Self-editing is a skill that every author should work on. Fortunately, with a bit of awareness and effort, it’s also a skill that’s hard to avoid working on. But let me first point out that I’m not suggesting that everyone can rely exclusively on self-editing. I really think that every writer would benefit by working with a professional editor at least once in their career.

Would it be nice to have a professional edit on every book? Sure, it would, but if you’re an indie, and especially if you’re one who cranks out a lot of books, that much editing probably isn’t a financial reality for you. So, if for whatever reason you can’t have a particular work professionally edited, what can you do?

6 tips to help you get your book in better shape

How well these suggestions work depends on the amount of refinement needed and the level of effort and honesty you bring to self-editing the project. Let’s dive in.

Tip #1 Get a trustworthy proofreader

By trustworthy, I don’t just mean avoiding some moustache-twirling villain that’d nick your book and give you a swift kick in the butt the instant your back is turned. I mean you want your book read by someone that not only knows how to spot gaping plot holes and awkward typos, but also has the guts to be honest with you about it.

Sometimes friends and family don’t want to hurt your feelings, but that’s not going to help you. Remember that strangers will be reading your book, and strangers often feel no qualms about hurting your feelings.

The best thing a well-meaning beta/proofreader can do to help you is to speak up if something in your story is wrong, weird or simply not good. To encourage this sort of vital honesty, you must make yourself appear reasonable and approachable.

If you’re oversensitive and prone to taking offense easily when you feel criticized, you need to retrain yourself or you will hate the process of publishing. You will also scare off the valuable feedback that you need to improve your book in meaningful ways.

So, if a writer needs to learn to be more accepting of negative feedback, let them learn. In the meantime, let them fake it to extract maximum benefit. (You can always fume and throw things across the room in private.)

Tip #2 Listen to your book

I don’t know about other programs, but Microsoft Word has a ‘read aloud’ option. The reading is flat and robotic but it’s very effective for catching missed or incomplete words. This is helpful because when you write something, you know what you’re trying to express. And you often know it so well that your brain will automatically insert a missed word because you know it’s meant to be there.

That’s an incredibly cool mental trick, but it works against you when you’re self-editing. People on the other side of your skull don’t have the background knowledge to fill in the blanks. They’ll see the errors and their enjoyment of the book might suffer.

However, when you hear a sentence read aloud, any missing links and spelling errors stand out far more clearly. I’m not saying you’ll catch everything, but you’d be surprised what you’ll pick up. All in all, it’s an easy and very handy way to give your book another layer of polish.

Tip #3 Make a repetitive word list

This is optional but I highly recommend it. I honestly don’t know if anyone does this except me, but I think it’s a good idea, so I’ll share it.

This arose from a reviewer complaining that I used the same distinctive speech tag too often. Bless her cotton socks, she evidently did a word search in the kindle version and mentioned that I’d used this word 17 times. Because it wasn’t a hugely common one it evidently stood out to her.

I cast my mind back to a book of someone else’s that I read and I’d formed a similar quibble. This book substituted ‘snorted’ for ‘laughed’ MANY times. It was as though a herd of pigs infiltrated the book and filled it with incessant mirthful oinking. I hated it and also complained in a review. It was a sauce for goose and gander moment, and I realized that this reviewer had raised a valid point.

I then started looking at other words that I know I favor. I then made a list of those words and searched the document for them and then evaluated each instance. What I discovered is that I overused some words, or at least used them too close together. So, I went through that entire list and made the needed changes.

That’s now a standard part of the process when I’m self-editing. I go through that process for every single book before I turn it over to any beta readers. While it is a bit tedious, the result is a better and more well-rounded narrative. It is completely worth it and I recommend you try it at least once.

Tip #4 Make a timeline

Make yourself a separate document and do a chapter breakdown. Here you can list any subtitles and then a brief overview of the events that happen in that chapter. I would also strongly suggest noting both the day and the time of day (i.e. morning, afternoon, evening, night). This will help you to maintain continuity and identify any issues with the progression of events.

For instance, if you’re winging it with no sort of guide as to what happens when, it’s easy to time warp. Let’s use the example of a murder mystery:

A murder victim is discovered on a Wednesday morning. But you may have alluded to a party that happens Saturday night and the next clue arises from a conversation that happens during that event. If you aren’t paying attention, you can easily jump to that next plot point and ignore the fact that a couple of days passed with seemingly nothing happening. Suddenly it’s Saturday evening and your sleuth is planning her investigative goals for the party.  It’s been days; what was she doing to advance the story in that time?

Now that you realize there’s an empty hole in the plot progression, you can either change the day of the murder or insert some explanation of what happened in between. You might even get inspired for a subplot and weave that in.

Tip #5 Be willing to be brutal

Without doubt one of the hardest things you may ever do as a writer is to admit that a scene you love doesn’t fit. I’ve been there myself and it’s not nice to realize that an exchange or comment that I really thought was great is actually dragging the scene down. If you’re serious about self-editing, you need to be ruthless.

A good professional editor will tell you when something is hurting the flow of the story, doesn’t contribute and feels like filler, or is out of character. If you aren’t working with a good editor, you need to try and watch for those things yourself. Be honest and realistic in your approach while also accepting that you almost certainly won’t do as thorough a job as an impartial editor would. That’s okay, with a conscientious self-edit, you can still make real and effective improvements to your story.

In saying that though, don’t just throw away the conversations or actions, or whatever they might be, just because they don’t fit at the moment. Make another document for deleted scenes and offcuts, stash those bits of text there and you may be able to use them somewhere else someday.

Tip #6 Rinse and repeat, and repeat

You will need many a draft, my friend. I highly doubt that any truly good book got it right the first time, or even had only a single editing pass (except maybe the Bible, but we’re not looking to be that ambitious).

You will need to read and listen to and read your book many times. Each time you go through, you will most likely add, subtract or tweak something. That means you need to step back and look at that section in full context again. There have been many times that I’ve changed a sentence or altered a description and then realized I’d left a word in from the original version. Or left out a word I thought I’d added.

The steady, monotonous plod of effort will be worth it. You don’t want a reputation for having a slap-dash or haphazard style. You want a level of smooth flow and accuracy that is so effective it’s enjoyed almost without being noticed.

There’s so much you can do to help yourself

And there we are. We’ve looked at just 6 suggestions that can help you to effectively self-edit your manuscript. Again, it’s not entirely a substitute for an editor, but sometimes it’s our only option. (I can only hope that there aren’t too many typos in this post.)

The more you write, the better your writing can become. As long as an author is willing to learn and has a good blend of confidence and humility, there’s no limit to where their skills can go. So, whether you’re on your own or working with an outside editor, make your book the best it can be and enjoy sharing it with your readers.