A mini-guide on how to line edit! I’m gonna try and make a big long post later, but for those who don’t want to read a lot of words, here’s some quick tips!
Line editing is a level of editing focusing on the sentences & paragraphs. It looks at the structure of each sentence to see if it’s conveying the idea the best it can. You want to upgrade the prose and clean up the text.
When do I do line editing?
After developmental (or “big picture”) editing, before copyediting (grammar & spelling). Don’t do line edits before you really workshop your piece, because you might end up getting rid of a lot of sections in developmental edits.
Ok, but Kels, what do I do?
Right, here are the quick-and-dirty line editing tips I use:
Use the “find” tool to search up your crutch words and get rid of them. These are words like: very, definitely, just, kind of, sort of, somewhat, somehow, maybe, enough, really, seem, sudden, guess, etc. etc. Everyone has different crutch words—I personally use “just” a LOT so I went and got rid of most of them! I tend to keep crutch words in dialogue to make it sound more natural, but up to you!
Look at your “that”s. Most of the time, a “that” in a sentence can be deleted. Read the sentence without the “that” and see if it makes sense. for example: “She told me that yesterday was her birthday.” vs “She told me yesterday was her birthday.” You can do without the “that” and it makes for cleaner, more concise writing!
(this is a pain BUT) read every sentence out loud. You might notice weird turns of phrase that you’d be better off changing, or clunky phrasing, missing words, weird pacing etc. if reading the WHOLE thing seems like A LOT (it is) do it one chapter or scene at a time and take a break! this will help u notice all of the weird small things that you just don’t pick up on while reading in your head
look at sentence structure! do you have a lot of long sentences? too many short sentences? a looooong paragraph of description that isn’t broken up? do a lot of your sentences start with the same word/phrase (like “He went upstairs / He called his mom / “Hi mom…” / He thought it was weird….” all in one paragraph, even with some other stuff between it?) make sure you’re changing up the composition so your readers dont get glossy-eyed!
read your dialogue out loud SEVERAL times. each time try for a new inflection. make sure it reads the way you want it to. make sure it sounds like something a real person would say. look at it again, and make sure it matches the character. make sure it’s not too heavy-handed or cliche or obvious to the theme.
look at your metaphors & similes. is there a better, more creative way you can say that?
word choice! word choice word choice word choice. this goes along with the reading aloud and metaphor bit, but pay close attention to the word choice. Are you using strong verbs/adjectives? was that an adverb you can get rid of? can you use one word there instead of two?
double check plot and character inconsistencies. this goes past just dialogue—look at actions & thoughts, too. while a lot of this might be caught in developmental edits, some stuff is bound to slip by. question EVERYTHING.
Line Editing article | ShaelinWrites video | Alexa Donne video | Crutch Words list
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