Lion's Tooth Editing

Sometimes it doesn’t matter what sort of deals or accommodations you are able to find, any expenditure at all is beyond reach and trade in kind is also out of reach. This doesn’t mean all is lost.

There is a lot of advice out there for how to edit your work. After all, I had to learn it somewhere, myself. We all did. So I’m not offering up anything ground breaking or revolutionary, just a bit of encouragement.

I have ADHD. My brain rebels at the idea of doing the same task AGAIN, so editing my own work has always been more than a bit of a struggle. As a result, I’ve done a lot of reading on tips and tricks for self-editing and developed a few of my own that I later discovered were shared by others.

The first trick I picked up was to hand write everything because typing it up gave me a built in word by word opportunity to edit my first draft and produce a second. While it isn’t for everyone, it is helpful for many.

The second trick that is broadly advised is to let your work rest to produce distance in your mind. A week is enough for some, others need as much as six months. I find one month is a good, reasonable place to start, but it’s about figuring out for yourself how long is long enough that you’ve lost the intense familiarity you have with the recently written.

Many people also advise reading it out loud. Doing this will draw your attention to a lot of little errors you would just skim over while reading silently. If you can do this, it’s an excellent idea. I, personally, cannot. I can approximate reading out loud in my imagination, but actually reading out loud is uncomfortable and distracting. If you’re similar, you could try using a read aloud program, allowing you to hear the errors as the program stumbles over them. I’m not an auditory person and would actually miss far more this way. It’s about finding out what works for you.

Since the biggest obstacle to editing your own work is your familiarity, simply changing the font of your document can add enough of a difference that your brain is able to pay closer attention to the text. It sounds silly, but it really works, and it’s really easy. What do you have to lose?

When it comes to grammar, I highly recommend Purdue Owl. Grammar Monster is another wonderful, clear resource for English grammar. If you have questions about word use or punctuation, these sources can answer your question. As far as the more finicky rules, however, it’s far more important that you are consistent in your use throughout your manuscript than that you get it ‘correct’.

Now, you have these tools and tricks; you’ve waited; you’ve changed the font; you’re ready to get started. What do you actually do?

I would start with notes. You wrote this thing. Sit down and make a few notes about the themes that emerged while writing. These could be vibes, character arcs, or philosophy. Anything you want your readers to make note of. Once you’ve done that, add anything that you were surprised by, there might be some rough edges. It’s great for the reader to be surprised, but once they recover, you don’t want them to feel like you were surprised as well, or, worse, like you withheld information for no other reason than to make the surprise surprising. Finally, make a note of anything you’re worried about. Is there a point you don’t think you made clear enough? Is there a character you think got too much time or too little?

Now you get to open your document. Read through it like a reader. It’s okay to make grammatical or spelling corrections, but don’t let them slow you down so much you lose momentum. It’s okay to make some edits based on the notes you made, but don’t let them slow you down so much that you lose momentum. It might even be better to add to your notes as you go, marking places you realize need work. Once you’re done reading through, make one last pass at the list of notes. Were there any concerns that you feel better about? Have any been clarified? Did you find any plot holes? Notice anything or anyone that comes out of nowhere? Anything you wanted more of or less of?

Use those notes to go through more slowly, making changes and smoothing out language.

Once you’ve done all that, I HIGHLY recommend letting it rest once more, perhaps half the time, but at least for a while. Maybe long enough to read a book or binge a show or work on a different manuscript. This time around, I wouldn’t take the time to make notes. I wouldn’t prime myself at all. I would just attempt to read the work like a reader. Put it on a tablet if you have one. Read it as a PDF without the option of editing, so as to remove the temptation. Just read it. Flag places it gets awkward, places it gets rough, but keep going.

You’re done when you enjoy it.

If there’s still a nagging feeling like you’re missing something, or that something is off, ask a friend to read it. Not as someone who’s going to give you detailed notes as they read, but just as a reader. Ask them simply when they’re done if their was anything that confused them or didn’t work for them. Ask them to tell you about it like you didn’t write it, like it was any other book they’d picked up.

If you don’t have a friend you can ask, maybe sit on it for a bit longer, read/watch/write while you wait. Pick it back up as detached as you can, and see if anything catches you on another read through.

The biggest thing, though, is to trust yourself. You have to put in the work, but you CAN do this.