• 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.
• Use active voice
Verbs give sentences and books vibrancy. When too many of them in a story are passive or weak, the writing sounds drab.
• Cut begin fallacy
One way to tighten your writing is to eliminate the begin fallacy. This occurs when the writer introduces an action to the reader by saying “began to,” as in “My nerves began to calm.”
• Fat writing
Fat writing, a term coined by CSFW’s Sarah Smith, is “unnecessary and grandiose verbiage.” You may have heard writing instructors refer to it as “verdant greenery” or “purple prose.”
• Delete redundancies
A redundancy exists when the modifying words aren’t needed because they say exactly what the word being modified implies. For example, “rich heiress” is redundant as an heiress by definition is rich.
• Avoid pushbutton words
Sometimes rather than finding a truly evocative term, writers get lazy and use pushbutton words. Pushbutton words attempt to evoke an emotional response from readers without appealing to their critical faculties or intellect.
• Dump fuzzy words
Fuzzy words weaken your writing by giving an inexact, out-of-focus picture of the landscape or idea that you’re portraying. Examples of fuzzy words include almost, half- , very, really, seem, looked like, and felt.
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My name is Rob Bignell. I’m an affordable, professional editor who runs Inventing Reality Editing Service, which meets the manuscript needs of writers both new and published. I also offer a variety of self-publishing services. During the past 15 years, I’ve helped more than 400 novelists and nonfiction authors obtain their publishing dreams at reasonable prices. I’m also the author of the Storytelling 101 writing guidebooks, four nonfiction hiking guidebook series, and the literary novel Windmill. Several of my short stories in the literary and science fiction genres also have been published.
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