How to Self-Edit. Wait — How Do YOU Self-Edit?
Let's Create a Communal Editing Masterclass Together
Hey workshoppers. Let’s pool our editing knowledge…
In Sophie Campbell’s fiction editing workshop, she encourage you to be ruthless when it comes to streamlining and perfecting your words:
Every sentence and scene should have meaning and intent
Trim down the unnecessary and tighten your prose
Focus on creating an experience that resonates deeply with your reader
There’s a load more great advice in the workshop, but here in the Community Corner we want to know how YOU approach the editing stage.
So, when you whip out the red pen or turn on tracked changes, what are your go-to editing rules of thumb?
Share Your Top Self-Editing Tip
Let’s see if we can make this comments section an absolute editing masterclass…
For what I imagine will be my final copyediting run-through, I start at the bottom of my manuscript and work my way up, paragraph by paragraph. Not following the thread of the story allows me to focus purely on the words and sentences. I find a lot of things to fix or tweak that way.
No specific advice, but I find if I have to revise to fit a lower word count, my writing inevitably improves. A couple of times that meant I had two stories I thought were intertwined but were better as two separate stories.