Any editing advice/what worked best for you?

It seems like a good idea to print out the critiques and go though each one, but I think in the end it's less efficient than one expects. You might want to take a 'master' copy of your story and annotate it with the critiques (you can do that in what ever word processor you use). It should also be useful to summarize each critique - that is, what is the 'take home message' of each person's response.

What stage of editing are you in?

Generally speaking, you have to approach each stage differently. First, you should edit with the big picture in mind. There's no point fiddling with every sentence until you're sure those sentences are going to be part of the story. Once you've got the big picture settled, then you can focus on the details.

I also find it's helpful to give yourself one or two goals for each editing pass. Maybe you're going to cut out adverbs on one pass. Maybe you're going to improve dialogue or characterization on another. If you break your editing down into smaller tasks like that, you'll find that it doesn't seem so overwhelming.

I usually do an editing pass or two where I make sure all the scenes are more or less how I want them, and the vast majority of the prose and dialogue is in good shape.

Then I print it all out, throw it in a binder, and start going through it with a pen. I read out loud as I go and watch for smaller details, like repeated words, repetitive sentence structures, etc. I also watch for things I could cut to make it more concise, and punch up the dialogue wherever possible. It takes a while, but it makes a huge difference in the end.

Something I do for a final pass is export an ePub version of my manuscript in Scrivener, then load it onto my Kindle. I do the majority of my reading for pleasure on my Kindle, so reading it in that format gives me a better idea of whether my writing falls in line with what I'd expect to see in a published book, if that makes sense. I caught a lot of mistakes doing this with my last WIP.

I start each writing session by editing the previous one, which saves a lot of time at the end. When the manuscript is complete I read through a couple of times for typos and any other obvious issues. I then perform separate reads for plot, each major character, dialogue etc, which makes each read manageable and focussed. Then I'll do more general reads until I'm happy to let someone else look at it.

My tips:

1. Find a place to periodically post segments of the text for critique. There is Share Your Work here but reddit.com/r/destructivereaders and reddit.com/r/writerchat are also good places. Ask for them to point out grammar and tense mistakes you seem to be repeatedly making (like you don't understand the rule behind it). This can help you realize how you need to edit the rest of your text on your own.

2. Read the story out loud as if you were telling it to a group of kids at the library or reading it to a friend or recording an audiobook. This really helps you see where minor grammar mistakes are and what sentences don't make sense or are clumsy.

3. Look into getting an advanced grammar check program like grammarly.

+1 for Matt T's suggestions.

I finish a draft before editing, so my first pass is to find plot holes and pace issues.
Next pass is to check for fine-tuning and character stuff-- consistency issues.
I usually ship it off to betas at this point, and annotate a single copy with their best comments, checking them off one by one.
My final read through is a line-edit. I'll often read large portions of my novel out loud (or have my word processor do it for me-- there's a function on most that can do this).
Hope this helps!

I edit as I go, as in I write a scene/chapter/part of a scene, then go back and re-read and edit it before writing the next one. This helps me to avoid continuity errors (or at least to nip them in the bud) and make sure the voice is consistent and everything flows reasonably well. By the time I get to the end, most of the editing's done. I also get things critiqued as I go along - this means issues/errors can get nipped in the bud and it helps with development of characters, plot and worldbuilding, although I do make sure that anything posted for critique's had several rounds of editing (i.e. it's not first draft and full of basic errors I could've corrected myself). This means I don't have a gargantuan job of editing a whole entire manuscript of first draft quality writing. Additionally, I don't know how I'd manage to keep a story on track without re-reading and editing what I've written before moving on. It wouldn't end up being coherent.

That said, everyone works in different ways and you have to find what works for you and our brains aren't all wired up the same so there's no "one true way" of doing anything.

halfbloodprincess said:

Hi everyone. I'm self editing my book, and I would like to know if anyone has any tips or advice to make the process more productive/easier. My plan was to...
1. Reread and edit several times myself
2. Get several critiques for each chapter from critique partners/forums
3. Print out all critiques and go through each chapter one by one. (However, I have no clue how I'll do this without the resource's to do all that printing)

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I don't see what benefit there would be in printing out the critiques. For a start there's the cost of the printer ink and paper and you've said you don't have the resources. You can read the critiques from a screen and a lot of it won't be line-by-line editing (which I could see the benefit of printing out) because a critique isn't the same as having someone edit your work. You're not going to want to follow each critique to the letter either. You need to give critiques consideration and there may be reasons for not following some of the advice. (And if you get conflicting advice from different people then you have to disregard some of it for sheer preservation of sanity.) It's impossible to please every reader and you shouldn't aim to. Because of this, you need to give critiques due consideration and determine which advice is going to improve your manuscript in line with what you're aiming at with the story.

Some advice you shouldn't disregard, e.g. if many people are saying the same thing's not right and needs to be fixed, then that's an indication that it's not right and needs to be fixed and it's not just one person's subjective opinion, but most of the time this involves things that affect the whole manuscript, and often something you can sum up in a few words, e.g. "overuse of words relating to eyes - suggests excessive filtering - need to fix" and you don't need to print out 20 different critiques pointing this out.

If you want something written down to refer to as you go through your manuscript, you might be better off just writing down the main points in a notebook.

I'm not sure there's all that much benefit from getting every single chapter critiqued separately. Probably 99% of what I've got from having my work critiqued are things that I can get from a critique of one chapter and apply to the whole manuscript. Let's say you post chapter 1 for critique and people give you lots of advice. You're not just going to edit chapter one and then post chapter two, untouched, for critique. You'll get mostly the same advice, which you already know, because it'll have the same issues. More realistically, you'll post chapter 1 for critique, get advice, then apply it to the whole manuscript. If you're going to get additional chapters or scenes critiqued next then it's probably better to choose one that you're having a particular difficulty with, say what that difficulty is and then post that for critique that will be geared towards helping you fix the issue (though you'll get general advice as well).

If you want advice on the manuscript as a whole, then you need to find someone who's prepared to read the whole thing. There's a beta reader forum for doing this on an exchange basis (i.e. I'll read and critique your manuscript and you read and critique mine) but you need to be careful to select someone that's familiar with the genre you're writing in and gets what you're aiming at with your story (which hopefully also means their manuscript will be right up your street too).

Hope that helps and also saves you paper and printer ink.

I edit partially in a similar way to neandermagnon.

For continuity etc I continually revisit previous chapter(s) to ensure what I'm writing currently fits in with what I have already established. When proof-reading for typos, grammar errors and technical aspects, I find it useful to change the font.

Might sound silly, but I write in a serif font and my eyes get used to it. I can proof-read something five times and think I've caught all the errors, only to find a bunch of new ones when switching to a sans-serif font because my eyes are seeing something new.

I found this handy. Reading it over gave me a lot to think about when I started editing. Of what exercises/tasks I did, I found the revision prep the most useful.

http://blog.janicehardy.com/2015/02/at-home-workshop-revise-your-novel-in.html

Two things that have been golden for me:

1. Read aloud - I hear the mistakes or lumpy bits. I tend to catch errors I might not catch if I hadn't read out loud too. Reading in my head, I find that I don't pick up on those instances where I meant one thing but typed another (word or sentence). If I read it out loud, I come to a crashing stop.

2. Send my manuscript to my Kindle app on my phone and read it on a small smartphone screen.

Yes, definitely a lot of great advice. I'm a big fan of printing out the ms and going through it manually. Also another thing too that might help, changing the font. Sometimes it helps you see it a different way.

Something I have found helpful is to put the manuscript aside for a short time, then read it as if you had found the pages blowing down the street, meaning, read it as a reader, not as the author. This can help detect mistakes that you might have passed over before.

I have to add that I am one of those writers that edit as I go along. It's my natural pickyness combined with a sort of egotism. I really don't like the idea of others changing my work around, even just to correct it, and if I can edit my own works I will beat them to it, if that makes any sense to anybody. (It does inside my own head!)

I write my irst drafct straight through, set it aside for two weeks, then look at it again.

Undercover said:

Yes, definitely a lot of great advice. I'm a big fan of printing out the ms and going through it manually. Also another thing too that might help, changing the font. Sometimes it helps you see it a different way.

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Instead of changing the font, I change the spacing when I'm editing on my laptop. I also do another pass with a hard copy.

KTC's idea about reading on a smart phone screen is interesting... I may have to steal that!

I like to write by hand and then type the half a chapter at a time. This serves as a first edit and greatly lessen the amount of work I need to do later. I like to do a first edit of a chapter when I finish writing it, as I find doing everything at the end painful. The same principle can apply regardless of when you edit.
1[SUP]st[/SUP] I do a run through of the story to see that it makes sense- things are stated or restated correctly, time lines work, etc.
2[SUP]nd[/SUP] I read the story out-loud on the computer, with the focus on punctuation and flow.

I do steps 1 and2 while I am still writing the book. When it is finished I do the following.
The 3[SUP]rd[/SUP] thing I like to do is a search for particular words that I overstate or misuse: but (and its synonyms), that, which, etc. and recheck punctuation.
4[SUP]th[/SUP] Read through the entire story looking for any errors or things I need to change.
5[SUP]th[/SUP] After a little time away from it, print the story and read out-loud, as a reader. At the same time give copies to other people to read. At this point a person tends to see what they meant to write, regardless of what is actually there.
6[SUP]th[/SUP] You may choose to have a professional edit your story. I have friend who is a retired English teacher that has written her own books. Check with people you know to find someone qualified who is willing to do it for little cost to no cost.

Steps 5 and 6 are the real key ones to make your story flow and have no jarring mistakes.

Forgot to mention, something else I do when re-reading my own work is to try to forget about everything I already know about the story. To look at it from a tabula rasa, not just critically, but emotionally. As in, how does it make me feel? Who do I empathise with? Am I confused about something? Am I getting bored by the action (or lack thereof?)

It definitely helps me to detach myself from the story as an author, and review as a reader. I do myself the courtesy of always being as honest as I can with myself.

Interestingly, something that helps me is the fact that I've started writing an entire series before publishing any of it. (I'm going with self-publishing, so this can actually be helpful in many ways.) By the time I get to editing the first book in a series, I'm able to come into it fresh. The same thing should happen with subsequent books.

Something that has helped me is printing out the text one sentence per line. I have a program that does this and I put a double space between each sentence. This allows me to concentrate on each sentence for errors in grammar and punctuation as well as seeing if the sentence stands by itself.

Interestingly, I had some time to kill while my manuscript was printing out, so I decided to go wandering around AW.

Obviously, I'm one of these "red pen and paper" kind of guys, and after my wife goes to bed, I'll start to read out loud.

When I sit down to write, I often reread the previous chapter. That does two things for me: I get back into the mood of the story, plus it gives me a chance to do some editing or commenting. I write my drafts in Google Docs, and just use a red font to indicate places where I need to "work this" or "be sure this links to such-and-such."

Once I am finished, I'll have a professional editor go over it for content and "big picture" problems, then finally line-by-line things I need.

Yes to all the above -

I also will read my book backwards, paragraph by paragraph. That helps me step away from the plot and look at the syntax.

I love this website! What fantastic idea's all around,especially the one to read it out loud. The one thing I would also do is to sit on it for a little while. When I'm writing, and something doesn't seem right, I make a notation but continue on. 9 out of 10 times, that notation creeps up on me even in my sleep and I take care of it while editing. I wish I could edit as I write, like some people do.

1. I use a Word add-on called Text Aloud and listen to the story one scene at a time. It's great because it helps me catch all my dropped articles (my particular writing bugaboo). It also forces me to notice the same word used twice in quick succession, or homonyms that are awkward, or dialogue that falls flat for whatever reason.

2. I use Grammarly, a browser add-on. I just drop one scene at a time into a window in my blog, and go through the highlights, then make the changes I agree with over in my word document. I disagree with Grammarly a lot because it doesn't understand squat about voice and dialogue, but it's saved my bacon many times (like that time I had "gentlemen" where I meant to write "gentleman" and every single proofreader missed it and I didn't notice it using Text Aloud).

3. When my MS is as clean as I can get it, I give it to ONE proofreader. When it comes back, I go through and make the necessary edits, then give it to another proofreader. I don't care how good your proofreaders are, they will catch different things.

I repeat these steps until I want to vomit.


ETA: Any time I change anything late in the process, I take the paragraph and run it through Text Aloud. I am the queen of botching things when I edit. I can't believe how often I think I've "fixed" an issue only to have made another mess.