We were talking on the #PulpRev Discord recently about the problems that authors face with editing:

1. Writing and editing are two separate skills. Writers may also be good editors, but it’s not guaranteed.
2. It’s a big ask to solicit free editing advice from friends and acquaintances. Editing is long, hard, tedious work, and editing a friend’s manuscript risks burning the relationship.
3. Professional editors are expensive.
4. Self-editing is difficult even for an accomplished editor because of the author’s familiarity with the manuscript. Call it manuscript blindness. Problems won’t stand out to you because you’re reading what’s in your head and not what’s on the page.
5. There are tricks that help you self-edit, but they’re not widely known. (Do they teach anything useful in school any more?)

For all these reasons (and more!), terrible manuscripts abound.

Since not everybody can follow my own strategy of marrying a talented editor, I thought I’d summarize the self-editing techniques I’ve gathered over the years.

1. Change the font. (Keep it readable, just different from the font you wrote it in.)
2. Double the line spacing.
3. Give yourself a generous right-hand margin.
4. Print it out.
5. If you have time, put it away in a drawer and ignore it for a few days.
6. Read through the manuscript in passes, with a red pen or pencil in hand.
7. If red pen hurts your feelings, grow up. Writing is pain. Editing makes it better.
8. Mark problems as you find them. (You don’t have to have a solution to the problem at this point.) Mark the point in the text, and mark in the right-hand margin. This makes it easier to find later.
9. Read out loud, or subvocalize. It’s slower, but it forces you to see, and more importantly, hear every word. The goal here is to mark anything that sounds strange. If you stumble over it while reading it out loud, your reader is likely to have trouble with it too. If it sounds weird or awkward, it is. Rewrite it.
10. Work in passes. Have a particular kind of problem to look for on each pass.
11. The developmental edit is focused on the big picture items of theme, character, and consistency. Does everything hold together and contribute to a unifying theme?
12. The structural edit focuses on the overall structure of the story. Does it work? Does it engage the reader? Does everything happen in logical progression? Does every scene move the story forward?
13. The copy edit focuses on the mechanics of the prose. Look for problems with: spelling, grammar, capitalization, word usage, dialogue tags, point of view, verb tense, and inconsistencies in description (character, setting, action blocking).
14. Once you’ve gone through all your passes, return to your editor of choice and revise.

I hope this is helpful, and results in an abundance of better-edited manuscripts!

This list is adapted from (shameless plug) my own book of short story writing advice, Write a Salable Story Today, Even If You’re a Terrible Writer. (If you follow that link and purchase something, I get an extra kick-back at no extra cost to yourself.)