Self-editing

Hello fellow writers.

How are you doing today? 

I wish to share with you a few self-editing tips that I personally use.

Some of you might have more experience with this so I welcome you to share your thoughts in the comments. 

1. I edit as I go, chapter by chapter. Others edit only when they're done with the first draft. I'd go crazy. Sorry. 

2. I read everything aloud. It helps so much with spelling and punctuation.

3. I make sure to write in one tense and with an active voice. If I started telling the story in past tense then it needs to continue like that. 

4. And I must keep the point of view consistent as well. 

5. I make sure the structure is easy to read and to have various lengths of sentences in a paragraph. 

6. I look for the most commonly confused b@stards: his/he's, its/it's, your/you're, to/too, onto/on to, into/in to, their/they're/there. 

7. I cut the repetitive words and phrases.

8. Search for synonyms.

9. I tend to tell instead of showing the action, so I scope through the text to add descriptions.

10. I make sure the time and place correlation flows in a continuous manner, that my characters don't just teleport into a certain situation.

11. I try to keep my adverbs as few as possible by describing a certain emotion or action.

12. I make sure all my dialogue starts in a new line whenever the speaker changes and that I place the closing quote mark. I also make sure that the punctuation stays inside the quotation marks. 

13. I make sure my descriptions are short and concise. I use my characters' senses of sight, hearing, taste, touch, and smell but not all at once.

14. I make sure to combine the dialogues and descriptions so that it floats around the actions of the characters and moves the plot forward. 

15. I comb through every sentence to check if I used the possessive correctly. For example Sarah's books or the monkeys' dinner. 

I think that is it.

If I remember anything else I'll leave it in the comments.
Hope you'll find these tips useful. 

Happy writing!