There are many skills writers must hone to bring their work to life. Knowing the basic structure of a story is essential, as are building a vivid setting and engaging main characters. But perhaps most valuable (and underrated) is the skill of self-editing. While you may feel compelled to shoot up from your desk and shout “Done!” the moment you’ve finished your first draft, there’s more to do. Looking back at your work with critical eyes doesn’t just help produce a quality end result. It also allows you to see your own growth and opportunities as a writer.
Like any part of the creative process, self-editing isn’t one-size-fits-all. If you are wondering where to start, consider some tips below.
Make Friends with Re-Reading
Some authors get so excited to finish a draft they throw it at an editor before checking their name is spelled correctly. There’s a good reason for that—finishing a draft is thrilling! After all that time you can finally call it something other than “in progress.” Rereading your work may sound like an exercise in redundancy—but that isn’t always the case.
The creative process takes many twists and turns. What feels like an epic plot twist or witty repartee in the moment may fall flat at a second glance. Reviewing your work not only gives you a chance to catch weak writing, you can also find pacing and plot issues a future editor might point out.
Read It Out Loud
You can do this yourself, use a text-to-speech program, or ask a very patient friend. It still counts as self-editing, we promise! The point is to get it off the page and into your ears! As much as a mental re-read can help catch storytelling hiccups, hearing your words aloud gives you insight that reading can’t. One of the biggest hurdles in self-editing is that, as the creators of our work, we know what our writing is supposed to sound like. This is to say: we know how we intended for something to read, and this can make us blind to moments where we fall short of making it happen. Reading aloud can be especially helpful in catching your own literary quirks like run-on sentences, repeated words and phrases, and unnatural dialogue. Awkward or overwrought sentences will feel difficult to read fluidly and highlight areas you may want to revisit.
Walk Away for a While
Sometimes the only solution is a little distance. As tempting as it can be to start reviewing the moment you’re done penning your draft, how fresh something is in your mind can affect the way you perceive it. In other words: sometimes we’re “too close” to our writing to see it clearly. Taking a few weeks or months between finishing your draft and revisiting it allows you to see your work as a reader would. This time away also allows you to forget how you originally intended things to sound, making it even easier to catch phrases or plot elements that don’t serve the reader!
Familiarize Yourself with Cliches (and Avoid Them)
As much as writing is a private journey, writing for an audience means being mindful of clichéd plot elements or phrasing. Any seasoned writer will tell you that a good cliché has its time and place, but excessive use of cliché elements will leave any manuscript feeling flat, uninspired, or even lazy. If you find yourself stockpiling “shocking” plot twists or frequently starting using words like “suddenly,” it’s worth taking some time to get acquainted with overused writing tools and find new ways to work around them.
Use an Active Rather Than Passive Voice
In writing, an active voice means that the subject of the sentence performs the action of the verb. The passive voice refers to when the verb in a sentence happens to the subject.
For example, let’s talk about coffee.
Active Voice: The barista made the coffee.
Passive Voice: The coffee was made by the barista.
You can see how a passive voice puts more distance between the reader and the action being performed. While this isn’t always a bad thing, it can impact reader engagement. Remaining in the active voice whenever possible helps keep the reader closer to the action on the page, and more likely to keep reading.
Avoid More “Cinematic” Urges
While storytelling may transcend its given medium, there are some things that don’t translate from the screen. It can be tempting to harness some movie magic with vivid descriptions of each setting and gesture. Or by hopping from one banter-heavy scene to the next. Unfortunately writing lacks the same visual component that makes these work on screen. Too much setting or action description leaves a reader bogged down in details, while brief, chatter-heavy scenes weigh a story down with filler. Keep an eye out for these, and condense or remove them when you can.
Trim Out Filler Words
Speaking of filler, nothing kills a writer’s style faster than a mountain of qualifiers. Avoid very, actually, pretty, literally, and any of their other insidious friends. While these filler words can add a casual flavor, they’re better left out unless absolutely necessary. In the words of Mark Twain: “Substitute damn every time you’re inclined to write very; your editor will delete it and the writing will be just as it should be.”
Whether you’re self-publishing or sprucing up your writing before finding an agent, self-editing is an invaluable tool. It’s not always fun, but self-editing is the only way to make something spectacular.
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