by Jacqui Murray
Now that I’ve published my first novel, To Hunt a Sub, I can say from experience that writing it and editing it took equally long periods of time (and marketing is just as involved). After finishing the final rough draft (yeah, sure) and before emailing it to an editor, I wanted it as clean possible. I searched through a wide collection of self-editing books like these:
The Novel Writer’s Toolkit by Bob Mayer
Self-editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne
The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing by Evan Marshall
…and came up with a list of fixes that I felt would not only clean up grammar and editing, but the voice and pacing that seemed to bog my story down. Here are ideas you might like:
- Use ‘was’ only twice per page. This includes ‘were’ and ‘is’.
- Limit adverbs. Search for ‘ly’ endings and get rid of as many as possible.
- Watch out for bouncing eyes–
- He dropped his eyes to the floor.
- His eyes roved the room
- Use gerunds sparingly. Search for -ing endings and eliminate as many as possible.
- Eliminate ‘very’.
- Eliminate ‘not’ and ‘n’t’–switch them to a positive. Rather than ‘he couldn’t run, he was so tired‘, say ‘he stumbled forward, his legs so tired they refused to obey’.
- Eliminate dialogue tags as often as possible. Indicate a speaker by actions. Those you keep should be simple, like said.
- Be specific. Not ‘the car’, but the red Oldsmobile convertible’.
- Eliminate but, the fact that, just, began to, started to. Rarely do these move the action forward.
- Use qualifiers sparingly. This includes a bit, little, fairly, highly, kind of, mostly, rather, really, slightly, sort of, appeared to, seemed to--you get the idea. These make you sound unsure.
- Run your manuscript through an auto-editor like Autocrit. It’ll find problems like sentence length variations and repetition of words so you can fix them.
- Run your manuscript through a grammar checker like Grammarly or Hemingway.
- Don’t have too many prepositional phrases in a sentence. There’s no set rule, but if you get lost before the sentence ends, you have too many.
- Secure each chapter in place and time. A quick reminder of where characters are and whether it’s in the present or past is good enough.
- Don’t repeat yourself. It’s tempting to retell events when a character is talking to someone who didn’t live through the last few chapters, but summarize instead–briefly. Your audience already knows this material.
- Verify that time tracks correctly in your novel. Make sure the day is correct and that characters have enough time to get from here to there in the timeline.
- Verify that your characters are wearing the correct clothing and have the right reactions for their position in the timeline. For example, if they were in a car accident, when they appear again in the novel, make sure they act accordingly.
- Describe with all senses. Add what your character smelled or heard along with what s/he saw.
- Don’t tell what you’re showing. Use one or the other, preferably showing.
A great way to find these mis-writings is with Ctrl+F, the universal Find shortkey. It will highlight all instances of whatever you’re searching on the page.
What these don’t address is character development, plotting, or living scenes so you’ll still have to deal with those prior to sending it to your editor.
Guest post contributed by Jacqui Murray. Jacqui is the author of the popular Building a Midshipman and is the author/editor of dozens of books on integrating tech into education, an Amazon Vine Voice book reviewer, a columnist for Examiner.com and TeachHUB, and Editorial Review Board member for Journal for Computing Teachers. You can find her book on her publisher’s website, Structured Learning.
Reblogged this on Orthografia.
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Thanks for the reblog!
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You are Welcome!
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Excellent post! Sharing…
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Thanks, Bette. They’ve helped me a lot.
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Thank you for the wonderful post, Jacqui. Enlightening.
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Thanks so much! I just used the list to edit my WIP!
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Yeah – it probably means a complete re-write of my ‘Evhen & Uurth’ WIP, but many good pointers. I’ve ‘Pressed This’ to my Ceeteejackson.com blog. Cheers! 🙂
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Surprisingly, it doesn’t take as long as it seems it would. You get in the swing of, say, replacing ‘was’ and it isn’t nearly that difficult.
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Mean list – very helpful.
Thank you.
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I’ve seen longer ones so I tried to make this one focused.
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Yes, well I found the items you included very useful. I’d love to see any other such items too -but, on its own, your list has improved my process. thank you.
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Thank you for sharing this post. Lots of information.
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My pleasure.
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Reblogged this on Kim's Author Support Blog.
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Thanks for the reblog!
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Great suggestions … love the bouncing eyes! I also remove standing legs … he stood and …. thanks!
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I would tell you I have no ‘bouncing eyes’–and then I find them. They just sneak in.
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A lot of information in a great post! Thank you!
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Thanks so much. I like lists.
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Thank you so much for sharing these tips.
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My pleasure. Hope they help!
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Some solid tips here. I’m currently editing a memoir and most of the same rules apply. Thanks!
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Interesting. I haven’t written a memoir. Good to know the rules are similar.
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Smart tips. Thanks!
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I like things as clean as possible before my mss gets to the editor.
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Good article. Loads of useful tips. I’m close to the end of my current story so will be editing another soon. Thank you!
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These are almost relaxing, to work through the list. A good activity as you transition between edits.
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That’s really true most times some people feel that a little mis-spelling on your part means you don’t know what you are doing http://www.sec342.com/blog
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They do, especially agents. I’ve had some tell me they throw the mss out if they find a misspelling. Sigh.
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yeah…..making all your hard work look like you’ve done nothing http://www.sec342.com
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Reblogged this on Don Massenzio's Blog and commented:
Check out this post from Jacqui Murray on Ryan Lanz’s blog with some great self-editing tips.
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Thanks for the reblog!
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My pleasure.
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Reblogged this on Finding Myself Through Writing and commented:
As all authors know, editing is NOT the fun part of writing. If you are FINALLY at the editing stage of your novel, these tips should be on your to-do editing list! Thanks for the tips Jacque!
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I am truly amazed by how much work is left to do on my novel. Thank you for such an informative post!
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You’ll be surprised how fast it goes once you get in the swing of these rote edits.
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Reblogged this on A Writing Life.
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Reblogged this on Books and More.
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Fantastic advice and links, thank you.
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Good to hear they’re helpful.
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Brilliant! Much appreciated.
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My pleasure!
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Excellent advice. useful. Thank you. 🙂
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A post like this is always helpful; even if you’re still in the process of writing.
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Thanks so much for compiling this list. I see lots of mistakes I can work on.
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Reblogged this on Between the Beats.
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Thanks for the reblog Lizzi! You won a copy of The Navigators by Dan Alatorre. To receive your copy, please reach out to me via my “contact me” tab.
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This is a great list, can I share it with my English tutoring students?
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I’m not the original author, so it depends on how you want to share. I don’t see why not. To be safe, credit the original author.
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Reblogged this on Tzivia Adler, Writing & Resource Consultant and commented:
The first few items on this list are good for any format of writing, and my college tutoring students should take a quick look.
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Thanks for the reblog!
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Reblogged this on WILDsound Writing and Film Festival Review.
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Thanks for sharing!
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