Self-Editing Tips for Fiction Writers

While I’m a huge proponent of working with a developmental editor, I also strongly believe the best way to make the most of that investment is to get your manuscript in the best shape you’re able to on your own before handing it off to an editor. This is important because if your editor needs to spend time addressing issues that you could have fixed on your own, that’s time away from deeper aspects of the manuscript that you may not have seen or may not have known how to address.

I also recognize that sometimes, for various reasons, professional editing is simply out of reach. In those cases, approaching your story with an editing mindset and having some idea of what to look for can be helpful.

Working through these self-editing tips can help you get your manuscript in the best shape you’re capable of before either sending to your developmental editor or hitting publish.

1. Read Your Manuscript Straight Through From a Reader’s Perspective

My top tip for self-editing your novel is to first read through the entire manuscript as though you are a reader. I like to save my manuscript as a PDF and read on my iPad so it feels a little more like a book, and not reading it on my computer helps keep me from trying to edit as I go.

Reading through the manuscript from start to finish is the best way to experience the story as your readers will. It’s so easy as writers to think we’ve put everything on paper that we were thinking as we wrote, but sometimes that doesn’t happen. We might have a perfect vision of our main character’s appearance but then realize upon reading that we didn’t describe them once. We might say our main character has social anxiety but we don’t actually show her being anxious in social situations.

Or as we’re reading, we might notice a glaring plot hole or inconsistency. Depending on how long your first draft took, it may have been a long time since you wrote the beginning of your story, and it’s possible that by the time you got to the end, you forgot some of the details and mixed them up. Certain plot holes might not be clear until you read the story straight through and realize something isn’t working.

Reading through your manuscript can also help you identify places where your pacing is too slow or you’ve rushed through an important scene that should be dramatized. If you’re falling asleep as you read a scene, you know you need to go back and cut some description or backstory. If you can’t visualize a scene based on the words on the page, then you know you need to go back and add in some more stage direction.

Trying your best to view your manuscript as an objective reader can help you pinpoint overall issues with the story as well as smaller moments that need some work. Try your best to read through without breaking into editing mode, but do make brief notes so you remember what your thoughts were as you went through.

2. Check Your Manuscript for POV Breaches

One of the things I spend a lot of time pointing out in the manuscripts I edit are areas where the writer has a POV breach. POV breaches are moments when the point of view switches from the one we have been in to a different one. This often occurs in third person limited since as writers, we know what’s happening in all of our characters’ heads, but the POV character doesn’t. So we end up with statements that briefly put us into the perspective of a character who is not our POV character. And while this might be brief, it jars the reader.

To check for POV breaches, pay attention to any information shared that your POV character wouldn’t know for themselves. If you’re in the POV of your main character, commenting on what another character knows, thinks, or feels can’t be done with certainty—if you make these kinds of observations, you’ll need to qualify them as being assumed by the POV character and show evidence for why the POV character believes that to be true. For example, the POV character may believe another character is angry and cite them balling their fists as evidence. For more on POV breaches, check out my blog post here.

While you may not catch every instance of POV breaching in your manuscript, the more you are able to catch ahead of sending your manuscript to your editor, the more time your editor will be able to spend on other concerns.

3. Check Your Manuscript for Filter Words

Filter words are another area I tend to spend a lot of time on as a developmental editor. Generally, filter words aren’t a terribly complicated fix—for the most part, it just requires restructuring the sentence. But since these are rather easy things to look for and fix, they’re a great thing for writers to self-edit and take off their editor’s plate so the editor can focus on bigger things.

Filter words are words that pull readers out of the story by drawing attention to the fact that they’re being told a story. They’re words that filter the narrative through the lens of the POV character (for example, she saw, he heard, she felt). For a more in-depth explanation of filter words and how to fix them, check out this blog post.

4. Watch for Info-Dumping & “As You Know, Bob” Conversations

Lastly, check your manuscript for instances of info-dumping and “as you know, Bob” conversations. Info-dumping is when a writer conveys information pertaining to the story in a giant “dump” without weaving it naturally in the story, pulling readers out of the present story to focus on backstory. Similarly, “as you know, Bob” conversations are a type of info-dumping where the writer uses dialogue between two characters to relay information, but it feels unnatural because the other character already knows that information.

Both of these are the result of the writer trying to share information with the reader in a way that doesn't feel natural instead of weaving the details into the story. Both tend to pull readers out of the story because they remind them they're reading a story rather than experiencing it along with the characters.

To fix this, first consider if the information is truly necessary for the reader to know in that moment. If not, find a more natural place to weave the information in. If yes, consider how you could condense the information or incorporate it more naturally so it feels more integral to the story in the moment rather than a random tangent of information.

There's no one-size-fits-all approach to fixing info dumps, and some will require more effort than others to revise, but doing so will make your manuscript much stronger and help keep your readers engaged with your story.

I hope these were helpful to get you started with your self-editing process. If you’re looking for someone to help you take your manuscript to the next level, check out my developmental editing and manuscript evaluation services here. I’d love to chat to see if we’d be a good fit!