Proofreading or Editing?

 

THERE is nothing quite so heady as the tumble of ideas, stories, characters and drama that spill onto the page when you write your first draft.

Your first draft, however, is just the beginning.

The first stage of the editing process is up to you, the author: typos, structural issues, inconsistencies in your characters, and little details that slipped by you in the first draft are all important. Does that character have blue eyes or green? What season are you in? Are all the subplots tied up to your satisfaction?

There are two important stages to the editing process once you decide it's time to hand your work over.

Editing:

A novel is a huge undertaking. The story that you have told is precious to you-and that's why it may be more difficult for you to identify structural issues, even after an initial two or three edits. This is when an editing service can help you to take a step back and get a fresh perspective. A professional edit will help you to identify weaknesses in the plot, unfinished business and inconsistent details. It will also identify issues such as passive voice, wordy sentence structure and basic spelling, grammar and punctuation issues. While all feedback on your novel is subjective-every reader is different-a professional edit will give you an impartial point of view.

Proofreading:

Proofreading is for a manuscript that is in its final stages of preparation for either indie publication or submission to a traditional publisher: you've smoothed out all your plot crinkles, you've tied up all your loose ends, you're happy with your story arc. All that remains is to make certain your writing is crisp and clean. This means proofing spelling, grammar, punctuation, and consistency-all that mechanical stuff, such as ensuring you have consistently used either American or British/Australian English, your dashes are in all the right places and your improper nouns are not capitalised. Some of this stuff might seem finicky, but that's what a proofreader is for-making sure the story flows from your page to the reader without any interruptions.