Tag: Editing

Thursday Technicalities: Self-Editing

Featured Ariel Paiement

Introduction

Last week, we talked about the types of edits that can be acquired when you’re ready for an editor. But what if you can’t afford an editor or just want to make sure the edit will take less time so you don’t have to pay as much? As an editor, I always encourage people to get an editor before publishing, particularly self-publishing, but I also understand that not everyone has the money to do that. So what can you do if you’re in that situation? You can self-edit.

Basics of Self-Editing

To begin with, let me say this. Self-editing means nothing if you don’t have a clue how to do it. This is why I recommend that authors find an editor who can help them in this area. Why? Because frankly, most authors can’t do both. There’s no shame in that. They’re not bad writers because of it, certainly. I’ve helped out plenty of people who had great ideas and even an okay execution of the idea, but they didn’t know how to edit it so that it would truly come to life. So, chances are pretty high that you may not have any idea how to edit, even if you know your way around writing a story well enough.

If you’re in that situation, again, there’s no reason for embarrassment. It’s a normal situation to be in. You should, however, take the time to learn about editing. I know it takes time and that time is often in short supply for all of us, but self-editing means you are going to be your own editor, and whether or not readers can really enjoy the story depends entirely upon not just how well you write but also how well you can edit.

This post can’t possibly cover everything you need to know about self-editing. There’s simply far too much to cover, and you’re not going to be able to learn it all overnight. You should approach this with the basic understanding that self-editing is your doing the same things an editor would do. Since that requires a lot of knowledge, the rest of the post will be going over resources you can use to learn how to be a better self-editor. You have to learn and practice editing the same way you had to learn and practice writing. The two are related but separate competencies, and they require very different mindsets and knowledge bases.

Resources

  1. Self-Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne and Dave King: This one is a really good book to start with if you have no self-editing experience. It’s at the top of the list because it’s more modern than book two on the list but still covers a good mix of basic and advanced topics. It’s well-organized and moves from simple to complex.
  2. Strunk and White’s Elements of Style by Strunk and White: You should read this if you read nothing else. It’s a bit drier than Browne and King’s book listed above, but it’s just as relevant, and you’ll learn a lot, particularly about the grammar and style portions of editing that every editor should know. I recommend it to both authors and to those asking me for editing advice. For all its dryness, the book is still indispensable, and once you’ve read through it once, you can continue to use it as a reference while editing.
  3. Revision and Self-Editing by James Scott Bell: This comes from a bit more of a writing perspective based on the pieces I’ve looked through for reference. I’m reading through it in its entirety now, and it’s packed with useful examples, information, and pieces of advice from editors and authors who have experience in the field. Bell also has a pretty good sense of humor, in my opinion, and it comes out in the way he says things or the selections he chooses for examples. This one’s definitely not a terribly difficult read either.
  4. Woe is I: A Grammarphobe’s Guide to Better English in Plain English by Patricia T. O’Conner: I haven’t personally read this one, but it’s a national best-seller recommended by editors for people looking to self-edit. It focuses more on the sentence-level edit, something every book benefits from but often doesn’t get. Welcome to the world where you agonize over every page, paragraph, sentence, and word in your book. Fun stuff, right? In all seriousness though, this book is well-known for being a humorous, fun approach to teaching you what you need to know about grammar and sentence-level edits.
  5. Editing Mastery: How to Edit Writing to Perfection by Shani Raja: This is an online course with Udemy written by an ex-Wall Street Journal editor. I’ve gone through almost half the course, and it’s been one of the most valuable resources I’ve ever come across. It’ll teach you how to do a deep edit like some of the world’s top editors do. The course example and practice assignment focuses mainly on non-fiction, but I’ve found that the principles are fairly easy to apply to fiction of any sort as well.

Conclusion

I hope the resources I’ve provided help you out in your self-editing journey. It’s not an easy area to master, frankly, but the resources above have been some of the most useful ones I’ve come across in my time both freelance editing and self-editing. Whatever you choose to do, I wish you best of luck with your piece!

Thursday Technicalities – Types of Edits

Featured Ariel Paiement

Introduction

Editing. Doesn’t everyone just love it? Well, some of us do. If you’re like me, one of your favorite parts of the writing process is actually the rewriting and editing stage, at least when there’s not a huge time crunch. I know, I know. It’s weird. Most writers really can’t stand this process, and most writers don’t have a clue how to go about it. Now, most of us are capable enough of catching the stray grammar error or glaring plot hole, but many times, writers–and even published authors–don’t know what it takes to make their book publish-worthy material. That’s the job of their editor. 

Which begs the question. How do you know what kind of edit your work needs if you’ve never done this or if you haven’t worked with an editor before? I’m glad you asked because that’s what today’s discussion is all about! Let’s get right into it.

If you’re a beginning writer, chances are you need a deep edit. A deep edit goes through several stages and looks at everything from story structure and big picture stuff to the gritty details of sentence structure and word choice. This is a quite extensive edit, and most freelance editors I’ve spoken to specialize in specific areas, so a deep edit from one editor may be difficult to achieve. This means that, often, a beginner writer may need to find two or even three editors to look at the piece. This obviously isn’t the most fun thing to work with, but if you can find one or two editors who are able to compliment each other’s skill sets to give your piece a well-rounded edit, that’s usually easiest. For those of you in this situation, the key is to look for an editor or editors who note that they’re good with content editing, structural editing, style editing, and presentation editing. For fiction, these areas may not be presented exactly with these titles, so read on to find out what kinds of things fall under each so you have a better idea of what you’re looking for.

If you’re not a beginning writer, you probably know what areas you struggle with frequently. Chances are you don’t struggle with all of them, though you may struggle with more than one. So I’m going to break down the stages of deep editing for both you and the beginners wanting to know what each stage entails. This way, you will have a better idea of what skill set you need to find in an editor to give your book an edit best fit for it.

Content Edit

A content edit is the first step a deep editor takes in editing a piece. In fiction, a content edit is going to take a look at the purpose of the piece, the genre it’s in, and what it contains. The point of this level of editing is essentially to ensure that every major point in the book or story revolves around the purpose, genre, and main idea of the story. This kind of edit gets rid of scenes that might be unnecessary or repetitions of previous scenes that made the point already. It will eliminate rambling and make the piece more concise. It will also focus on adding anything that’s missing. Practically speaking, a content edit is focusing mostly on the plot of the story in fiction and making sure that the book’s scenes make that plot work from beginning to end.

Structure Edit

With this type of edit, the editor is going to shift gears to look at the angle and narrative structure. Depending on the work, there may not be any particular angle, but there will be a narrative structure. This type of editing will make sure that each point in the narrative structure is ordered elegantly and works smoothly with the others.

Style Edit

Here, we start getting into the finer details. A style editor is going to look over the work to remove clutter in your scenes, paragraphs, and sentences. This edit fine tunes and refines the work so that the narrative style really shines. This one is, perhaps, one of the more difficult edits to do because it calls for someone who will really dig down into the piece to look at things like word choices, sentence structure, and pacing using more technical avenues like paragraph and sentence lengths. Having done this before, I can attest to how much work this is. Sometimes, it can be a hard call on whether something is clutter or necessary and whether to use one word instead of another in a specific sentence. However, these changes can make a huge difference in a piece, so if you can’t do this yourself, find someone who can.

Please note that an edit like this doesn’t focus on fixing grammatical errors or presenting things in a clean, professional way on the page. That’s saved for a presentation edit. What this edit will do is improve your narrative style, make your ending resonate with the reader, make your middle flow from paragraph to paragraph seemingly effortlessly, and make your beginning arresting to the reader. If that’s what your book is missing, this is the type of edit you need, so find an editor who specializes in this area.

Presentation Edit

Last editing stage, everyone! In this stage, your editor will worry about the nitty-gritty details of grammar and punctuation. They’re going to look for those pesky misplaced commas or fix misspellings. They’ll read it through to make sure that any leftover sentences that might trip readers up are removed, and they’ll trim the sentences you don’t need if necessary. This stage cleans up your manuscript and makes it ready for presenting in its final form to your reader. If you’re able to do the first three types of edits on your own, it may still pay off to have someone do this sort of edit for a piece. As humans, we’re prone to error, so having someone else take a quick look through our work to clean up any missed problems is usually a very wise decision. 

Conclusion

I hope this has been informative for you all! Next week, we’ll start talking about some of the specifics on knowing where your work is at, knowing when to self-edit, and knowing who to hire when you need an editor. This area is one that I see a lot of uncertainty about, particularly with writers new to the editing process, and a lot of mistakes can be made. My hope is that, in the upcoming weeks, I can take some of the stress and confusion out of the process for you!