Editing Your Own Work
You will find as you write a first draft that you just need to get words down. Don’t worry about inconsistencies or about errors at that point (I’ll fix a missed letter and quotation marks as I go, but that’s it.) Just write. There’s time to edit afterwards.
Unless you’re writing to deadline, it’s best to put a larger project aside for a while—in a drawer or in a file for a week or more. When you come back to it, you’ll look at it with fresh eyes, then let your inner editor go at it.
There’s plenty you can do, however, let’s look at five most common areas to work on:
- Replace cliches with fresh new language: Instead of strong as an ox, consider He made lifting his toolbox look like an easy thing. Skip jargon too. Your audience might not know the terms.
- Use active voice rather than passive: Start the sentence with the subject and you’ll be more likely to stay in active voice. Passive writing uses more words. Instead of Ana was allowed to walk to her friend’s home, you might express it this way: Ana’s parents said she could walk to her friend’s place.
- Show versus tell: You could write that the character was mad, or better yet describe their physical reactions. Did Trudy shake her fist in her anger at the kid who stole her bike? Or did she run after him, trying to get it back?
- Correct spelling: Spell check will alert you to replacements, but it can also lead you to the wrong word. Which dictionary are you using and which variants of a word will you use (gray or grey)? Grammar check can also assist or drive you crazy.
- Avoid adverbs: By choosing a verb with precise meaning, you lessen the need for adverbs. Consider meandered instead of walked slowly, and hurried instead of walked faster and faster.
Writer Mag suggests reading aloud to catch mistakes your eye skips over because you know what you wanted to say.
A writing partner may come in here, or a critique group. Each individual in the group notices different things. One might see a plot issue, another an inconsistency, and still another might ask, “Could it really happen that way?”
Write, then edit as much as you can, and you’ll be on your way to a better story or article. The more you learn, the stronger writer you’ll become.
Resources to help with self-editing:
Spunk & Bite, Arthur Plotnik
Checkmate: A Writing Reference for Canadians, Joanne Buckley
Emotion Thesaurus, Angela Ackerman and Becca Puglisi
Bad Choices Make Good Stories, Erin M. Dionne
Carolyn R. Wilker
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