Self-Editing Tips and Tricks

For this week’s writer roundtable, let’s talk about self-editing tips and tricks. What are the ones you use to help you catch as many errors and edits as possible? 

Sean Taylor: For me, I use several depending on the story. 

1. Shuffle the pages and read them out of order. That takes my brain away from the story and focuses on paragraphs instead. 

2. For stories shorter than 5000 words, read them backward to catch spelling and comparably spelled words (or and of, it and is, to and too, for example). 

3. Read aloud. Hearing it will often register better than seeing it. 

4. Have an app read it to you (this is great for those times at night I can’t sleep and just lie in bed). 

5. See multiple pages at once on a printout. This forces me to look at pages in context of each other. 

Brian K Morris: Me, I use the text-to-speech part of MS Word to read the story back to me to catch misspellings that aren’t (from/form or Brian/Brain). after I’ve visually edited the piece as best I can.

My twist is I use the AI voice that’s WRONG for the story. For instance, if I write crime adventure, I find a voice like a little girl to read it back. If I’m putting together a story with some romance in it, I find the deepest baritone I can find. This way, I don’t get lulled because someone’s reading to me like my mom did when I was a kid.

Matt LaRock: In my head, I read it in different accents. Sometimes it shows me phrases and sentences that don’t really work. And it adds a sense of humor so I don’t take it too seriously.

Danielle Procter Piper: I let the story sit for a month, then review it with fresh eyes. Then it sits for another full month before I comb through it again.

Jim Ritchey: Bono taught me No.3, of all people, or got the wheels turning. Concentrate on the sound of the words. How they fit together. Started noticing it in all my favorite writers. Steinbeck was musical.

John Pence: Reading out loud is great neuroscience. You have to process it on so many levels: symbols to letters to words, motor-speech, spoken language, heard language, grammar, and memory …

That’s the shit, but I don’t always do it.

Time away is always good, too.

Robert Krog: Reread it. Read it out loud. Read it backward. Wait a couple of weeks before rereading by one of these methods. Of course, all of these take the time I don’t usually have, but they all help to catch typos and such and are worth it. Just rereading aloud is good, but I actually have read stories backward a time or two. Another option is having someone else read the story to me. I find that works quite well. I don’t usually have a reader available though.

Read more: 

https://seanhtaylor.blogspot.com/2021/07/self-editing-tips-and-tricks.html