Out of all the words that you, as an aspiring writer, might know or use, the word “editing” must be the least favorite. But – like it or not – all writers have to edit their own work. Of course, you will eventually be sending your work to a professional editor, but before you do that, you have to edit it yourself.
It is important to mention here that even though you will be hiring an editor, you should never send out a messy first draft.
Assess What Heeds Help in the Draft
The first thing that you should do is to identify what really needs help in your first draft. You will have to break it down into one of two categories: the writing or the plot. The plot or the story is like the underground, invisible foundation part, which is the part that nobody sees but is still the most important part of your book.
Without a story, your book would never exist. Your story will make or break the entire thing. The writing is, therefore, more of the surface-level part as it is all about the way it sounds and paints a picture. It is important to separate these two categories because there are two types of editing that you will be focusing on:
- The developmental editing
- The copy editing
If you feel like you rushed writing your first draft and the entire structure of your story could be better – then you should definitely go back and restart by outlining the entire story. If you have story problems, you have to go for a developmental edit and fix the entire story itself.
Development editing requires you to take a really objective look at your story and synopsis, and even go to the extent of reading the synopsis to someone you trust and know that their opinion can help you a lot.
Understand the Importance of A Detailed Outline
You should know that you can save yourself some serious effort and time with developmental editing when you really take some time and outline your book in a very thorough way. Believe us when we tell you that if you nail this part of book-writing, you might never have to write a second draft.
Obviously, you will have to copy-edit, but your story itself will already be perfected before you even start working on the first chapter. Yes – you read this right. Having a perfect and thoroughly detailed outline in place can save you so much time and effort later when you actually start working on the story or novel.
Also, your short story editing, if you have written a collection of short stories, will go so much smoother than you can possibly imagine. So, to maintain smoothness in your project of completing the first draft and having it edited, you might want to start the right way, which is by putting some extra effort into creating the outline.
Have A Detailed Synopsis for Better Editing
If you haven’t worked on your outline before working on your first draft, then you shouldn’t worry about anything, as you can make some extra effort now to rewrite and revise the entire content.
Having a detailed synopsis will help you tremendously with the editing task, so if you don’t have a synopsis, you should write one. It is incredibly helpful to have a visual of your story laid out so that you can see what is broken and what needs to be fixed.
Use Sticky Notes
An incredibly helpful way to do this is to write out your synopsis on sticky notes. This way, each chapter will get its individual sticky notes. Subsequently, spread out the sticky notes on the floor or a very large table – and this way, you will have a complete look at how the story is laid out.
While you are at it, you can think about the placement of your chapters and assess whether each scene makes the scene that follows it inevitable. This is a big and important rule that a lot of aspiring writers don’t follow.
So, you will want to look at the story structure and ask yourself – does each scene make the next scene that follows it inevitable? If the answer, at some point, is no, you need to fix it and consider what would really happen in your story given cause-and-effect.
However, if you want to be a successful writer, you must nail your first draft – no matter what it takes. So, you should never be afraid to go back and outline your novel as if you haven’t even written it yet. When editing, you will want to find all of the problem areas where you can make your character motivation stronger, as well as where cause-and-effect doesn’t seem to make sense.
The Art of Editing Your Writing
Now, suppose you love the story, and it doesn’t need any developmental editing; then it might be just the writing that needs help. So, once you have jotted down everything and gotten everything out without self-criticizing, it is time to edit your writing. This is also the time when you will find out how bad your writing really is.
It is important to mention here that there is a great chance that your writing is never as bad as you think because often, the author is their own worst critic. However, you will still feel like your writing style is missing something or that your writing is dragging or rushing or doing something that it should not be doing.
Detach First, Edit Later
You should allow your story to sit by itself for at least three months. The reason is that you need to detach yourself from the story for some time so that by the time you get back to it, you see clearly what needs help.
The passage of time – at least three months – will allow you to distance yourself from your story and not be so familiar with it. This way, you will be enabling yourself to develop an objective perspective instead of a subjective one while editing the draft. However, it is impossible to look at your story objectively, which is why you will hire a professional editor later to do what is needed.
