10 tips for becoming a better self-editor
10 tips for becoming a better self-editor
I’ve done a lot of self-editing lately — for this newsletter and when finishing my manuscript draft. I’m lucky to have a wonderful book editor, but as writers, we can’t rely on our editors to do all the heavy lifting. We have to do our own self-editing beforehand, and we have to build in time to do it.
Over the years, I’ve developed some self-editing tips that I’ve found helpful. I’m sharing a few of them with you here in hopes that you’ll find them helpful too.
1.) Create some distance. If time is on your side, create a buffer between writing and self-editing. If you go immediately from one to the other, your self-editing will suffer. Ideally, a day’s separation helps. If you’re on deadline, look for shorter separations; even walking away from your desk to get a cup of coffee or to take a quick walk can help. Your eyes will be sharper if you’ve given them some rest.
2.) Line edit first, then copy edit. Whenever possible, it’s best to separate these two types of editing so that you’re not trying to look for everything all at once. Even if you’re lucky enough to have both a line editor and copy editor, you should still do these two types of editing yourself before turning in a piece.
Line editing is when you self-edit by looking at your writing with these elements in mind: structure, pacing, tone, transitions, and sentences/paragraphs/sections that aren’t quite working. Copy editing is when you look for finer details: typos, grammatical errors, stylistic errors, word choice, name misspellings, etc. I like to think of it this way: When I line edit, I’m putting on my reading glasses. When I copy edit, I’m using my magnifying glass.
3.) Cut big, then small. Or, as writing scholar Roy Peter Clark likes to say: “Prune the big limbs, then shake out the dead leaves.” First, be on the lookout for entire paragraphs or sections that don’t support your focus. Cut, trim, or rewrite these parts. Then be on the lookout for the weakest quotations, anecdotes, and details. Consider cutting them so that you can give greater power to the stronger quotations, anecdotes, and details — or rewrite them so they can be among the strongest. Lastly, mark optional trims. After a few reads, you can decide whether they should be actual cuts.
4.) Be willing to let go of your darlings. The British writer Sir Arthur Quiller-Couch once famously advised writers to “murder your darlings.” By that, he of course meant that writers should be willing to part with passages they like, especially if an editor says they’re not working. I kept this maxim in mind a lot when self-editing my book. But instead of murdering my darlings, I send them to my outtakes document. This is a Word doc where I keep copy that didn’t make the final cut but still has potential. My outtakes document got longer during the self-editing process, and it ended up being over 35,000 words. This isn’t unheard of; when at a writing conference a couple years ago, I met another author who said her outtakes document was over 100,000 words long.
Mine is largely filled with narratives from people I interviewed but ultimately couldn’t include due to space constraints. In the months ahead, I plan to use the document as a point of reference and a source of inspiration when writing stories related to the topic of my book.
5.) Be mindful of context. When self-editing, I always ask myself: What would I need to know if I were a reader who didn’t have any prior knowledge of this subject matter? This is an especially important question to ask when writing personal narratives; when you so intimately know your own story, it’s easy to lose sight of the context that others need to know to fully understand your experiences. When a piece lacks context, readers will draw their own (sometimes incorrect) conclusions.
As my former colleague Keith Woods, now chief diversity officer at NPR, once said: “Context lends meaning to facts. It adds to understanding. It puts action into perspective, zeroing in on the reasons things happen as they do so that the viewer, reader, user or listener won’t have to guess about the motives of a character in a story. When a story provides too little context, a character’s actions can seem odd, inexplicable.”
6.) Watch out for wordiness. When self-editing, I always look for superfluous words that don’t add meaning to my message. These often come in the form of wordy phrases that can be cut from four to five words down to one or two. Here are some examples:
Make an appearance with → appear with
Is capable of being → can be
In order to —> to
Is dedicated to providing → provides
In the event that → if
It is imperative that we → we must
Brought about the organization of → organized
Significantly expedite the process of → speed up
On a daily basis → daily
In view of the fact that → since
Relating to the subject of → regarding
Have a facilitative impact → help
Were in great need of → needed
At such a time as → when
Is of the opinion that → believes
Came to the realization that → realized
7.) Highlight/bold/underline all names. My name is so often misspelled that I once wrote an article about it. Over the years, people have referred to me as “Mallory,” “Mallery,” “Malory” “Malary,” “Mallard,” (like the duck), and so on. To avoid misspellings in my own writing, I highlight all names as a visual aid. When I highlight them, I can more easily spot misspellings or inconsistencies. Sometimes, for instance, I’ll notice that I spelled a name correctly on first reference but misspelled it in subsequent references. I think spelling names correctly is a sign of respect — and it signals to the reader that you are a reliable, trustworthy writer.
8.) Read your work out loud. When you read your work out loud, you hear things that your eyes miss — typos, redundant words, repetitive sentence structures, etc. You can also more easily detect if your writing is too wordy. Whenever I’m out of breath by the end of a sentence, it’s usually an indication that the sentence is too long and that I need to either tighten it or break it into two sentences.
Reading your work out loud also enables you to hear the way your writing sounds, and it can therefore make you more attune to your own writing voice. One of my mentors, Pulitzer winner Jacqui Banaszynski put it well: “When I read my own work out loud, I hear things that my eyes look over. I hear when sentences are getting too long or when I’m using adjectives or adverbs I might not need. I also hear when I’ve built in some lack of clarity.”
9.) Print it out. I know this is not the most environmentally-friendly advice, but printing out your work can help you see it differently. Sometimes words become one big blur when you’ve been staring at them on a computer screen for too long. Printing them out forces you to interact with your writing differently, and it gives you the freedom to step away from all the distractions on your computer. I like holding my writing in my hands and crossing out words with a pen instead of a delete button. And I like taking my hard copies to places I wouldn’t otherwise go with a computer — a picnic bench, for instance, or a park.
10.) Switch it up. If you don’t want to or can’t print out your work, change the way it looks on the screen. You can do this by adjusting the margin size or by using a different font color or type (think Century Gothic instead of Times New Roman). The goal here is to trick your brain into seeing your writing anew, through a different lens. Changing the way the text looks can help you more easily detect what needs fixing.
I mentioned this strategy to a student recently, and she shared a different way to switch it up: Reading your work backwards, starting from the last paragraph and working your way up to the first. I don’t think this strategy would work for me personally, but I love knowing that it’s helpful for her. That’s the beauty of self-editing: everyone has their own strategies. The key to successful self-editing is finding the ones that work best for you.
I’d love to hear from you! What are some of your tips for self-editing? Or what challenges do you face during the self-editing process? Leave a comment by clicking on the button below.
That is a great list of unnecessarily wordy phrases. I'm going to keep that around for my day job, editing legal writing. Lawyers are addicted to nominalizations and excessive uses of "to be" verbs! Have you heard of E-Prime? It's a way of writing English without the verb for "to be." I find it really useful to seek out and destroy unnecessary uses of "is," "are" and "was" when I'm editing.
Some treasure here!