The Self-Editor’s Toolkit: Practical Tips to Elevate Your Writing

You type the final full stop and give yourself a well-deserved pat on the back. You’ve finished. The hard work is done!

…Or is it?

Actually, you’ve only finished the first part of writing a book - there is still a lot of important work ahead. Now is the time to take off your author’s hat, and put on your editor’s hat.

It may seem like a daunting task, but self-editing can be rewarding and empowering. It’s your baby, after all. Who better to look after it in this early phase than you?

The Right Mindset

The first step is (by definition at least) the easiest: take a break. Close that manuscript down (after making sure you’ve saved it, of course!) and file it away for a good length of time — maybe even a couple of months. 

What you’re doing here is creating distance. When you’ve lived inside your manuscript for so long it can be difficult to see it from an outsider’s perspective. A break is the best way to get your book out of your system.

So, you have my full permission to binge those Netflix series everyone watching while you were agonising over your own characters, or read a book about a totally different topic from the one you’ve been trying to educate your audience on. 

This break will help you shift from “writer” to “editor” more easily.

If you want a better understanding of what an editor does, have a look at my earlier blog post to help you understand how you should approach this first round of editing.

Your Editing Essentials

Once you’ve had your sabbatical from your book, and you’re ready to start self-editing, there are many strategies you can deploy to help you maximise the impact of your efforts.

• Reading aloud

One of the biggest and most common problems with self-editing is being too close to your own work. Your brain knows what the writing should say, and therefore it corrects mistakes as you read them. 

Reading aloud, or using a text-to-speech function, can help you focus more on what is actually on the page, rather than what should be. (Another good strategy, if you can, is to print the work off and look at it on paper as the eye reads off of paper differently than on a screen. However, that could be a lot of paper and ink). 

Reading aloud can also help you hear the rhythm of your writing, and help you notice if your pacing is a little off, or where any phrasing is a bit awkward. 

Your writing should be melodious to the ear, whether fiction or non-fiction. Listen for where sentences are too long or too short, or where there isn’t enough variety in the length. 

The eye might not see these things, but the ear will definitely pick them up.

• Editing in layers (Structure → Style → Proofing)

Don’t try to tackle everything at once. You’ll get muddled, lose focus and miss things. Instead, do two or three separate passes over your book. 

Pass 1 - Structure

First time round, focus on the bigger picture of your writing — is the story arc correct? Do your chapters follow on naturally from each other? Have you included enough clues and hints early on in your story to make the events later feel believable? 

Pass 2 - Style

Next, go through the book again and this time focus on your style, or your voice. Does it remain consistent, or does the chapter that you wrote at 2am after 16 coffees sound more manic than the rest? Do any chapters feel overloaded with imagery because you were feeling particularly poetic that day? This is the stage where you even all that out.

Pass 3 - Proofing

Finally, go through and look for mistakes e.g. typos, punctuation errors, inconsistencies (do you spell the name of a character in different ways at different points e.g. Katie vs Katy). This round should hopefully be the quickest as it’s more surface level stuff.

• Hunting for overused words

In the “style” edit, notice if you have any writer’s tics: Do you start a lot of sentences with “as”? Do you have a phrase you use often such as “in terms of”? Are there lots of exclamation marks, or ellipsis? Once you notice them, you can use the “find” tool in your word processing document to find all the times you’ve used them and change any that you feel can be changed. 

Remember — everyone has a tic (or two, or three!) and you don’t need to eliminate all instances of it from your writing; just take out enough so that the reader doesn’t feel it’s overused.

• Tracking progress

You’re probably thinking that this is a lot to manage, and you’re right — it is! But there are ways you can make it easier. Use different colours to show the different changes you’ve made so you can keep track. 

Also, save multiple versions of your work. After each edit, create a new document and name it based on the type of editing you’re about to do and what chapter you’re on (e.g. ‘Edit 3 - Proofreading - Chapters 1-5) This means if you make any mistakes or accidentally delete something, you can just go back a draft and pick up from there.

Time to Stop

Probably the most important thing you can learn as an editor is knowing when it’s time to stop tweaking. A piece of work that is over-worked is not necessarily a better piece of work than one that still may contain the off typo or inconsistency. 

You still want it to be your book, just an improved version. 

Don’t Have the Time?

I realise that what I’ve just outlined above seems laborious and time-consuming, and, if done properly it is! However, you don’t have to do it alone. 

There are some fantastic pieces of software that can support you like Grammarly, Scrivener, Hemingway etc. although don’t be tempted to let them do all the work for you. AI, while amazing, can still make mistakes, and may suggest changes that are just plain wrong. 

It is vital that you still check your work carefully.

My handy list of common mistakes and how to fix them can also help you avoid common pitfalls. Click here to get your free copy to download.

Or, if you feel you’ve just reached that point where you need someone else to take your baby and give you a break, I’d be happy to look after it for you. I promise I’ll treat your work with care and work with you to make your writing the best it can be. 

Pop me a message if you’d like a chat about how I can help you with this next stage of your writing journey.