Mastering the Art of Self-Editing: Enhance Your Writing and Hire the Right Editor

Ever wondered how to transform your manuscript from good to brilliant? Today, we’re demystifying the art of self-editing and sharing coveted tricks to enhance your writing style. Home in on sentence structure, narrative flow, and the fine details of spelling and grammar to shape your narrative into an engaging masterpiece. Discover the power of potent verbs, the subtle art of punctuation, and why reading your manuscript aloud could be your secret weapon in the battle against run-on sentences.

Have you been grappling with tenses, gratuitous L-words, and knowing when to be ruthlessly decisive with your edits? Let us illuminate the way. In this episode, we peel back the layers of tenses and discuss the importance of being conscious of your language choices, especially those pesky L-words. We also delve into the importance of objectivity, and why knowing when to step away from the editing process is just as crucial. And remember, editing doesn't have to be a chore; it's your golden ticket to making your manuscript shine for readers.

But wait, there's more! Beyond self-editing, we're guiding you through the labyrinth of hiring the right editor. Get the low-down on the different types of editing, from structural to line to proofreading, and why each one should fall into place at just the right moment in your editing journey. Involve other discerning readers in your process and understand why it's essential to engage a professional editor to catch those elusive mistakes. Plus, learn why building an online presence and using platforms like Patreon can lend a helping hand in supporting your work. As a bonus, stay tuned until the end for a teaser of our upcoming guests!

Transcript

Wendy H. Jones: 0:03

Hi and welcome to the Writing and Marketing Show brought to you by author Wendy H Jones. This show does exactly what it says on the tin. It's jam-packed with interviews, advice, hints, tips and news to help you with the business of writing. It's all wrapped up in one lively podcast. So it's time to get on with the show. Welcome to episode 181 of the Writing and Marketing Show with author entrepreneur Wendy H Jones.

Wendy H. Jones: 0:30

Today I'm going to talk about self-editing on the show and we'll be giving you hints and tips on how to self-edit your work. And that's because I've been doing a lot of editing recently and I've been spending time knee-deep in looking at the sources and looking at all the different aspects of editing, and I've been having a great time. I love editing, but I know a lot of other people don't. But other than editing, what have I been up to? Well, not a whole heck of a lot, really. I've spent a lot of time in my office. I have done a lot of reading as well. I'm trying to watch less television and do more reading. It's just so that I can immerse myself in the written word. And I'm knee-deep in trying to get ready for my trip to the States in just three and a half weeks. It's flown past. It really has. I cannot believe how fast it has gone. In fact, it's not three and a half weeks, it's under three weeks. Gosh, that is coming up fast. And I have a three-month tour of the States coming up and I'm very, very much looking forward to that, i can assure you. So that's taken up a lot of my time.

Wendy H. Jones: 1:43

I've been getting things ready for that. You know all the usual things Making a hair appointment, making sure that I've bought all the toiletries I need to take. I know you can buy toiletries in the States before anyone says otherwise, but you know I'm a woman of habit. I like to use the stuff I like to use. But obviously you have to worry about weight as well. And then you need to worry about am I going to take paper packs? Am I going to take just my kindles? Am I going to take notebooks? Do I need a new laptop? No, i don't need a new laptop. My laptop's absolutely awesome. I have a MacBook Pro and it's brilliant. So all these things you need to take into consideration anyway what you need to take with you, packing lists, how much weight you're allowed All the usual stuff has been filling my brain. So the only things I can talk about at the moment are either travel or editing. So editing, it is that we're going to be doing.

Wendy H. Jones: 2:41

Today. I was going to have an interview for you with someone who is in search and rescue with a dog, and I was going to be interviewing, recording that today. However, that's had to be delayed by a week, hence the reason here I am talking to you about editing and I'm very much looking forward to it. Before we get on to the show, i would like to say, as always, it's an absolute pleasure to bring you this show every week. I do so willingly. If you would like to support my time, you can do so by going to patreoncom forward slash Wendy H Jones and supporting me for just $3 a month, which is the price of a tiered coffee per month, and it would let you know that you're enjoying the show and that you want me to continue. And continue. I would like to, because obviously I've been doing it for well. I can't count for a start, but I've been doing it for over three years. I can't quite say how much past three years. It's a good job. I'm good at words because it's not my 40 numbers. So it's wendiehjonescom forward slash. No, sorry, patreoncom forward slash. Wendy H Jones Gosh, i told you my brain is fried at the moment. I'm sorry, but I promise you that the show itself will be better than the introduction. So, as I say, i've been thinking a lot about self editing and wondering what I could talk to you about with that, and I have to say, first of all, i'd like to outline why self editing is so important.

Wendy H. Jones: 4:17

Well, firstly, it's your chance to help shape your narrative into what you want it to be. It's your chance to make sure that your manuscript is as squeaky clean as you can get it. It's your chance to shape your work. It's your chance to make it better. It's your chance to pick up all the things that are wrong with it at the moment, because, trust me, everybody, when they write a first draft, there is always something wrong with it and you always need to go back and change things. So it's your chance to make the changes and make them changes in the way that you want.

Wendy H. Jones: 4:52

It's a chance for you to look at sentence structure. It's a chance for you to look at the overall structure of the of the narrative. Have you missed anything out? For example, if you're writing a crime fiction novel, have you put in enough red herrings? Have you forgotten to investigate a murder? Trust me, i did that in one of mine once, in the first draft, and I had to go back and sort it out. So it's your chance to make sure that everything structurally is good. And then it's your chance to make sure that your spelling and grammar is good and that you're following the conventions. And it's your chance to see that it's not boring. Because if you go through and read it and you're bored with what's being read, trust me, so will the reader who has paid for your book. And you don't want that at all. You want your book to be as good as it can possibly be.

Wendy H. Jones: 5:41

So where does one start? That is the the question. You know, where do you actually start with editing a book? Well, i'd like to say, the first thing you want to do is you want to look at clarity, coherence and the overall quality of your book. So, as you read through it, are things clear? Are you misunderstanding something?

Wendy H. Jones: 6:06

Now, this may be difficult for you, because we all read our book so many times that you know sometimes it blends and we see what we want to see. But is it clear? Is everything coherent? Are the sentences good? Are the word choices good? Is the tone good? Is it in a voice that you're happy with All these sorts of things? are you happy with the quality or are there things that you feel need changing to make that manuscript better, to actually bring it to life more? Have you done this setting correctly? Is the speech right? Things like that do your characters all speak more differently to each other, so they all come across as characters in their own right and just not carbon copies of each other, or even carbon copy of yourself. We can all fall into that habit, that's for sure. So the first thing you're doing is looking at the overall clarity, coherence and overall quality.

Wendy H. Jones: 7:11

Now, some of the mistakes that you might want to watch out for, the errors that people make. I mean there are grammatical errors, punctuation issues, repetitive phrasing and excessive wordiness. Obviously that's not your structural edit. That's coming down and looking at the nitty gritty of your proofreading it, but you may pick things up as you're going through it and you want to be looking out for these. Now I would like to just give an overview of the things that I have found that people use. It's the L-Y word, anything that ends in L-Y quietly, quickly, you know, i can't think of any at the moment, but they're usually used to prop up sentences to make them better. And if your sentence needs an L-Y word to prop it up, then you need to think very clearly about whether your sentence could be changed. So, for example, instead of saying she said quietly, you might give the impression from the words that she was whispering. Or you could say murmured, muttered, whispered, and I know everybody says just use said, because said blends in and nobody pays any attention to it, and that is absolutely true. It is true that said should be. But if you're wanting to give an idea that things are a bit quieter or a bit louder, instead of saying loudly you could say shouted or yelled or screamed.

Wendy H. Jones: 8:47

Use more powerful words, and that's one tip I would really give you. Use powerful words and what we all tend to do, and I fall into the same trap as everyone else will say very, so we'll say very noisy, instead of saying deafening, something like that. A more powerful verb. Very often that could be frequently, regularly, you know. Think of other words. You can use various, like the L-Y words it's used to prop something up in an effort to make it stronger. Make it stronger by changing the verb. So things like very powerful, compelling, very pretty, beautiful, stunning, startling you know different words you can use. You know very scary, petrified or chilling, or you know things like that you can use different words. So think of more powerful verbs. And that's one thing that I have found out. You know I've found out that happens a lot, that people use the word vary or they use the L-Y words to prop things up.

Wendy H. Jones: 10:01

So you're looking at your sentence structure. So if you're going through it and you're looking at the overall flow and you come across an L-Y word, underline it, highlight it if you're doing it on the computer, or underline it if you're doing it on paper and just make a note to go back and look at that word to make it stronger, to make the narrative stronger. And the other thing that's used a lot in terms of L-Y words is suddenly. Please don't use the word suddenly. Suddenly is just a redundant word, you don't need it after the phrase, after the word suddenly. You know the words in. That should be used to show that something happened suddenly. So suddenly the fairy godmother appeared. You know, you can say in a puff of smoke a fairy godmother appeared, and do it like that, so it gives you the idea that it's sudden, without saying, suddenly, think the different words that you can use.

Wendy H. Jones: 11:07

The other things that you can use in terms of looking at your sentence structure is look at whether the sentence flows correctly and if it does. Now, often if you've got two sentences that stand together, we will very often use a comma between them, but there are two whole sentences. If you've got two whole sentences then and you put a comma between them, that is a comma splice, and your comma splice is where you use a comma to link two independent clauses and usually a colon or a semi colon should be used instead. For example, john and Cherry love walking. They walk every day. You would use a semi colon there instead of instead of a comma, because it joins them together, and you can only do this where there are two totally separate sentences, if the sentences stand on their own. Now, if you said John and Cherry love walking full stop, they walk every day, it sounds a bit simplified.

Wendy H. Jones: 12:17

Now, i know it's a very simple sentence as I'm giving you. You know it's things like that that you can do. I'm only giving you two very simple sentences, and you can also use semi colon, because very often what happens is we will do a run-on sentence so and so and so and so and so, and such and such and such and such and such and and, and you've got several sentences there that are stuck together to make one long run-on sentence and you can break it down either by splitting it into two sentences or you can break it down by using semi colons or colons, and that will make it read better. So look at every sentence. Look at every sentence and see if it reads well, try reading it out loud. Reading it out loud is a really good way of really good. Now, you shouldn't say really good either, and I did that deliberately. Instead of really good, i could say that is a powerful way, a powerful way to understand whether your sentence works or not. So, really, really good, really anything is another word that is worth omitting. Go through your entire manuscript and look for that.

Wendy H. Jones: 13:36

The other thing that is used a lot, the word that and 99.9% of times, the word that can be removed from your narrative and it doesn't hurt the sentence at all. So if you're looking at your sentences, what you're doing is if the word that can be taken out of the sentence and the sentence still stands as a proper sentence, then remove the word that. The other word that you can remove and it makes the narrative much tighter, it makes your text much tighter, it helps your ideas to flow is the word just. We do that all the time, all of us will, but I was just doing we don't need that. The word just is redundant. You can use the word just. I'm not saying use it all. So you need to look at every sentence and if you're using it to say I was just doing something or I was just listening to something, then it can usually be omitted. Now it's your manuscript, so what you use is up to you. However, i can only give you ideas, i can only give you tips.

Wendy H. Jones: 14:55

So the other thing that we do all my goodness, we spend our entire time using one word. I'm not joking, and mine seem to be smiled, or smile, or smiles. For heaven's sakes, how many times can you use that in one novel? So if I'm saying you know, because I'm trying to break up sentences, i'm trying to give a person I say Di Shona Mackenzie smiled and said well, if I say that every time it starts to get really annoying. You can change it for things like get in, but seriously, you don't just want to think of other words for smiled all the time.

Wendy H. Jones: 15:38

So you might want to look at other ways of showing action, other ways of breaking up dialogue, breaking up sentences, rather than just the one word that you're using. And, trust me, if you go through your narrative, you will find one word that you are obsessed with, and I will go through all at the end. Go through and change that word. Your narrative will be all the better for it. And so the other thing you need to look at is whether the tone and the voice that you've used is consistent throughout the entire book, the entire manuscript, whether it's a short story, whether it's a book, whether it's a piece of flash fiction. Your tone should be consistent, and that's important. So go through it Now.

Wendy H. Jones: 16:33

How this can help you do that is to actually read it out loud. If you read it out loud, you'll find the tone. You will also find out whether your writing is flat or whether it ebbs and flows, because if you've got very monotone writing, when you read it out, it's going to be very monotone. So, for example, if I say DI Shona Mackenzie spent her whole day in the workforce and there was nothing to do and it's really boring, if I say DI Shona Mackenzie spent the whole day in the workforce and she was so bored that she needed to think she was rubbing her fingers on the table, thinking of things she could do to actually get her out of this hell that she suddenly seemed to be in, it will help you to realise that things are boring and you need to spice them up. Now again, i'm making that up on the spot.

Wendy H. Jones: 17:28

There are other things you can say. You know that will make it better, but reading it out can make you realise where your writing might be boring, where your voice might be monotone and where your characters do not have enough action. And that's the other thing I want to say. You need action in your books. When I talk about action, i'm not talking about, you know, car chases, that type of action. I'm talking about action in between things. So, for example, i can say you know, di Sean McKenzie said I've had enough of this. You've got to tell me what's going on and I'm not putting up with this any longer. She slapped her hand on the desk. Give me the correct answer now and stop wasting my time and your time, though stop. She clutched her hands in order to stop them shaking, because this waste of space in front of her was seriously upsetting her.

Wendy H. Jones: 18:34

And there's another word that you might want to look at seriously, another LY word. I use that a lot as well, and I need to look at where I'm using seriously, and I'm giving you this from my own, because obviously I'm not going to tell you what I'm doing with my clients work, that's for sure, because that's not fair on them and they're paying me to help them not tell the rest of the world what they're doing. But I do see seriously in a lot of manuscripts and that's one that you might want to look at Repetitive phrasing, the way you're using the same words over and over and over, and I'm not just talking about smiled, i'm talking about in the same sentence you might, or in two or three sentences you might, have the same word or same verb three or four times. That you need to look at. You need to look at what you're doing Now.

Wendy H. Jones: 19:30

The other thing you need to look at is excessive wordiness or flowery language. We're all very good at using flowery language I do it all the time and the flowery language sometimes you can take five of the words in your sentence and replace it with one powerful word. So look at those instances where you can actually get rid of the excessive wordiness and tighten your manuscript up. The more you tighten those sentences up, the more you tighten your words up, the better your manuscript is going to be, the better your novel will be, the more it will come out for your readers, and that also enhances readability. If you're struggling to read something when you read it or when you're reading it out, then your reader is going to struggle as well and you want it to be readable. So you do everything you can to enhance your readability and taking out flowery language is one of the ways you can do that.

Wendy H. Jones: 20:39

So the other thing when you're doing edits is you can actually re-look at your ideas. You can rethink what you were saying there, you can rework paragraphs to make them work, and this all helps to strengthen your writing. If you're doing all of this re-writing your paragraphs, re-writing your sentences, moving things around, even moving chapters around and it might be that you want to take entire paragraphs or chapters out completely. Now, when you cut them, paste them somewhere else. I'm not saying get rid of them and send them to the trash bin and never use them again, because you never know they might fit into somewhere else in your manuscript or they might come in useful in a different manuscript, but that is one thing to look out for that. You can cut things in order to make them more readable. That is important.

Wendy H. Jones: 21:43

So, as you're trying to refine your writing still as well and to revise your thinking because, especially if you're doing non-fiction, it might not be clear what you're saying. So you might need to revise your thinking to make it clearer for your reader. Or you might say well, that's not actually what I meant, but that's what I've said. Because that's the difference What you've meant versus what you've said are two different things, and you need to look at what you've said is actually what you meant, and this is your chance to do that. Obviously, you're going to look for spelling errors. You're going to look for typos, inconsistency in your grammar, you're going to look at your punctuation and, eventually, your formatting as well. You're not going to do all that at the beginning, that's for sure.

Wendy H. Jones: 22:37

One of the other things that you need to look at are tenses. Tenses are really important and people jump around between past and present and future like nothing else on earth in their manuscripts, in their novels, obviously in the first draft. I'm not talking about later on, but none of us are actually thinking about tenses. So make sure, if you're writing in the past tense, everything is in the past tense. If you're writing in the present tense, everything is in the present tense. And if you're writing in the future tense, it's in the future tense. I've never actually written anything in the future tense Not a whole novel anyway, that's for sure. I'll have written sentences and things in the future tense, but not a whole novel. But I've certainly written things in the past and the present tense and they're the two that people get very mixed up with.

Wendy H. Jones: 23:30

And there's another thing very mixed up with. You don't need the word very. These are things that everybody gets mixed up with and that's all you need. It stands on its own without very beforehand. So check your tenses are the other things.

Wendy H. Jones: 23:48

So you know you've got to be objective. This is the big thing when you're editing. You've got to be objective. We love every single word we've written. We treat it like it's our own. We treat it like it's something we gave birth to, which we did in a certain way. But you need to be objective when you're editing. You're passionate when you're writing and you're objective when you're editing, and you need to be able to take decisions that will make your narrative better.

Wendy H. Jones: 24:20

And you've heard the saying kill your darlings, and you sometimes have to. You sometimes have to get rid of those words because they're not making your manuscript better, they're not helping the storyline, they're not helping the flow of your writing and your story And they're pulling people out of the story. So if you come across a word that pulls you out the story and you have to think about it, then you need to rewrite that word or get rid of it, because I can absolutely assure you that that is going to happen when your reader reads it as well. So do all those sorts of things, and managing self-doubt is actually an important one. We all doubt ourselves, and we doubt ourselves when we're editing, because you read it and you think what's on Earth? Why did I ever think this was going to be good? Why did I ever think I can write? Remember, this is a rubbish first draft. Everybody writes a rubbish first draft. And what you're doing when you're editing is operating on it, polishing it and getting it Sunday close on, basically. So your editing is for that, when you do not doubt yourself, you can do this, you've got it. It's an edit, not a disaster. And the other thing you should really really think about and there's another two L words And instead of saying really really think about, you should say consider. Another thing you can consider is knowing when to stop editing and consider your work complete. We're all like that.

Wendy H. Jones: 26:03

My very first book. I spent forever editing it and editing it again and editing again. Eventually you have to get a lick go of it. I know people that have spent 10, 20 years editing one book and they cannot get out of that cycle. It needs to go out there, it needs to go out into the world. At some point you need to finish and you have to say my manuscript is complete.

Wendy H. Jones: 26:28

Now a lot of people look at editing as a necessary evil. I love editing. I love editing my work because I see it as my chance to make what I have written better, to make what I have written something that is going to be brilliant for the readers. It is my time to get it right. You don't have to get it right in the first draft That's not what the first draft is about But you do have to think about it in the editing process, and this is your chance. Editing is your chance to get it all right.

Wendy H. Jones: 27:06

Now there are different types of editing and you can do it as you go along. There is structural edit, there is line by line edit and there is proofreading, and they are all different things And you might want to leave the proofreading until the end. Well, you do want to leave the proofreading until the end, because if you are chopping and changing things, it's not going to make sense, so you are going to have to proofread it again. So I would do it in that order structural edit, line edit and then your proofreading. There are the three edits that I do. Yeah, there are other edits you can do, but guess what, guys, once you've done all of that, it doesn't finish there, because then you send it to maybe alpha readers, which are your peers, other writers who will read it for you and give you feedback, and then you do an edit based on that. You send it to beta readers, who are your intended audience. They will give you feedback and you will edit it based on that.

Wendy H. Jones: 28:13

Then, guys, this is the clincher. I would advise you to send it to a professional editor and get it edited again, because you are so close to that work that you will not be able to see the flaws. You will not be able to see the mistakes. You will not be, because your brain reads what it expects to see there, it sees what it expects to see and it reads what it expects to read. So you do need to hire a professional editor as well, and that is extremely important. And you know I do do editing. I don't do a lot of editing because I'm primarily an author and writer, but I do do editing for people and they have been very happy with what I have done. I'm not saying you need to contact me to do editing, but if you want to, you can do, and if I can fit you into my timetable, my diary, then I can discuss it with you.

Wendy H. Jones: 29:14

But again, you need to get the right editor, and this is why I'm telling you that I edit. You do not want me to edit your manuscript if it's setting out of space, because I don't do sci-fi, i just don't read it. I don't know anything about it. So you don't want me. I don't do fantasy because I don't really read it, so I would be struggling to help people with fantasy. I can help people with other types of editing crime fiction, no trouble, cozy mysteries, you know. Literary fiction, biblical fiction. I have done all of that. I've helped people with non-fiction. I can do that. But again, the reason I'm telling you this is because you need the right type of editor. Don't just employ an editor and then discover they don't actually work in the area that you are writing in, because that is pointless, because it's not good for either of you. So you need to get the right editor. And I'm going to include something else If you're doing non-fiction, you need an editor for the actual book itself, about the structure, the proofreading, everything like that.

Wendy H. Jones: 30:29

But you also need an editor who can tell you about whether your subject matter is correct and if you've got anything wrong. So that's another step you have to add in. If you have a historical fiction book, you need somebody from that period to have a look at it to see whether not somebody from that period, somebody who's knowledgeable in that period, i should say it'd be a bit difficult if you're writing about the Middle Ages to get somebody from that period to edit your book. But you need someone who's knowledgeable in that area to actually tell you whether things are historically correct or whether people would use those words in that day and age, because maybe the word wasn't invented to 200 years later, so they wouldn't have used it in dialogue. I'm not saying you can't use contemporary language in historical books, but the actual words that they use on the whole needs to be accurate, so you can't use a word that hadn't been invented. So these are the things that you need to consider Get the right editor for your project and research that, really research that and make sure that you get the right person for you.

Wendy H. Jones: 31:42

So I hope you found this helpful. I will be back again next week when I will be talking with someone about Search and Rescue, and so if you're doing anything and you want to involve Search and Rescue, then you will get some marvellous tips then. I hope you found today's session helpful and I look forward to seeing you again next week. And until then, keep reading, keep writing, and I will see you in a week. That brings us to the end of another show. It was really good to have you on the show with me today.

Wendy H. Jones: 32:19

I'm Wendy H Jones and you can find me at wendahjjonescom. You can also find me on Patreon, where you can support me for as little as $3 a month, which is less than the price of a tea or coffee. You go to wwwpatreoncom. Forward, slash wendahjjonescom. I'm also Wendy H Jones on Facebook, twitter, instagram and Pinterest. Thank you for joining me today and I hope you found it both useful and interesting. Join me next week when I will have another cracking guest for you. Until then, have a good week and keep writing, keep reading and keep learning.