Stages of Editing

Editing is one of the most important parts of writing a book - almost as important as the act of writing itself. There are four important things to remember when you’re working on your edits.

(All this content is from a writing workshop I had today. I thought this information could help anyone else who wants to write.)

First of all is structural editing. By that, I mean thinking about whether the story flow makes sense. Do the scenes make sense? Are the scenes actually doing something important for the story, or are they just there because you want them to be there? Are the scenes arranged in order? You need to think about how the plot works and what purpose the scenes have. For example, is the paragraph or scene you write exposition or exposition? Does it move the story forward or offer readers a little relief?

Second, you need to look at your characters. You need to look at whether the characters match who you intended them to be. All your characters can’t sound the same, so it’s important for you to understand who your characters are. You need to know what drives them, what they like or dislike, what they desire, and what they are afraid of. These are important because they help justify the choices your characters make.

Third, you need to look at clarity. This term is kind of vague, but let’s unpack it a bit. It involves things like setting, action, time, and point of view. Your setting needs to be clear to help the reader visualize the story. The actions have to be in order, and you need to describe them in a way that makes sense, and the readers have to understand the reason behind the action.

Fourth is language editing. Out of the four, I think this is the simplest part of the four. Here, you look at things like word choice, pattern, rhythm, and repetition. You don’t want your writing to be repetitive because readers could get bored and put the book down. You also need to look at grammar and the way you write your sentences. You need to think about whether you want to write in active or passive voice and how you report things that your characters do. Your writing can be verbose or simple, depending on what effect you want it to have.

And with that, dear reader, you can edit your book.

I know, it looks like I just gave you a list, but when I heard these things, I thought they were really important and I immediately knew I wanted to share these with you.