How to self-edit your novel...

All about writing for yourself, but editing for the reader - plus a special offer for subscribers!

Hi everyone,

Today I am welcoming author and editor Jon Barton from The Literary Consultancy to the newsletter. He tells us all about what to do when you’ve actually finished a first draft, how to edit for the reader, and touches on some of the mistakes he often sees authors making.

At the end there is also a special offer for subscribers of this newsletter, so make sure you read to the bottom!

Hi Jon. Please can you tell us a bit about yourself and your role?

Hi Phoebe. I’m an author and freelance editor working across a range of commercial fiction genres. I started life as a playwright and screenwriter before writing fiction. At the moment I’m working with authors commissioned by Audible Originals, and read for The Literary Consultancy’s industry-leading manuscript assessment service. When I’m not doing that, I lead TLC’s Self-Editing: Fiction course, which encourages aspiring authors to explore the fundamentals of editing and how to assess their own work.

What advice would you give to an author feeling overwhelmed with the editorial process? How should they make a start?

If you’re ready to edit, by definition, you have finished a manuscript. Okay, it might be a messy first draft, or you may have written (and rewritten) chapters many times over. In my experience, new authors neglect to celebrate finishing a draft, and in some cases, minimise the effort involved.

It’s so important to celebrate the accomplishment of reaching the mountaintop. Enjoy the view while you’re up there, because editing requires you to look at the manuscript as a whole, and that can feel daunting in a different way.

If that sounds like throwing snowballs at Everest, it really is okay to take a step back. The vast majority of writers enrolled on TLC’s Self-Editing: Fiction course have forgotten to celebrate the achievement, but it’s a necessary step when teaching yourself to self-edit. “You can’t edit a blank page” is a tired cliché, but in this case, it’s absolutely true. Editing shouldn’t be any harder than writing the book in the first place. I’ve always found that an encouraging thought!

What is the one mistake you often see authors make when editing?

In my experience, authors habitually tell themselves the story when writing their first draft. That’s not a mistake necessarily, but it can cause problems that manifest in various ways.

Say you’ve written a murder mystery, but there’s been no murder for the first third of the novel. Things clearly need to happen faster.

To give another example, what time of day is it? How much time has passed since the previous chapter? Where does the action occur? These may sound obvious, but specificity adds verisimilitude, which is especially important when readers are required to suspend their disbelief. Without those details, readers have to work harder to situate themselves. Often writers haven’t paid attention to such things, because they’re laser-focused on reaching the end. So the guiding principle when self-editing is: write for yourself, but edit for the reader.

Is there a timescale you think authors should set themselves when editing?

A deadline can be useful, however arbitrary, because you’d definitely be working to a deadline if you signed a publishing contract. That can provide helpful pressure. But it depends what kind of writer you are and what you think you need to thrive. Perfectionists convince themselves that the writing will always need work and will never be “ready”, but a manuscript edited to the best of our own ability represents the best sample of writing we’re capable of producing at the point of submission. I think that’s a helpful metric.

If the ultimate goal is to submit with a view to traditional publication, in all likelihood, the submitted manuscript won’t be the final draft.

Draw up a plan, give yourself enough time to action what needs editing, safe in the knowledge that the novel will continue to evolve.

Is there any editing software you think is useful, or is a simple word document good enough?

Nothing beats printing the manuscript and reading a hard copy. It’s important to get away from the computer screen when editing. I might suggest taking the work for a walk: read aloud using a voice note or a recording app on a phone, go outside, and walk around the block. Listening to a page or a section of the novel will put you in a reader’s shoes. It’s also a good way to identify holding patterns at a language level. On TLC’s Self-Editing: Fiction course, we use word clouds to identify frequent qualifiers. I ask authors to draw seismograph lines that represent the pace of their story. Anything to help shed new light on the material can be constructive, and that may involve a visual or an oral prompt.

Why do you think self-editing can feel so hard?

It’s hard to pick apart something you’ve grafted at for a long time, especially if you had convictions about one aspect of its structure, only to discover it doesn’t work in execution. Perhaps there is a perceived gap in knowledge, e.g. the characters are one-dimensional, so what are the techniques you can use to develop them? Reading for pleasure, you might become so impressed by the quality of published writing that you judge your own work against it.

The important thing to realise is that self-editing can be the most exhilarating part of the process, instrumental in bringing the book to life.

It can even be the moment when the story starts to behave and feel like a novel worthy of publication.

What are your top three editing tips for readers of The Honest Editor?

Having committed to the edit, “by prearrangement with yourself” as Anne Lamott calls it in Bird by Bird, here are my recommendations to get started:

1. Print the work and read aloud to yourself. It’s a great way to separate writing from editing. Sounds obvious, but it will also help you to think objectively; to think like a reader.

2. One bite of the apple. Don’t try and do everything at once. Create a list of everything you feel you need to work on. Split that list into two: one list for expansive tasks (e.g. a significant plot change); another for small gains (e.g. changing a character’s name). You’ve essentially drawn up an actionable plan.

3. Read widely within your genre, to investigate what works and what doesn’t. Let your taste be your guide. Identify tropes, and the myriad ways authors use them, subvert them, bend them to their will, or ignore them completely! It will also give you a clearer idea of where your book might fit in the market right now.

Thank you so much, Jon, for your time, and I hope readers find this helpful!

Offer for Honest Editor Subscribers:

If you use the discount code HonestEditor15, you will get 15% off Self Editing courses at The Literary Consultancy this Spring. This includes the Self Editing Fiction course (only five spots left for this one!) and the Self Editing Non Fiction course. If you need a little boost or some editorial help, this is the perfect offer!

Phoebe x