Once upon a time, back in August of 2014, I’d finished writing my novel. It was done! All I had left was editing and then I could start querying! I started researching the query letter (the Query Shark rocks!) when I was away from my manuscript and couldn’t edit. I figured the hard part was done, all I had left was to polish it up.

Here I am, 2 years later, with 2 revisions and 4 new drafts under my belt. In that time, I’ve learned so much. What I revise now, I never could have done when I started.

My writing?

Well, that’s about the same. Luckily, as writers, we don’t have to stop with the first draft.

5 Big Things I’ve Learned About Editing

The 3 main types of editing:

When you first start to edit your novel, if you’re like me, you’re trying to make it legible and entertaining. Looking for all your typos and bad commas. That’s not a bad place to start, but that’s not all there is to know about editing.

• Type 1: Developmental editing –

  • Your world and characters need depth. They need to be more than just stereotypes or 2-dimensional characters.

• Type 2: Structural editing –

  • How do the plot and action flow?
  • If there are chapters where nothing happens, do you need them?
  • Does everything in the story make sense and follow what’s happened before?
  • Are there hints so even the unexpected makes sense–in retrospect?

• Type 3: Line edits –

  • The editing most people think of.
    • Misspellings, commas, and awkward phrasing.
    • Places where you tell, instead of show.
    • All the little rules you can learn and checklists.

You Can Ignore Edits

Just because you’ve got 1 million comments on your manuscript doesn’t mean you have to make 1 million changes.

• Reasons I Ignore An Edit:

  1. It’s dialogue and that’s how my character speaks
  2. For stylistic reasons
  3. Because the editor doesn’t know [X], which explains why [Y] needs to be in there
  4. ONE critique partner/beta reader got confused, but everyone else seems to grok* it perfectly fine

Waiting Before You Edit Helps

• If you’re like me, you:

  • read this advice 100 times
  • wrote your rough draft
  • edited less than 2 weeks after you finished

However, I’m older and wiser than I was when I finished my first shiny ugly draft. Now I know I can indeed edit immediately… line edits. I can make my story clearer and fix all the spelling errors and half the comma errors and get confused on the semi-colon vs em dash errors…

You know what I can’t do? Revise.

It took 4 rounds of edits, in which only 2 actually contained revisions (type 1 and 2 edits), for me to actually get my novel in decent shape. The flow is better, the last couple of chapters had to be rewritten–again.

Editing Techniques to Try

I learned I can do copy edits and flow best on paper. Other edits, I can be at the computer. The hard part? I can’t edit without either my stack of paper or at a computer. I could write on my phone, riding shotgun. I can’t even have music when I’m editing, because I’m too distractable. But everyone is different.

• The shrunken manuscript

  • With a small font and some highlighters, you can see the rhythm of your story, from the extreme macro-level.

• Edit The Unmerciful Suck

  • 25 steps I can’t summarize.

• One Pass Edit

  • Print it out, take notes of things you missed, things you made up. Plus, multicolored pens.

• Copy Editing Checklist

  • Exactly what it says

• The exite-o-meter

  • Outline your chapters, then rate the exitement level, and chart it!
  • Examine the chart and see if you’re following the 3-act structure.

You’re Never Truly Done**

*Grok means to understand on a visceral level. (From Heinlein’s Stranger in a Strange Land)
**You just reach a point where you deem it: Good Enough!

NOTE: You know what’s ironic? When you mis-schedule a draft post for Wednesday instead of Thursday, so your readers see the draft before you’ve finished editing it…while writing a post on editing. Luckily, those of you who saw this early liked it. Hopefully, you’ll like it better in all it’s planned glory!