Had to share this wonderful post for writers from Jacqui Murray of Worddreams. Jacqui is an author/blogger and adjunct professor of integrating technology in education and every week she shares some informative writing tips. This week’s share is her 19 Tips for Self-Editing.
Now that I’ve published my first novel, To Hunt a Sub, I can say from experience that writing it and editing it took equally long periods of time (and marketing is just as involved).
After finishing the final rough draft (yeah, sure) and before emailing it to an editor, I wanted it as clean possible. I searched through a wide collection of self-editing books like these:
The Novel Writer’s Toolkit by Bob Mayer
Self-editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne
The Marshall Plan for Novel Writing by Evan Marshall
…and came up with a list of fixes that I felt would not only clean up grammar and editing, but the voice and pacing that seemed to bog my story down. Here are ideas you might like:
- Use ‘was’ only twice per page. This includes ‘were’ and ‘is’.
- Limit adverbs. Search for ‘ly’ endings and get rid of as many as possible.
- Watch out for bouncing eyes–
- He dropped his eyes to the floor.
- His eyes roved the room
- Use gerunds sparingly. Search for -ing endings and eliminate as many as possible.
- Eliminate ‘very’.
- Eliminate ‘not’ and ‘n’t’–switch them to a positive. Rather than ‘he couldn’t run, he was so tired‘, say ‘he stumbled forward, his legs so tired they refused to obey’.
- Eliminate dialogue tags as often as possible. Indicate a speaker by actions. Those you keep should be simple, like said. CONTINUE READING
DGKayewriter.com 
Wish I’d had these earlier. I’m happy to report that I employ most of them; but when you’re Type A, it’s all of nothing! At least I have them now, thanks to you, Deb. And they’re nicely tucked away in my “Writing” folder for the next project 🙂 ♥
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Lol, I know T, better late than never. Glad you’ve filed away like I have. 🙂 ❤
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Thanks, Deb. I’m honored!
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Always a pleasure to feature your posts Jacqui, they’re always full of such great information. 🙂
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Very informative as usual, Debby. Thank you!
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Thanks Marian. Jacqui is a wealth of great info for writers – it’s no surprise her blog is called Worddreams. 🙂
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I love your shares! Another very useful post 🙂
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Thanks so much Christy. 🙂
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I find these all very helpful! I do wonder what Jacqui finds objectionable about gerunds. I’ve heard a number of the suggestions elsewhere, but never that one. Before I ditch them, I’d like to know why I should.
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I think some rules are meant to be bent. There seems to be two sides of the coin on gerunds. 🙂
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Cracking tips off to read the rest
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🙂 🙂
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