, does it make sense? Is this how real people speak?
5. Set both purpose and goal
Each round of editing should have a clear purpose and a measurable rate of progress. Easier in the Line Edit and Proof-read stages, the purpose is clear – clarity, consistency, style. The measure is how many errors exist or how many were corrected, through any given editing cycle.
6. Focus on one level or problem at a time
Trying to do too much at once cuts the quality at each level. Look specifically at plot, character, style, grammar, repeated words, cliches, sentence length, pacing. Each editing pass needs to examine one aspect at a time.
7. Take care whose advice you trust
This is a rule for software tools as well as human readers. Automated tools, especially Large Language Model AI tools are far from perfect.
Human language is complex, layered, and inconsistent. The software tools are only as good as the underlying rule set. Current generation AI (Artificial Incompetence) isn’t intelligent, it’s a giant pattern-recognizer and re-arranger. At the edge of it’s rule-set, AI will hallucinate, generate inconsistencies and give up part-way through processing. You have to decide when to implement changes.
8. Prose is never perfect
Even when advance readers and AI tools are done with your manuscript, it’s unlikely to be 100% error-free. This means we’re working a time-cost-quality equation. How long and to what standard you you maintain the edit? When does ‘good enough’ meet the terms of good enough to go to press?
Taking these eight lessons from the edit of the latest YA fantasy adventure brought home something I already knew. My earlier four books need another thorough, tight edit for a second print run. A distressing prospect, it needs to be done.