When I realised the importance of creating an effective, methodical self-editing process, I reached out to the best writers I knew.
I wasn’t just looking for tips.
I wanted to get stomped into the ground. I wanted smart people to insert fishhooks into my weaknesses, attach rope to the hooks, and haul me into the air like a grisly puppet.
Sorry if you’ve just eaten. But there’s no room for pity or indulgence when it comes to editing writing. The fact is, you’re not as good a writer as you think you are. Find someone who can show you why you suck, and you’ll save yourself years of bad writing.
Let them bang your head against the wall of your failure a few times. You’ll soon see what that wall is built of, and you can start pulling out those mistakes yourself. In time, you’ll avoid them automatically as you write.
If you’ve got time, it’s good to take several passes, with a different approach in each pass. This is how professional editors work – there’s plenty of editors who earn a living specialising in just one of the approaches listed below.
- Developmental editing
- Structural editing
- Copy editing
- Line editing
- Mechanical editing
Developmental editing
It’s always good to start with the ‘big picture’ stuff. And if you can, leave that first draft alone for as long as possible before editing.
When you’ve just written it, all the details are fresh in your mind. You understand completely everything that’s on the page, and you know why it’s there. It all makes sense – to you.
You know who doesn’t understand? Your reader, that’s who. Not until you’ve explained it to them. So, when you edit writing, you need to get in reader mode first. And if you can let the details of what you’ve written fade from your mind, then you’ll see it from their point of view when you come back to it.
Is anyone going to know what you’re on about? Does the piece actually have a point? Does the reader leave the piece any wiser than when they came in? How well have you satisfied the intention of the piece?
Developmental editing example – Sometimes, you’re up against the clock. When time is of the essence short, a banzai editing process can be really useful, based on your own ingrained bad habits. I decided that showing my banzai edit style may also be of value to anyone reading this article, so I included my checklist at the end.
Structural editing
Ok, they get the point. You’ve got your idea across, thanks to your developmental editing. You’ve got the ball over the line. But did you deliver your point with accuracy and elegance, or did you just shoulder charge through, with your arguments going every which way?
Structural editing is the single greatest editing kindness you can perform for your reader. Structure your thoughts on the page. Give them something to read that flows. Show them the map at the beginning, then lead them round the attractions. Let the logic of your various arguments accumulate, leading inescapably to your conclusion. Don’t make them trudge randomly back and forth behind you, wincing at your clumsy, repetitive stumbling.
It’s a good time to consider style, too – start weeding out your clunkers here. That includes avoidable use of the passive voice, and looking for opportunities to add sensory description.
Structural editing example – the ‘ball over the line’ analogy above was getting a bit torturous, with clunky references to footballers I knew nothing about (I’ve stopped following football sometime around 2002). I stripped it back, but decided to keep the descriptive aspects.
Copy editing
Your article/blog/short story/angry letter to your MP should be looking pretty sweet by now. Unfortunately, we’re aiming for excellence, so you’re not done yet.
Let’s really put the screws on this piece, and see where we can get to. We’re looking to trim the fat now. Pulling out your unnecessary words – that, now, he, and, just, but, though. Kill all that nervous tic punctuation (yes, the hyphens and the colons. I’m assuming you had the decency not to include exclamation marks in the first place).
We’re still keeping an eye out for passive voice, as well as making grammatical tweaks.
Copy editing example – I originally wrote this line as ‘tweaking for grammar’, which on reflection sounded like I was dancing provocatively for an elderly relative.
Line editing
Exactly what it sounds like. You’re going line by line. This should feel like a gruelling slog. You’re looking out for a lot of the same clangers you were hunting during the copy edit, but you’re slowing right down to ask yourself, ‘Is that really the best way to say that?’
Assess the line for style – could it be simpler, clearer? Could it be more evocative?
Assess the line for structure – Is this sentence too long? How does this line fit with the ones before and after it? Is the rhythm or sentence length too repetitive?
Go word by word where necessary – Is there a more effective word choice I could make?
Line editing example – ‘annoyingly long process’ became ‘gruelling slog’.
Mechanical editing
Nuts and bolts time. Get yourself in ‘pedantic English teacher’ mode, pull out the dreaded red pen, and go super-pernickety on your spellings, punctuation, line spacing – all the fun stuff. Or alternatively;
- Copy and paste your article into an email
- Switch on the Grammarly extension
- Swear at the American spelling corrections
If you really want to get this side of things nailed down (it is important, no matter what all the greengrocer’s say) then hire a proofreader to pull your work apart. Make a note of the mistakes they highlight, and add them to your banzai edit checklist. And don’t be ashamed, there’s a reason proofreaders are so popular at parties.
Finished! Look at that. It’s beautiful. Now send it off to the client and wait for it to come back to you disfigured and unrecognisable, like it’s been attacked by a pride of lions who’ve worked out how to ‘Track Changes’.
Uncle Dan’s Banzai Edit Checklist
This isn’t for you to copy. Unless your flaws are exactly the same as mine. Hey, maybe you’ve got piles and a false front tooth too! It’s unlikely that we match that closely though. Just find your least attractive features and make a checklist. Then you’ve got a tool to put behind the ‘break in case of emergency’ glass. Here’s mine.
- Punctuation – incorrect. INSIDE the speech marks, good practice to use a comma before a reporting clause.
- Punctuation – excessive. Remove hyphens, exclamation marks, colons, unless serving a specific purpose.
- Unnecessary words – he, and, just, that, now, but, though. Look for them at the beginning and ends of sentences, paras, clauses
- Active voice (unless passive is serving a purpose, or using active would render the sentence unreadable or strange). This will also help remove unnecessary ‘state-of-being’ words, e.g., is, am, are, was, etc. Not: There was a man standing on the train platform. Rather: A man stood on the train platform.
- Avoid hedging verbs whenever you can, like smiled slightly, almost laughed, frowned a bit, etc.
- Maximise sensory description. At least one per paragraph, ideally, depending on topic and tone.
Really hope this has been of use to you. I’d love to see what crimes other people might put on their Banzai checklists – if you’re feeling brave, friend, you can share yours in the comments box below.
P.S. I edited the living shit out of this blog. I bet I missed a bit though – if you spot it let me know.