Self-editing is like performing surgery on yourself. It can be done, but it requires a steady hand and no small amount of courage. Here are some tips for how to ‘kill your darlings’ without killing the writer.
Make it huge. Zooming in to 300% or increasing the font size of the text makes errors more obvious. This also helps you slow down so you’re moving word by word, line by line. When reading at normal pace, our eyes tend to fill in the blanks and skip over small words, which means we’re predisposed to miss errors. A huge font size prompts your brain to treat the text differently.
Learn your quirks. Every writer has their own specialty typos that pop up regularly. Mine are spelling ‘and’ aand and ‘your’ youor (who knows why). It could be something about the rhythms of our fingers on the keys. When you find a typo, use the ‘find and replace’ function in Word to see if it recurs.
Look for repetition. We all have our favourite turns of phrase, adjectives and verbs, but using them a few too many times can make the writing feel stale. Another common error to check for is the repetition of small words (such as ‘the the’) in the text. Use the search function in Word to check for these overused or accidentally repeated words.
Go analogue. Print out the current chapter of your manuscript that you’re editing. Double spacing will give you plenty of space to mark it up and make notes. Editing by hand is a great way to find errors you may have missed on the screen. I love to print out a hard copy and sit outside to edit when my eyes need a break from the computer screen.
Even after a productive round of self-editing, there will be parts of your manuscript that remain blind spots – aspects of the writing that are impossible to see because you can’t ‘un-know’ it and read it for the first time. A fresh pair of eyes will catch those blind spots and help get your manuscript into the best possible shape for publication. Get in touch to find out how I can help: sophie@wisewordsediting.
Comments