21 Self-Editing Secrets that Can Supercharge Your Manuscript

So you want to get your book published?

If you want people to actually read what you’ve written, you must master the art of ferocious self-editing.

These days, anyone can get anything printed.

It doesn’t even have to be good. If you have the money—and often not much—many companies will print whatever you submit, as is.

That’s not necessarily underhanded. Almost any independent publisher would be happy to offer all the services you’re willing to pay for to make your manuscript as publishable as possible.

But you’re the boss.

If you say you can afford only the minimum and you want them to print what you present to them, they’ll say, “As you wish.” And if they won’t, you can easily find someone who will.

On the Other Hand

Ideally, you’d rather be discovered by a traditional publisher who takes all the risks and pays you an advance against royalties and then royalties on your sales. But the odds of landing a traditional publishing contract are slim.

If you do get a contract, of course, the publisher also has the right to edit your work until it shines and they are satisfied.

Regardless, whether you’re fortunate enough to land such a deal or will invest in independent self-publishing, you still must separate yourself from the competition by ensuring your manuscript is the absolute best it can be.

Yes, a traditional publisher will have its own editors and proofreaders, but to get that far, your manuscript has to be better than a thousand other submissions.

And if you’re self-publishing, the only way to stand out against even more competition is to make your manuscript as crisp and clean as it can be.

There’s little worse than an independently published book that looks like one.

So…

You must become a ferocious self-editor.

Whether you’re going to hire an editor, or be assigned one by a traditional publisher, your responsibility is to get your book manuscript to the highest level it can be before you pass it on.

Never settle for, “That’s the best I can do; now fix it for me.”

We all need that second pair of eyes. Every piece of published writing should be a duet between the writer and an editor, not a solo. But you should exhaust every effort to fix every problem you see before an editor takes over.

Sadly, if you attempt the traditional publishing route, could pour your whole life into a manuscript and get just five minutes of an editor’s time before your book is rejected.

Sounds unfair, doesn’t it?

Maybe it’s happened to you before.

But as one who has been on both sides of the desk for more than four decades, let me tell you there are reasons for it:

Editors can tell within a page or two how much editing would be required to make a manuscript publishable; if it would take a lot of work in every sentence, the labor cost alone would disqualify it.
An editor can tell immediately whether a writer understands what it means to grab a reader by the throat and not let go.
Have too many characters been introduced too quickly?
Does the writer understand point of view?
Is the setting and tone interesting?
Do we have a sense of where the story is headed, or is there too much throat clearing? (See below for an explanation.)
Is the story subtle and evocative, or is it on-the-nose?

Yes, a professional editor can determine all this with a quick read of the first two to three pages.

If you find yourself saying, “But they didn’t even get to the good stuff,” then you need to put the good stuff earlier in your manuscript.

Google Self-Editing and you’ll find dozens of checklists that include examining your manuscript for things like:

Active Voice
Description
Character Motivation
Context
Engaging the Senses
Hooks
Pacing
Reading Aloud
Similes and Metaphors
Synonyms
…and more

These are all important, and I urge you to study them as you get time. But I want to zero in on tight writing.

Author Francine Prose says:

For any writer, the ability to look at a sentence and see what’s superfluous, what can be altered, revised, expanded, or especially cut, is essential. It’s satisfying to see that sentence shrink, snap into place, and ultimately emerge in a more polished form: clear, economical, sharp.

I’ve learned that all writing is really rewriting, so I’ve become a ferocious self-editor.

I attribute a great deal of my success mastering this discipline. If you’re ready to become an expert at this, here’s what you need to do:

21 Self-Editing Secrets to Make Your Book Shine

1. Develop a thick skin. Or at least to pretend to. It’s not easy. But we writers need to listen to our editors—even if that means listening to ourselves!

2. Avoid throat-clearing, a literary term for a story or chapter that finally begins after a page or two of scene setting and background. Get on with it.

3. Choose the normal word over the obtuse. When you’re tempted to show off your vocabulary or a fancy turn of phrase, think reader-first and keep your content king. Don’t intrude. Get out of the way of your message.

4. Omit needless words—a rule that follows its own advice. This should be the hallmark of every writer.

5. Avoid subtle redundancies, like: “She nodded her head in agreement.” Those last four words could be deleted. What else would she nod but her head? And when she nods, we need not be told she’s in agreement.

“He clapped his hands.” What else would he clap?

“She shrugged her shoulders.” What else?

“He blinked his eyes.” Same question.

“They heard the sound of a train whistle.” The sound of could be deleted.

6. Avoid the words up and down—unless they’re really needed. He rigged [up] the device. She sat [down] on the couch.

7. Usually delete the word that. Use it only for clarity.

8. Give the reader credit. Once you’ve established something, you don’t need to repeat it.

Example: “They walked through the open door and sat down across from each other in chairs.”

If they walked in and sat, we can assume the door was open, the direction was down, and—unless told otherwise—there were chairs. So you can write: “They walked in and sat across from each other.”

And avoid quotation marks around words used in another context, as if the reader wouldn’t “get it” otherwise. (Notice how subtly insulting that is.)

9. Avoid telling what’s not happening.

“He didn’t respond.”

“She didn’t say anything.”

“The crowded room never got quiet.”

If you don’t say these things happened, we’ll assume they didn’t.

10. Avoid being an adjectival maniac. Good writing is a thing of strong nouns and verbs, not adjectives. Use them sparingly.

Novelist and editor Sol Stein says one plus one equals one-half (1 1=1/2), meaning the power of your words is diminished by not picking just the better one. “He proved a scrappy, active fighter,” is more powerful if you settle on the stronger of those two adjectives. Less is more. Which would you choose?

11. Avoid hedging verbs like smiled slightly, almost laughed, frowned a bit, etc.

12. Avoid the term literally—when you mean figuratively.

“I literally died when I heard that.” R.I.P.

“My eyes literally fell out of my head.” There’s a story I’d like to read.

“I was literally climbing the walls.” You have a future in horror films.

13. Avoid too much stage direction, feeling the need to tell every action of every character in each scene, what they’re doing with each hand, etc.

Especially in Fiction (but also in nonfiction anecdotes)

14. Maintain a single Point of View (POV) for every scene. Failing to do so is one of the most common errors beginning writers make. Amateurs often defend themselves against this criticism by citing classics by famous authors who violated this. Times change. Readers’ tastes change. This is the rule for today, and it’s true of what sells.

15. Avoid clichés, and not just words and phrases. There are also clichéd situations, like starting your story with the main character waking to an alarm clock; having a character describe herself while looking in a full-length mirror; having future love interests literally bump into each other upon first meeting, etc.

16. Resist the urge to explain (RUE). Marian was mad. She pounded the table. “George, you’re going to drive me crazy,” she said, angrily.

“You can do it!” George encouraged said.

17. Show, don’t tell. If Marian pounds the table and chooses those words, we don’t need to be told she’s mad. If George says she can do it, we know he was encouraging.

18. Avoid mannerisms of attribution. People say things; they don’t wheeze, gasp, sigh, laugh, grunt, snort, reply, retort, exclaim, or declare them.

John dropped onto the couch. “I’m beat.”

Not: John was exhausted. He dropped onto the couch and exclaimed tiredly, “I’m beat.”

“I hate you,” Jill said, narrowing her eyes.

Not: “I hate you,” Jill blurted ferociously.

Sometimes people whisper or shout or mumble, but let your choice of words imply whether they are grumbling, etc. If it’s important that they sigh or laugh, separate the action from the dialogue:

Jim sighed. “I just can’t take any more,” he said. [Usually you can even drop the attribution he said if you have described his action first. We know who’s speaking.]

19. Specifics add the ring of truth, even to fiction.

20. Avoid similar character names. In fact, avoid even the same first initials.

21. Avoid mannerisms of punctuation, typestyles, and sizes. “He…was…DEAD!” doesn’t make a character any more dramatically expired than “He was dead.”

Your Assignment

Apply as many of these hints as possible to the first page of your work-in-progress and let me know if it makes a difference.

I’ve added a downloadable self-editing checklist below with all 21 tips included. The more boxes you can check for your manuscript, the leaner, meaner, and more ready it will be for submission to a publisher.

Click here or below to download it free:

 

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