Tips on self-editing.

There’s not one answer for this one. Every author has a different process. We encourage authors to do several read-throughs before sending it for professional editing. You want to get the most out of your edit, and sending a manuscript off without doing the basic checks will make your editor’s job challenging. When a markup is extensive, it actually makes the document hard to read. So when we go through for our second pass, it’s hard to see the wood for the trees.

Some things that can be done at the self-edit stage are…

📌 Run a basic spell check.

📌 Read your manuscript out loud. You will likely catch more wrong word choices if you read aloud, as when reading in our heads, our brain automatically tries to fix things.

📌 Use a program to read your book to you. It doesn’t matter what program you use. You aren’t looking to get an audiobook experience but to catch the errors your brain would usually fix.

Many authors will read through their manuscripts at least three times before sending them for professional editing. Each time, you look for different things. This helps you focus.

1. Read for structure. Here, you want to ensure that you have conveyed your story outline well and that everything is in the correct sequence. Chapters flow from one to the next.

2. Reading for readability. Would someone who doesn’t know your subject matter well understand your book/follow your storyline? You may need a glossary of terms at the front or back of your book if you are talking about a particular subject that most wouldn’t understand. This is a great way to educate your reader and still write an authentic story without many explanations in the text. This is the phase when you will weed out those extra-long sentences or clunky passages.

3. Reading for grammar and word choice. Now for the fine-tooth comb. You may think this is the job of your editor, and yes, that’s what we do, but if we are dealing with four hundred entries of the same word or multiple entries on the same page of the same phrase, it certainly makes our job much harder and will detract us from the mechanics of your writing. This is always the last stage because if you reword/restructure in the first and second read-throughs, you will catch the grammar in the third. If you do the grammar checks earlier, you may need to review the text again after rewrites. Having a thesaurus helps, but make sure you aren’t substituting for a word that no one will understand or that sounds too formal/casual for those characters/situations.