Self-editing Tips

Hello fellow writers.

How are you all doing today? 

I wish to share a few self-editing tips I personally use, to help you make your story an easier read. 

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, whenever I'm done with a chapter and before I publish them on Booknet. Sorry, I'm not brave enough to post my typos (they do slip through, though). 

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 the past tense then it must continue in the same tense. 

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 of tone, body language, and facial expressions.

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. 

16. I make sure I use commas and full stops in a paragraph.

17. And believe it or not, it is not wise to overuse exclamation marks ( ! / !!! ) in fiction. Teachers advise using them only a couple of times in a story, to add the desired impact. 

I think that is all.

Hope you'll find these tips useful and maybe you'll consider using them too. 

Happy writing!

Do you wish to know more? Check out some of my writing-related works.

These are put together for self-study purposes. I hope you'll find them useful. 

Glossary of Writing Terms

Story Discovery

Simple Grammar and Punctuation

Commonly Confused Words