25 Golden Rules of Self-Editing

• How to self-edit and revise your fiction story 
Rarely does a writer create the perfect first draft. Usually several drafts are needed to get close to what the writer envisioned upon committing the story’s first word to paper or computer memory. Many writers find revising and self-editing difficult, however, largely because they’re unclear of what exactly needs to be changed to improve their story.

• 12 tips for revising your own manuscript
During the process of writing your novel or nonfiction book, you’ll probably spend a lot of time revising the manuscript. Catching every error in one reading is unlikely, but you can reduce the number of drafts you eventually write simply by following some editing tricks. Here are some common ones used by writers and editors alike.

• Set your story aside
To remove yourself from the story so you can best determine what needs to be changed, set it aside for a few days, then re-read.

• Revise by deconstructing 
While analyzing your own draft, try deconstructing the piece into the various elements of fiction (plot, setting, character, point of view, theme, style, etc.).

• How to use Track Changes on your manuscript
Most editors who review a manuscript that is in a Microsoft Word file will use the Track Changes function to correct an author’s work. As an author, you’ll want to be familiar with using Track Changes so that you can get your manuscript into a publishable form.

• Six useful tips for self-editing your book
Once you’ve written your book, you need to edit it. Though you certainly can (and should) have an outside editor at least proofread your book, you’ll need to do some of that work yourself as well. 

• How to get rid of MS Word’s proofreading marks
Among the most annoying features of Microsoft Word’s Track Changes program is that every time you reopen a file, the corrections show up. To not see the corrections, you have to toggle the “Display for Review” setting to “No Markup.”

• Missing typos? Try editing old-fashioned way
When self-editing a draft of your manuscript, consider doing it the old-fashioned way: printing it out on paper.

• Don’t trust spellcheck, your junior high-aged editor
So you’ve got your story typed in manuscript form and are about to send it out. You decide to do one more spell check before printing the final copy. Good idea, right? Wrong.