Your English Teachers Lied To You: Editing Edition.
Part One (Bad Writing Rules Edition).
It took me a dozen+ years of writing to learn how to properly edit- to learn what editing actually entails. Because guess what was never explained to me?
Proofreading is not editing.
So for everyone out there whose English teachers also failed you, here’s a guide to the reality of the editing process. It’s not comprehensive, it’s just to give you a leg up if you, like me, thought “editing” meant changing a few sentences and making sure there weren’t any grammatical or spelling errors. Unfortunately it’s a little (a lot) more involved than that.
First Things First: Write Your First Draft.
Just do it. Know that no matter how hard you try to make this first draft perfect, you are still going to have to edit it. So you might as well save the editing for later and finish the story. And really think hard about starting over half-way through. If you aren’t completely changing the plot or characters, you probably don’t have to. Most everything can be fixed in the next stage:
Developmental Editing.
Look at the story as a whole. Really consider what you want from this story: how you want readers to feel as they go through it, what pacing and atmospheres are required, how you want to portray the world, and how sympathetic or real each character needs to be.
This is a crucial part of editing that I didn’t know when I was younger. You need to look at your (written!) story with intent and make conscious decisions. The first draft came from your heart, the next drafts need to come from your brain. (But if you try to make the first draft come from your brain, you’ll never finish.)
Even once your draft is written, don’t be afraid to rip it apart. It is not a finished product. Think of it as an extended outline; you still have the opportunity to change your mind about plot points, character arcs, world building, etc. Sometimes even the years-long plans that sounded great in your head turn out not-so-great on paper. Do what it takes to make the story the best version of itself, even if that means killing your darlings. (Just make sure to keep an unedited version saved in case you want to reverse any changes.) Keep in mind that you are not done writing. You might still be writing scenes, heck, entire chapters, from scratch.
If you’re having trouble seeing where improvements can be made on a first draft, that very rarely (if ever) means it is perfect and cannot be improved. This is a good time to find beta readers. If you can’t see your story objectively, listen to where and what your beta readers want to see changed and consider why. Try rewriting those scenes and characters accordingly and be open-minded to admitting it improves the story.
The “stages” of editing, by the way, are not one-time acts. You might developmental edit six times, maybe twenty, maybe only once. It depends on the story and its needs, not yours. Don’t change a few scenes and move on because you’re impatient. You want your story to be cohesive and as close as possible to its final form (not its final wording!) when you’ve finished developmental editing. Then you can move on to:
Line Editing.
If the story, as a whole, is the best version of itself, now is the time to look at its individual fibers. That is, the sentences. “Line” editing, right, who saw that coming?
Now is the time to stress about synonyms and word order. This is when you can beautify sentences, dig into that thesaurus, make sure your characters’ voices are unique and consistent.
To be fair, all the processes of editing get a bit mixed up. If you’re fixing some sentences during developmental editing, that’s fine, it’s bound to happen. If you know exactly how you want to change something, then sure, go for it while you’re looking at it. Just don’t stress about it during that stage, because that sentence or paragraph might be chopped entirely by the time you’re done. That’s why you need to be sure you are finished with developmental editing before wasting time tweaking narration and dialogue that might not exist in a few drafts.
In this stage you can finally look at the style of your writing and work on being a good writer, not just a good storyteller. Syntax, narration flow, visceral descriptions… this is the time to polish your writing to how you always imagined it’d be when you win that Pulitzer Prize or Hugo Award.
When you can feel that shiny trophy in your hand as you read your beautiful, lilting prose, now is the time for:
Copy Editing.
This is when you look at the nitty-gritty. Make sure grammar is working to your advantage (whether that means it’s “correct” or not is up to you). Check that no repeated words stand out and important words deliver the impact you want. Pay attention to whether the vocabulary and language matches the genre, world, and atmosphere.
Copy editing and line editing are often shown to be the same thing, and you can very well do both of these at the same time. Line editing as described above will always involve some form of copy editing because it’s a focus on language and style. However, personally, I believe it’s still a good idea to reread your latest draft with detail-oriented specifics in mind. And finally we can move on to:
Proofreading.
This is what you always did two minutes before submitting that essay you wrote an hour before it was due. And it is not editing. And most word processes basically do this for you now. It’s essentially just double-checking that spelling and punctuation are correct and that the manuscript is in the format necessary for whatever its next step is (if you’re querying, that it matches agent or publishing house parameters, if you’re publishing, that it fits the physical book layout, etc).
PSA: The names of these stages aren’t relevant. It’s for the sake of categorization and distinction. Different people seem to have different concepts of what developmental, line, copy editing, and proofreading are. They use different names for the same thing or group two together when others say they’re separate processes. Really, none of that matters. What matters is that you do what you need to do, regardless of what name it’s called.
-
Don’t forget to write a sentence of your story today! Thanks for reading~
