10 Rules to Self-Editing – Basic 1st draft editing – The Last 5

Okay, if that wasn't enough work here's more:

RULE #6-  Put that in your cross-hairs.  That can usually be deleted outright without any replacements.  You will find hundreds of these demons.  My word find program in MS Word shows me how many I have.  I write down the amount and compare the body count at the end of the check.  I'm always amazed how many I've offed.

Rule #7-  Had needs killing, especially had been.  Last but not least, ly.  Readily, hopefully, hungrily, etc..  You probably can't eliminate all these, but have a look at them, especially two in the same sentence or paragraph.

RULE # 8- Sentence structure.  Search for and you'll find plenty of them.  By eliminating some you'll be forced to restructure sentences, ending up with sentences of varying lengths which look good and read well.   James Lee Burke is the only writer I know who can string together a quarter page of ands and get away with it.  Oddly, it works.

RULE # 9- Contractions.  Do not, would not, will not, can not, sound too formal.  Find not with a word search and cut them down with an apostrophe.  When people speak they usually say not for emphasis, otherwise it's contracted:  I would not go near that woman.

RULE # 10- Overall structure.  Be consistent on spacing between sentences, lines, paragraph indents, italics, and capitalizations.  Use the giant reverse P up in the formatting bar of MS word in the title bar. Proper structure is pleasing to the eye and flows better, especially if you can vary sentence length.  eBook readers are probably more tolerant of some improper capitalizations.

Now that you've accomplished all that work, read it aloud.  This should eliminate problems with pace and awkward phrasing.  Keep a calendar and timelines for your story.  Have some realistic expectations.  You can't be in Hawaii one day and the next day infiltrating Nth. Korea on a lark.  Only on TV's Hawaii 5-0 can this be done.  I turned it off.  Book 'em, Dano!  Even if you take your manuscript to an editor for a fee you'll pay less because you've already done some grunt work.

Do all these 10 rules yourself and you'll understand why professional editors charge so much–it takes time.  Simply destroying was and restructuring in a 100,000 word manuscript will take hours.  Think of editing as taking readers for a drive around your town.  You need to achieve various speeds (pacing and flow), obey signs (punctuation), show them the sights (imagery), talk to them about your town (dialogue), plot (a route), tension (radar traps, animals and kids running out in front of you), avoiding speed bumps (creates jarring prose requiring rereading the sentence) etc..

After completing these time-consuming tasks you'll be far ahead of where you were and in doing so will probably find other errors along the way to patch up.  Good luck.  It's not supposed to be fun.

 

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