How to Efficiently Edit Your Novel

Are you missing the energy of Camp NaNoWriMo’s April session and can’t wait for it to start again in July? If you want to continue your noveling adventures, participant Virginia Mialma shares some tips to help you dive into edits and get the most of your editing time:

So, you’ve finished your novel… or maybe you’re just stuck and you’re just trying to make some progress in some aspect of your novel and you’ve gone through a phase of light editing to pass some time and hope for genius to strike. Either way, that red pen in your hand can feel like a hot iron on your precious words.

First of all, don’t tackle five different parts of writing at once. You have the plot, you have characterization, you have grammar, you have spelling, you have those annoying little dash marks that never come out right the first time (maybe that’s just me). Break these up into much more manageable and not so incredibly overwhelming pieces.

When you are editing to pass the time, try basic spelling/grammar editing. I know that seems weird, but (hear me out) you will never finish the book you are writing if, when you’re still just halfway finished with your book, you’re also reading and nitpicking your plot in the beginning. You’re going to get so caught up redesigning the perfect plot that nothing else has gets done except entirely rewriting the first half of you novel multiple times. You will be in the exact same place as before, struck by writer’s block and trying to go back and edit for in hopes of catching ideas.

On the other hand, if you are going through and editing words, punctuation, and sentence structure, your brain is still on your story but instead of nitpicking things that aren’t ready yet, you get a refresher on the beginning of your story and you have gone though some light editing. That way, if you ask someone else to read it, most of your words will make sense.

But… what if you’ve finished your book? You just wrote your amazing climactic action scenes and your blood, sweat, and tears finally have fruitage. You should go right back into it, right? Work off of this momentum, right? 

“Staring at something up close isn’t going to get any clearer no matter how long you stare at it.”

No, don’t do that! You’ll burn yourself out. This may be easy or hard depending on your mindset at that point in time, but the best way to begin editing a novel you just completed is to not. Set it aside, take a step a back from it and give yourself some well-deserved R&R. When you get too close it’s hard to see the big picture. 

Go ahead and grab a picture, any picture will do. Now hold it right up to your face, and I mean I want your nose to touch the picture. Now stare at it. Can you tell what it is? Keep staring, I’ll wait… can you tell what it is now? No? That is because staring at something up close isn’t going to get any clearer no matter how long you stare at it. You need a break, you finished the novel! Celebrate and rest. Leave it alone for not just a day or two but a few weeks, a few months even. You’ll come back with brand new eyes and be able to get farther faster this way rather than trying to push the momentum from finishing the novel into editing the novel.

Just like exercising your body, the resting period in between sets is just as important as the set.

Virginia Mialma is a student at Miami University Oxford studying creative writing and interactive media. Virginia spends way too much time on Wattpad, get underlined, and YouTube both as a viewer and an entertainer. Virginia has two dogs, Jayce and Scarlett; a Beta called Yami Yugi; and an unhealthy obsession of anime (if you couldn’t tell from the Beta’s name).

Top image licensed under Creative Commons from Abdulla . K on Flickr.