Editing

“Show don’t tell,” is maybe one of the most ubiquitous writing rules. There is nuance to this, like all things, but for the purposes of this post, we’re going to look at some of the signposts that we’re not just showing things happen; we’re telling the reader they happened. With each CTRL+F suggestion, I’ve included some show don’t tell examples with a fix or two to create a more compelling statement.

Using a reverse outline can assist in the big picture editing of first drafts by giving you some space from the text itself. When we’re editing the text it’s easy to be distracted by the prose when we actually want to look at the narrative elements.

No first draft is perfect. The next step is the first of many editing rounds. With your first draft it will be important to avoid getting too into the nitty-gritty of grammar, or even style, because you should be considering big changes. There’s no point in wrangling your commas if you might not even keep that sentence, scene or chapter! So… where do you begin?

These questions will help you weed out editors that won’t be a good fit for you or your project as well as make sure you and the editor are on the same page with your goals and expectations.

Online has a variety of avenues for you to explore, and they each hold their own benefits and downsides. But first, let’s discuss what you should be searching for. In theory, you could search “editor for hire” and you’d get loads of results.

You’ve made it to a point in your writing where you think it’s time to get some fresh eyes on it. This might be your first draft and you want to work the kinks out with a large scale, big-changes edit, or it might be your nearly final draft, and you just want someone to look for typos and missing (or extra) commas; we all know how they like to weasel their own way in and out of our writing.

You quickly realize that there are a lot more types of editing than you thought and suddenly feel overwhelmed. “What type of writing is for me?”