If you are like me, I’m good at spotting a few mistakes, but then it all seems to blur, and I get drawn into the story and the editing goes to pot.

Writing Tips–On Editing

I will admit that I am not the best at editing. However, while I may not be brilliant at it, one of the ways I tend to remember to edit to the best of my ability is that “people make mistakes”. Reading your own writing but not getting drawn into the story is a skill in itself. One of the best approaches I have found is that in the editing stage, writing or printing your story onto paper, can help you to highlight areas that do not look right. I tend to hand write my edited stories since the act of writing it makes me think about punctuation that I might have missed, or spelling mistakes that I failed to notice on the digital copy. Plus having a physical copy means that you can highlight scribble notes down anywhere on your page and cross out areas of text that are incorrect. Once the story has been scrutinised, my next stage usually involves starting a brand new blank word document and typing the story out with its new corrections. This allows you to catch any other errors that you may have missed while editing and it allows, you to add in the changes to a brand new version of your document. My last few steps is to get someone else to read the new version in printed form so that they can identify any errors that you end up correcting in your head as the author. This then lets you identify the final changes before submitting to a publisher for additional editing to take place.

Today’s tips are courtesy of LMKLING of INDIE SCRIPTORIUM — SELF PUBLISHING COLLECTIVE (SPC)