Seeing What the Reader Sees

One of the hardest but most important aspects of editing your own work is reading it with fresh eyes. You can (and should!) do this with beta readers or by hiring an editor, but being able to do it yourself is so, so valuable.

But how the heck do you do that? After all, when you're reading your own work, you not only know what's going to happen but also what might happen, what never happened, and what happened once in an old version like seven revisions ago!

You have to get out of your head. You have to read your own work as though it were the first time you've ever seen it. You know nothing that isn't on the page! It's not easy, but here are some tips to make it possible.

TAKE A BREAK. This is probably the most common advice. Step away from what you wrote for a while—days, maybe weeks or even months if you can. When you come back to it, you might have forgotten parts, but more importantly, your brain will have the opportunity to approach it like a new thing. That feeling won't last through the whole novel, but hold on to it as long as you can. Also...

TAKE NOTES. As you read your novel with fresh eyes, write down facts and details—especially things that you know have changed from outline to draft or from revision to revision. But—and this is the most important thing—you cannot write down anything that is not on the page! Write down what you see, not what you think you see.

PRACTICE. Believe it or not, seeing a familiar document from a fresh reader's perspective is a skill you can improve at. How do I know? It's literally my job. The more you do it, the easier it will be to see a manuscript the way a new reader would see it, setting aside all the extra information floating around in your head.

This is a very important skill for writers to learn. Beta readers are amazing, and a good editor is well worth the money, but you are the only person in the world who fully understands your intent and your vision. If you can maintain both readers in your head at once—one who has never read this before and the other who knows what you want it to become—you can do anything.

What Kind of Editing Do You Need?

In spite of *gestures at everything*, I am still a professional editor, and I still want to help you with your writing. So let's talk about that for a bit.

It's not uncommon for writers to be unsure of what kind of editing they need. They want to make their novel the best it can be, but they also don't want to break the bank doing it. Once you've determined whether you need an editor, how do you know what kind of editing to get?

This isn't helped by the fact that different editors use different terms and definitions. I'm going to use my terms here, which should give you a foundation for talking to any editor even if they use these terms slightly differently.

I'm going to talk about three very broad categories of editing:

1. Developmental edit
2. Line edit (a.k.a. copy edit)
3. Proofread

Developmental Editing

This is what you want when you've finished an early draft and want to know whether the story works. A developmental edit (or dev edit) looks at the big picture—structure, pacing, plot holes, themes, characterization, world-building. Does each scene and chapter serve a purpose and move the story forward? Does every major character have an arc?

From a practical standpoint, a developmental edit will consist primarily of comments in your document and a thorough editorial letter.

This edit is for writers who are ready to dig deep and do major revisions—adding or removing characters, combining subplots, cutting or rewriting whole chapters. You might even decide the best way forward is to rewrite the whole thing! (That's not as bad as it sounds, mind you. I'll talk about that in a future post.)

A dev edit might be less helpful if you're satisfied with the story's plot and structure and you just want it to be written better or if you're on a tight deadline and don't have time for major revisions.

This kind of edit is generally better earlier in the writing process, when the novel still feels soft and malleable. (Technically, novels are always soft and malleable, but it's hard to feel that way after the 50th revision!)

Line Editing (or Copy Editing)

This is for when you know the story and structure are sound, but the writing just isn't where you want it to be. A line edit (sometimes called a copy edit, though some editors have different definitions for each of these terms, so always ask!) looks at the writing and the craft—description, dialogue, sentence length, character voice, emotional impact. Does each sentence and scene convey the feelings you want them to? Are the style and detail choices consistent throughout? Is the word "just" used too many times, and does the main character sigh too much?

From a practical standpoint, a line edit will consist primarily of (lots of!) tracked changes with additional comments throughout the document to explain those changes or query the author's intent.

Line edits are useful when you're getting ready to publish and want to make the novel sound as good as it possibly can.

Proofreading

This is the last step before publication. The editor will be looking for objective errors—typos, grammar issues, punctuation. The goal is to create a document that is completely error free (even though, as any writer knows, that's virtually impossible).

Deep Edit

There's another kind of edit, sometimes called a deep edit, which is like all three of these rolled into one. The editor provides developmental comments, line edit changes, and an error free document all in one.

As you might imagine, this is a lot of work—some of which could be wasted if, for example, a developmental comment motivates the author to rewrite an entire chapter! On the other hand, this can be a good way to get a lot of information all at once.

Because every kind of edit not only improves that manuscript but also helps the author level up their knowledge and writing skills. Even if you don't end up using all of the tracked changes in a chapter you rewrite, you will still benefit from understanding why those changes had been suggested at all.

These Categories Overlap!

The way I've laid it out here can make it feel like editing is black and white—either you get developmental comments or line editing changes but not both. The truth is that there is a lot of overlap between each type of editing.

For example, I will often make line editing comments on a dev edit to help the author learn and save time in their revisions, and I will frequently leave developmental comments in a line edit as I go. And a line edit always looks for objective errors. These categories are really more about what the editor focuses on rather than rules about what they Will and Will Not Do.

How Do I Know What I Need?

In an ideal world, a novel would have a developmental edit (or two!) on an early draft followed by a round (or two!) of line editing and a final proofread before publication. But for an author on a budget, that's a lot! So what do you really need?

Ultimately, only you can decide, but these questions might help:

• What stage is the novel at? Earlier stages benefit more from a dev edit, while a line edit is usually better if the novel's close to finished.
• What aspects of your manuscript are you confident about? If you know the plot and chapter structure is good, for example, then you probably don't need a dev edit.
• What level are your writing skills at? For example, experienced writers who have published a solid story or two might (MIGHT!) have less to gain from a dev edit. Newer writers might benefit from a deep edit as a way to acquire a lot of knowledge all at once. (Note that everybody needs a good line edit.)
• What can you afford? A single round of editing can be very expensive, with no real guarantee of a return, so only you can decide what's most important to you. Maybe you can lean on beta readers for free developmental feedback. Or maybe you have a good sense of craft but less of whether this story will work, so you risk skipping the line edit. Or maybe you want to get a deep edit to learn as much as you can from it to apply to all future revisions.

Again, you're the only one who can decide, but also, talk to your (prospective) editor! Even before you hire them, most editors are happy to discuss what kind of editing might be best for you, and many (like me) offer free sample edits that can help you figure out what kind of feedback seems most useful.

Do your research and trust yourself. You know what you need better than anyone.

Who Are You Writing For?

With the US's ongoing slide into a literal banana republic,* it is very difficult for me to think about writing and writing tips. I'm sure I'm not alone in this.

* Wikipedia defines a banana republic as a country with an economy of state capitalism, where the country is operated as a private commercial enterprise for the exclusive profit of the ruling class. Show me the lie.

But one thing I keep thinking about—that applies equally to writing a sci-fi novel or arguing on Facebook—is who are you writing for?

Because here's the thing. There will always be people who don't like what you have to say. They will tell you your story is slow or predictable or confusing or has too many made-up words. They will try to convince you that the US government's actions aren't authoritarian actually, and why do you keep comparing everything to Nazis?

These people are not your audience.

Write for the people who enjoy your work, who identify with your characters, who know it's unconstitutional for press outlets to be denied access because they still call it "Gulf of Mexico."

I mean, sure, you want as many people as possible to enjoy (or agree with) your writing, and you should continue to work on your craft (and empathy and accurate information) toward that end.

But you can't please the haters. Don't spend your time on it. Diluting your vision can rob your work of what makes it unique and valuable. Arguing with someone who believes Elon's dismantling of the government is fine, actually, wastes both your time and theirs (not to mention the mental health costs of arguing online).

Remember who you're writing for. They're your people. Write for them.

You don't even have to acknowledge the others.