25 Self-Editing Tips for Indie Authors (and 8 unfortunately common writing mistakes that make you look like an amateur)

Years of publishing has taught me that a book written and published quickly can be just as good (or better) than one that took ten years to polish. Even though I have a PhD in Literature and spent nearly a decade as a book editor, I’ve seen far too many beautifully edited books fail; I’ve also spent times editing projects that I knew deep down weren’t commercially viable.

That’s why I strongly urge writers to self-edit as much as possible, whether or not they hire an editor or proofreader, so they can improve their writing. A great editor will always make things better, but they won’t change or rewrite the story for you. They may identify crucial plot holes or character development problems, but they won’t fix them (unless you’re paying them for ghostwriting, most editors will fix and improve but won’t rewrite your story).

So here are 25 self-editing tips you can use to check your own work before you look for beta readers or outside help.

Introduction

No self-published author should publish their work without paying a professional to edit it first. But what if you don’t have the money to pay for an editor? Or what if you want to keep your costs down by doing as much editing on your own as you can?

Before you spend money on an editor, work your way through this 25-point checklist. Because the better you can make your novel on your own, the better your editor can help you make it together. Think of it like football: Get the ball as far down the field as you can, then pass the ball to your editor. Together you can go for goal.

SELF-EDITING TIP #1

Does the world need this book? If so, why?

Every year, millions of books get published. Most get ignored. Ask yourself: Why does the world need your book?

This is not an argument to self-censor. Rather to think about what you’re publishing and why. Talking to hear the sound of your own voice may be amusing, but does little to attract an audience. Talking, writing, speaking—it’s all about the audience, not about you.

Sharpening your focus at this stage will make self-editing much easier. Because if you don’t know what you have to say or why you’re saying it, then how can you sharpen your prose to achieve those goals?

SELF-EDITING TIP #2:

How’s Your Hook?

Readers have short attention spans these days, and an ocean of ebooks to choose from. You need a strong hook in your opening pages to persuade readers to cross your palm with silver.

Pretend that you’re a reader, and ask yourself: Why should I care? Why should I invest my money—not to mention my time, which is even more valuable—in reading your novel? I could be watching Game of Thrones. Are you telling me your novel is more entertaining? Make me care!

And hooking the reader doesn’t end after the first five pages. There is no point at which you can relax and rest on your laurels (either within the pages of a book or during a literary career). Every word sells the next. Every sentence sells the next. Every paragraph sells the next. Every chapter sells the next. Every book sells the next.

Because as a reader? I owe you exactly squat. Zilch. Make me care. Make your writing so irresistible that I can’t help but want to read on.

That’s how you write a book. That’s how you build a career.

SELF-EDITING TIP #3:

Who’s Your Hero?

Reading a novel means donning an avatar’s skin. When we enter the pages of your book, we become, in our imaginations, at least, your hero. And we’re not going to be very comfortable if your hero is a jerk.

Your hero needs to be someone we can relate to, who we can understand. We don’t necessarily have to like him, but we have to care. This doesn’t mean your hero should be a goodie two-shoes, because that’s equally irritating. Instead, write flawed heroes and complex villains. Hannibal Lector may be a cannibal, but boy can he keep me turning the pages!

SELF-EDITING TIP #4:

What Does Your Hero Want?

A novel is just this: Who is your hero? What does he want? What’s stopping him from getting it?

Character is just another word for what the hero wants. Give us a sympathetic hero with a goal we can relate to, and the strength of will to pursue that goal at all costs, and you’ve got the makings of a great story.

SELF-EDITING TIP #5

Who’s Your Villain?

You needn’t go all Hollywood here, but your hero needs obstacles. If your hero wants a ham sandwich, and all he has to do is go to the fridge and make one, that’s not a very exciting story, now is it?

Note that by “villain” we mean the opposing force working to prevent the hero from achieving his goal. The villain and hero are sometimes the same character—for instance, a story of an alcoholic or drug addict fighting to get the monkey off his back. Or it could be nature—sailors fighting to stay afloat during a hurricane.

If you go with a human villain, be sure to give the character a touch of goodness. Evil is not cartoonish, but rather a misguided attempt to do good. Melodrama went out of fashion when the last vaudeville hall closed its doors.

SELF-EDITING TIP #6

Structure, Structure, Structure

The human brain digests story in a certain form, and stories that do not satisfy that form will drive your audience away.

To wit: Stories have a beginning, a middle, and an end; thesis, antithesis, synthesis; boy meets girl, boy loses girl, boy gets girl; Act One, Act Two, Act Three.

There are many books on structure out there, and varying theories about the precise form story structure should take. But you must have the basics down, or your novel will not be successful.

For further reading on structure, you may like to read Three Uses of the Knife by David Mamet and Save the Cat! by Blake Snyder. These are just my personal favorites, there are hundreds more out there.

SELF-EDITING TIP #7

Yes. No. But wait!

Good stories must have suspense. When we go to a ball game, we don’t want to watch our team trounce the opposing side, run up the score, and then go home. How boring would that be?

We want to see our hero struggle, to succeed, to fail, the end goal always in doubt. We want to watch the ball game come down to a nail-biting, edge-of-our-seat, who-is-going-to-win, oh-my-God-can-he-do-it thriller.

Not that your book has to be a thriller. It could be a story about cats. But if the cats were sympathetic, wanted something we could relate to, and faced sufficiently interesting opposing forces, then the yes-no-but wait! formula works just as well.

SELF-EDITING TIP #8

Chapter Breaks

Knowing where to begin and end your chapters is an art. Every chapter should begin with a hook. Every chapter should end with a cliffhanger.

Some of you at this point are probably thinking, “But I’m not writing a thriller! This doesn’t apply to me!”

Um, actually, yes it does. If you want people to read your work, you have to make them want to read your work. Readers owe you nothing.

Do I need to repeat that? Readers owe you nothing. Your job as an author is to make them care. My job as an editor is to help you make them care.

End of story.

SELF-EDITING TIP #9

Whose Head Are We In?

A common mistake some authors make, especially those that come to fiction from the theater or film, is omitting internal monologue. The strength of the novel is that we spend the book inside people’s heads. We don’t just watch the action. We are inside of the action.

Fiction is a window into someone else’s soul. A good author gives the reader an intimate personal experience not possible in any other medium. This experience can be deep or shallow, depending on the needs of the genre. But it must be there. A dry account of some events that happened may make a fine biography or history, but the goal of fiction is to connect with your readers at a subconscious level.

SELF-EDITING TIP #10

Head-Hopping

Have you ever seen prose that looks like this?

“Oh my goodness, what a giant turtle!” exclaimed Martha.  I do so love turtles, she thought. They remind me of my dead grandmother.

Jake harrumphed. Can we go home soon? I’m sick of the beach. And none of the girls are wearing bikinis.

Do you see the problem here? We’re jumping from Martha’s head into Jake’s head from one paragraph to the next. This jars us out of the story. If your story requires you to use multiple POVs (Points of View), then the easiest thing to do is to separate POVs into separate chapters. A more advanced technique is to separate POVs using section breaks:

[… several pages of Martha POV …]

“Oh my goodness, what a giant turtle!” exclaimed Martha.  I do so love turtles, she thought. They remind me of my dead grandmother.

Jake harrumphed. Can we go home soon? I’m sick of the beach. And none of the girls are wearing bikinis.

[… several pages of Jake POV …]

SELF-EDITING TIP #11

Dialogue

Authors with experience in theater or film tend to write better dialogue. Why? Because acting and writing dialogue are one and the same craft.

What do I mean by that?

Well, why do characters speak? They speak because they want something from someone else. Remember our definition of a story: Who is our hero and what does he want? And what’s stopping him from getting it?

The conflict in a scene could be a sword fight. Or it could be two people fencing with words. Think of writing dialogue as though it were a fight sequence: parry, thrust, advance, retreat, attack. This will give strength and verve to your dialogue, and make your characters pop off the page.

If dialogue is a struggle for you, consider taking an acting class or two. This will dramatically improve your dialogue-writing skills.

SELF-EDITING TIP #12

Conflict, Conflict, Conflict

In real life, constant tension is exhausting. We look for a way–any way, good or bad–just to end the tension, and let life return to normal. So it goes against our natural inclinations to write a story of constant tension, constant conflict, constant suspense.

But…we don’t read fiction to watch the paint dry. We read fiction because we want drama. There must be conflict on every page. Before submitting your manuscript to an editor, consider doing an editing pass looking at every single page, and ask yourself: Is there conflict here? Is there tension? Is there a war of words–or an actual battle–on every single page?

Because readers are looking for any excuse to put your book down. (Did you get that bit above about how readers don’t owe you anything?) A couple of dead pages, the reader starts to yawn, and they move on to the next book in their TBR pile.

SELF-EDITING TIP #13

Go Easy on the Exposition

Once upon a time Queen Victoria sat upon the throne of England, and it was acceptable to engage in pages of detailed exposition of what your characters looked like, description of the grounds of their country manor, the peculiarities of the servants, and the peccadilloes of the local clergyman.

My how times have changed.

Audiences now expect a more cinematic, punchy story. You can rage all you want, but this is the commercial reality. If you want to be a commercially successful author, you have to write for how the times actually are, not how you would like them to be.

Keep the exposition to what is necessary to advance the plot, no more.

SELF-EDITING TIP #14

1 + 1 = 1/2

This valuable tip comes from Sol Stein’s Stein on Writing.

Say a thing once. And only once.

Repetition seduces us into thinking it offers power, when in reality it offers only weakness.

We, your readers, are paying attention. Trust me on this one. We really are. And being told the same thing over and over again just annoys us.

Let me give you an example. Suppose it is important that we understand your serial killer does what he does because his great-aunt Margaret used to spank him with a poker. Whatever. Tell us that once. And only once. We read looking for the clue, the significant detail.

To quote David Mamet, “I have never met an audience who was not collectively smarter than I am, and who did not beat me to the punch every time.”

That.

SELF-EDITING TIP #15

The Rule of Three

If you’re writing comedy, you probably know this rule already. Repetition is acceptable–and indeed, desirable–to make a punchline funnier.

The first time we hear the joke? Funny.

The second time–the callback? Funnier.

The third time? The big payoff, serious laughter.

BUT:

The fourth time? Umm, OK, now the joke is just stupid.

The Rule of Three is real. Ask any comedian. Not two. Not four. Three.

SELF-EDITING TIP #16

Be Unpredictable

Nothing delights readers more than being surprised. So many of the stories we consume these days are formulaic. When was the last time you watched a Hollywood movie and couldn’t see the ending coming a mile away?

At each plot pivot, ask yourself: What would readers expect to happen next? Then consider doing the opposite. Not every time. Just enough to keep your readers off balance, on the edge of their seats, never sure what you’re going to do next.

SELF-EDITING TIP #17

Do Not Patronize the Reader

This is a tough one, sometimes expressed as “Show, Don’t Tell.” But it’s more than that. It’s about having respect for the reader.

Don’t tell me how to feel. Don’t tell me what to think. The goal of great fiction is to create an emotional experience for the reader. But how do you achieve that?

Some authors take a short cut and just tell us. That doesn’t work so well. Consider:

Martha was in anguish. She wept bitter tears for grandmother, wildly convulsing over the coffin. If only that savage turtle hadn’t eaten poor gramma!

Does that make me care? No. Martha and her dead grandmother mean nothing to me. So how about this:

Martha stood silent over the coffin. Her grandmother looked so peaceful. A cold rain began to fall. She wondered where the turtle was. Did it have a family, too? Did it understand what it had done? She doubted it. All the same, I plan to have turtle soup if it’s the last thing I ever do.

This is a silly example, but I hope it makes my point. A good story well-told is the same as “2 + 2 =”, in which you let us do the math ourselves. Telling is patronizing us and tacking on a “4”, as if we’re too stupid to figure it out on our own.

Writing fiction is about what to leave out just as much as what to put in.

Respect the intelligence of your reader, and they will love you for it.

SELF-EDITING TIP #18

Adjectives and Adverbs Must Die

You have no doubt heard this one already, but I want to emphasize the why. Go back to Tip #17. Adjectives and adverbs patronize the reader.

This may seem unintuitive at first. Think of it this way: A novel is not a complete emotional experience. It is a skeleton of an emotional experience which, when digested by the human brain, produces an emotional experience.

We, as readers, provide the flesh to your story with our own imaginations. Which means you must leave big chunks of the story to our imagination!

Adjectives, and especially adverbs, patronize the reader. You don’t have to tell us everything, and in fact we don’t want you to. You only have to give us enough to put the pieces together in our imaginations.

SELF-EDITING TIP #19

Avoid Clichés

Remember Tip #16? Being unpredictable is just as important at the sentence level as it is as the story level. Readers are hungry for metaphors that help us understand the world, but stale and hackneyed imagery does nothing for us except, perhaps, cure our insomnia.

Startle readers with a new way of looking at the world, fresh imagery, striking metaphors.

Remember George Orwell’s famous essay, “Politics and the English Language”:

A scrupulous writer, in every sentence that he writes, will ask himself at least four questions, thus: What am I trying to say? What word will express it? What image or idiom will make it clearer? Is this image fresh enough to have an effect?

Because you want your writing to have an effect on the reader. Right?

SELF-EDITING TIP #20

Avoid Politics

One of the hardest things for a beginning fiction author to accept is that storytelling is not a useful form of activism. Nobody likes to get preached at. What’s more, nobody will pay money for the privilege of being preached at.

The problem here is simple: Creating a story to communicate a political message comes from your conscious mind, and gets digested by our conscious mind. But we don’t consume stories to satisfy our conscious mind. We consume stories to satisfy our subconscious mind.

That’s not to say you have to give up writing about subjects you’re passionate about. Far from it. Your world view infuses everything you write. Instead of consciously writing a novel to prove your point, focus on writing on the most commercially popular fiction you can. Why? Because your subconscious will automatically select plot, character, and villains that support your world view.

This was a massive insight for me once upon a time, and I hope this realization will help you as much as it’s helped me.

SELF-EDITING TIP #21

Sex Scenes

Unless you’re writing erotica, leave something to the imagination. As we’ve already discussed, leaving something to the imagination is one of the key maxims to writing great fiction.

But when it comes to sex scenes, however, this is critical. There is nothing more boring or off-putting than a poorly-written sex scene. Nor are detailed descriptions of what goes where particularly titillating.

The goal here, as in all fiction, is to evoke a sex scene in our imagination. The key to creating a steamy sex scene is what you leave out, not what you put in.

SELF-EDITING TIP #22

What Comes from the Gut, Speaks to the Gut

The goal of fiction, as we’ve discussed, is to produce an emotional experience for the reader. But how do you do that?

What comes from the brain, goes to the brain. What comes from the gut, speaks to the gut. Is your manuscript visceral, primal, emotional? Or is it intellectual?

If the latter, you may like to start over. No editing in the world can take an intellectual exercise and give it an emotional oomph.

SELF-EDITING TIP #23

Evoke Emotion by Witholding Emotion

As we discussed in Tip #17, describing your characters’ emotional reactions has zero effect on our heartstrings. Think of it this way. Ever watched a movie where someone breaks down and starts crying?

What do you think at that moment?

Do you think, ah, the poor dear, it’s so horrible what she’s going through? Or do you think, “Gee, that’s great acting. What does she use, I wonder? Garlic? Onion? Or can she produce tears on demand? Now where’d that popcorn get to…”

You see? You produce emotion by what, in film, would be called montage: Martha and her grandma spending quality time together, followed by grandma between the jaws of a giant killer turtle. You don’t need to tell us how Martha feels. We are capable of putting two and two together on our own–and that is the only way to make us feel her loss.

SELF-EDITING TIP #24

Your Booming God Voice

It take a couple of books to find your “booming god voice.” What do I mean by that? The confidence that exudes from the prose of a master. It says, “I am in control. I am a master of this story. I have something to say, and BY GOD I MEAN TO SAY IT.”

Readers pick up on this confidence. It is a form of seduction. The words don’t matter, grammar ceases to have meaning, there is only you and me and the story. And we are in love.

So how do you self-edit to achieve your booming god voice? Well, you don’t. Not exactly. You may have to start over from scratch. Or you may decide to learn what you can, publish what you have, and do better with your next book.

SELF-EDITING TIP #25

Read it Out Loud

If you only take away one self-editing tip, make it this one.

Before you publish your work, or submit your work to agents, print out your entire manuscript. Single-sided, double-spaced, twelve-point font.

Now put your manuscript on a table or a desk, your palms flat on either side, and read the entire book out loud. Keep a pen handy, make notes when necessary, but put your palms back flat on the desk when you continue reading.

Do not rush it. Read every word in a normal tone of voice, as though you were telling the story to a friend.

This is an amazing technique, and I cannot recommend it highly enough!

Jens Porup has more than fifteen years of experience as an editor, author, journalist, copywriter, and proofreader. He’s edited hundreds of books over the years, both fiction and non-fiction, and loves working with self-published authors. He hangs his shingle at BookButchers.com and NextLevelEditing.net.

8 CRITICAL WRITING MISTAKES TO AVOID

The first 25 tips focused on cutting out the bad writing (or replacing it with better writing). They are the things a skilled copy editor would comment on. But when I read self-published books I often notice even more basic things: typos, poor grammar and spelling. For a writer, these are inexcusable, and yet very common.

Everybody makes mistakes. Even you. And unfortunately it’s usually the little, stupid ones that slip your notice. But you’ve got to find them so you can exorcise them. I listed 8 down below (a few of them were mentioned already, so this is just as a reminder).

1. Build sympathy first, show your good/bad characters (conflict)

Your book needs conflict, and your main character has to be sympathetic from the beginning. We need to root for, pity and bond with the main character, and hate and loathe the opposition. There must be a villain, or a source of conflict, or a foil – somebody who for some reason makes the protagonist feel bad.

The protagonist should doubt him/herself, so that through the story they can gain self-confidence and existential security.

This needs to be done quickly. No matter how cool the action scenes are, if we don’t know who to root for, if we don’t feel an emotional connection to the outcome, we just don’t care. Before I know which characters are good or evil, when they’re all strangers to me, I wouldn’t care if any of them got hit by a bus. Which means I’m not invested in your story. Before you blow crap up and have shoot outs, readers need to know, love and care about your protagonist.

2. Start with the action

Almost all scenes/chapters need to start in the middle of the action. Cut out all the lead up stuff. Cut out the explanation, back story, exposition and description of the scene. Start in the middle of a tense dialogue. Start with an attention hooking line. Start with close-up, in focus zoom in of drops of blood, sweat and tears. Hook attention first – then back up, fill in the details, slow down and set up the next major conflict (then cut the scene and start over with the next one).

3. Believable characters don’t flip flop or show ridiculous emotions

Normal people laugh when they’re happy. They might be short-tempered and snarky when they are angry. But they rarely “sob hysterically”, “shriek uncontrollably”, or “shake visibly.” People don’t let their emotions run wild – especially around a whole group of other people. And they don’t flip flop between happy and deathly depressed at every unexpected catastrophe. People usually don’t react at all when bad things happen – they are in shock.

They hold it in, do what needs done, and only let it sink in when they have time to process their grief. So check how often your main character (or any characters) cry, sob, scream, shriek, etc. You might allow them one emotional display per book (although I wouldn’t allow them any. Cut all that crap out, replace it with subtle melancholy, emptiness, inability to experience joy).

4. It’s/Its…There/Their/They’re

It’s the easy stuff we tend to miss. Even if we can spell big words correctly backwards, you’re going to mess these up a lot: use the search/find feature to search for these one by one and check them all. If you notice something else simple you screwed up, search for it – you probably did it more than once. Also, we tend to have ‘bad batches’ – so if you find any errors, super-edit that section, because there are likely to be more errors nearby.

5. Adverbs: -ly

Adverbs are bad. They are lazy writing. Anytime you express what someone did and how they did it by adding an -ly (said excitedly, left resolvedly, prayed devoutly…) you’re missing the chance to write well and picking something easy. A lot of these phrases will be meaningless (like “laughed happily”). Or they will be confusing. So use your search/find button for “ly” and track them all down. Does it need to be there? Is there another way you can show how they did something without using an adverb?

“Said excitedly” = “said, a grin spreading at the corners of his mouth and his body quivering with expectation.”

“Left resolvedly” = “stamped out of the room, slamming the door behind him.”

Seriously: search every one and try to get rid of them all.

Edit: Ok, not all. Some adverbs are acceptable. But get rid of the really bad ones that don’t mean anything. Be aware of the tendency to use them poorly, so that when you do decide to use them, you use them well and they improve your writing.

6. Exclamations

Now use the find/replace feature to search for “!” and “?!”. People aren’t usually very excited, and we don’t shout a lot. That means you really don’t need to use exclamation points, like, hardly ever. But a lot of indie authors have a bunch of characters saying things like “How dare you!!!” or “Are you crazy?!?!”

Lots of punctuation is no substitute for good writing. Not only is it unnecessary, it’s often used to mask over very bad dialogue – so searching for your “!” can indicate poor dialogue that you need to strengthen.

7. 1 space after a period

I know it’s a raging controversy, but I don’t care. Use find and replace, hit the space bar twice in the first field, and once in the second field, to replace all your double spaces to single spaces. You don’t need any double spaces, anywhere. (Unless you are submitting a manuscript to a publisher/agents, and they specifically request double spacing because it gives them more space for notes – but if you’re self-publishing, you don’t need them).

8. No fancy words

Unless you’re writing a first-person narrative, the narrator should be invisible. So when you use big, strange, fancy, unusual words, it interrupts the action and draws attention to the narrator.

This especially happens with repetition – a novel I read recently used “purchase” in the sense of “to gain traction.” The first time I thought it was a bit odd. The second and third time I thought it sounded stupid. You are likely to have favorite words that you like to use, but when you pick a fancy word instead of a common word, it will stand out. Characters themselves can use them in dialogue, but you shouldn’t use them.

Here’s a cool online tool you can use to check the frequency of all the words you used in your book:

http://textalyser.net/

Just paste all your text there and look at the most common words, to see if you have any bad habits you should break.

More Book Editing Resources

Don’t be in a hurry to send off your manuscript hoping someone else will fix it for you. The big problems are almost always story issues, and an edit can’t write your story for you. Getting reader feedback and fixing the story is your first hurdle. After your story is good, improve the writing. The further you take it, the better the final result (after editing) will be.

I recommend reading Plot Perfect, Story Grid and Story Fix, and studying story architecture – if the bones of the story are tight, writing a successful book is much easier.

This is what I use.

Book Writing Template for Fiction

You can learn more about the steps here: my “plotdot” book writing template

These are based on common writing mistakes myself and the editors at BookButchers encounter most frequently in new writers. This doesn’t necessary mean you’re a bad writer: the important truth is that everybody’s first draft is crap. Crap is a normal part of the process.

Real writers shovel it up, stack it into bricks, shape it into floors and walls, and cover it with pretty floral tiles. Most new authors are excited about the drafting and writing phases but are completely undone at the thought of editing and revising – because it’s not creative and intuitive and easy… because there are things you don’t know yet that you must learn if you want to be successful.

Luckily, there’s a ton of free writing tools and resources to make it easier – and you’ll find a BUNCH of them on this site, so make sure you browse around until you discover the thing you never knew you needed.

UPDATE: I also have a *more recent* list of 25 first-chapter mistakes.

PS) If you write fiction, I also just made a video about my 5-step book revision process (here).

Like this video? I also made a free course about editing books, with my recommended writing books for authors. You can sign up here. Or check out my recommended books on writing if you prefer to self-study.

Here are some more articles that might help:

Common writing mistakes (25 more book-editing tips)

There’s a whole bunch of stuff I haven’t covered yet, but I highly recommend reading through my list of COMMON WRITING MISTAKES (advanced stuff). These are things that nearly all first-time authors get wrong – and they’re easy to fix once you’re aware of them. They will, more than anything, drastically improve your story by avoiding a few stylistic choices. You want to tell the best version of your story, but these are the things that will make your book feel unprofessional.

Every page of your book needs to confirm that you know what you’re doing; so that readers trust you’ll lead them to a satisfying resolution. Give them too many reasons to doubt your craft, and they’ll give up. There’s also these posts:

• How to write a book in a month (34 easy steps!)
• The 6 signs of weak writing (how to tell if your book sucks)

The 4 Editing Passes (Do Them in This Order)

The number one reason writers spend two years editing a 70K novel is that they’re doing all four edits at the same time, on the same page, in the same sitting. They fix a comma, then notice the chapter doesn’t earn its emotional turn, then rewrite the whole scene, then fix another comma, then realize the scene has no place in the book at all.

That’s not editing. That’s anxiety in a Word document.

Real editing happens in four discrete passes, each one zooming in by an order of magnitude. Big problems first. Sentence-level problems last. Skipping the order is why most writers edit forever and still publish a book that nobody finishes.

Here’s what the four passes are actually doing:

• Developmental — Does the story exist? Is the protagonist’s want clear, is the climax earned, does the ending mean anything?
• Structural / scene — Does each scene justify its existence? Is something at stake? Does it end differently than it started?
• Line edit — Are the sentences doing real work, or are they filler? Is the voice consistent? Is the dialogue alive?
• Copy and proof — Are there typos, comma splices, wrong “their/there/they’re,” inconsistent capitalisation, format weirdness?

If you’re tempted to do them all at once, ask yourself this. Why would you proofread a paragraph you might cut? Why would you rewrite a sentence in a scene you might delete? Your brain is the bottleneck. Stop asking it to do four jobs at the same level of attention.

Pass 1: Developmental Edit (Story-Level)

This is the only pass that requires you to read the manuscript like a reader, not a writer. Sit down. Don’t open Word. Print it, or load it on a Kindle. Read it like a stranger reads a paperback on a long flight. Don’t fix anything. Take notes on a separate document.

You’re hunting for seven things:

1. Does the protagonist actually want something? Not vague desire. A concrete, namable goal that drives every chapter. If you can’t summarize what your hero wants in eight words, that’s the first thing to fix.
2. Does the protagonist change? A character who ends the book holding the same beliefs they started with isn’t a protagonist. They’re a tour guide. Map the arc — what does she believe on page 1, what does she believe on the last page, and what specifically forces the change?
3. Does the climax pay off the setup? Whatever was promised in the first 20 pages — the question, the threat, the want — has to land in the climax. If the climax solves a different problem than the one the book opened with, the book reads as broken even if every sentence is beautiful.
4. Does the pacing breathe? Where does the story slow down? If pages 80–140 feel like a wash, that’s not a line problem. That’s a structural problem. Probably you’ve stalled the protagonist between act one and act two.
5. Are the stakes escalating? Each new conflict should cost more than the last. If the obstacles are sideways instead of up, the book feels flat.
6. Is the theme actually doing work? A theme isn’t a one-word abstraction (“love,” “family”). It’s a question the book is wrestling with. What question is yours asking, and does the ending answer it?
7. Is the ending earned? Most manuscripts need a stronger ending or a sharper one. Tepid endings are usually a signal that the writer didn’t fully commit to the protagonist’s worst fear.

Tools for this pass: a printed copy, sticky notes, a scratchpad. A beat sheet (Save the Cat, Story Grid, Three-Act, whatever your genre prefers). And, if you want a faster diagnostic, the storyboard and plot tools at /apps/storyboard/ and /apps/plot-generator/ on this site will surface obvious structural gaps without doing the thinking for you.

Don’t fix anything during this pass. You’re a doctor making a diagnosis, not performing surgery.

Pass 2: Structural / Scene Edit

This is where you fix what the developmental pass diagnosed. Now you’re rewriting, cutting, reordering, and reshaping at the scene level. You may delete entire chapters. You may write new scenes from scratch. This is the slowest pass and the one that does the most heavy lifting.

The scene-level checklist:

1. Every scene has a goal. What is the POV character actively trying to do or get in this scene?
2. Every scene has a conflict. What’s preventing them?
3. Every scene has an outcome. Did they get what they wanted, fail, or get what they wanted with new costs?
4. Every scene changes the situation. If you can lift a scene out and the next chapter still works, the scene is filler.
5. Every scene has a “yes, but” or “no, and” structure. (“Yes she got the key, but it set off the alarm.” “No she didn’t get the job, and now the rent is due.”) Flat scenes have a “yes, and now everything is fine” structure, which is the death of momentum.
6. First and last lines do work. The first line of a scene sets the tone. The last line earns the page-turn. If your scenes start with weather and end with a sigh, that’s a structural problem.
7. POV is doing real work. Whose head are we in, and why this scene through their eyes?
8. The scene’s emotional beat is different from the previous scene’s. Two consecutive scenes of grief, or two consecutive scenes of action, blunt each other.
9. Subplots advance, not stall. Every subplot scene should move that thread forward, not just remind us it exists.
10. You’d miss this scene if it were gone. Cut a scene mentally. If the book is better, cut it for real.

This is the pass where you’ll cut the most words. Be ruthless. The book you finish editing is almost always shorter than the book you started editing.

Pass 3: Line Edit (Prose-Level)

Now you’ve got a structurally sound novel. Now you make the prose do real work. This is the pass most indies skip and most pros over-charge for, and it’s the one that separates “I wrote a book” from “I wrote a book somebody wants to keep reading at 2am.”

Twelve specific issues to hunt for:

1. Filter words. “She saw the door open.” “He felt the cold settle in.” “I heard the engine cut out.” These verbs (saw, heard, felt, watched, noticed, realized, thought) put a layer of glass between the reader and the experience. Cut them. “The door opened” is closer than “She saw the door open.”
2. Passive voice you didn’t mean. Some passive is fine. Most isn’t. “The letter was written by him” is almost always weaker than “He wrote the letter.”
3. Repeated sentence openings. Read 10 paragraphs in a row. If 8 of them start with “She,” you have a rhythm problem. Vary structure.
4. Weak verbs. “Was,” “had,” “got,” “went,” “did” are the laziest verbs in English. Replace at least half of them with something specific.
5. Telling vs showing on emotion. “She was angry” is telling. “Her hand tightened around the glass until her knuckles whitened” is showing. The line edit is where you swap one for the other.
6. Adverb addiction. “She said quietly,” “He walked slowly,” “The door creaked loudly.” Most -ly adverbs are propping up a verb that was too weak to do the job. Replace the verb. Cut the adverb.
7. Dialogue tags that try too hard. “He grunted.” “She hissed.” “He ejaculated.” (Yes, that one used to be common. No, you cannot use it now.) “Said” disappears. Stick with “said” 90 percent of the time. Use action beats instead of fancy tags.
8. Same word twice in three sentences. Especially distinctive words. If “shimmered” shows up twice in one paragraph, your reader notices.
9. Cliché phrases. “Heart pounding.” “Blood ran cold.” “Eyes wide as saucers.” Every cliché is a missed chance to write something specific.
10. Uniform paragraph rhythm. Every paragraph 4 sentences long, every sentence 12 words. That’s lullaby prose. Mix lengths aggressively. Punch with one-line paragraphs. Stretch with longer ones when the moment earns it.
11. Flabby openings. Sentences that start with “There was,” “It was,” “There were.” Almost always rewritable into something stronger.
12. Internal monologue overuse. First-person and tight third books often spiral into pages of the protagonist thinking about feelings. If a thought doesn’t move the scene, cut it.

Tools that genuinely help this pass: ProWritingAid for the structural prose reports, Hemingway for sentence-complexity audits, AutoCrit for genre-specific rhythm comparisons, /apps/grammarchecker/ for a free quick scan, /apps/editorproofreader/ for a fuller read, and /apps/aichecker/ if you want to know how AI-flat your prose has accidentally become.

Don’t run a tool, accept all suggestions, and call it a line edit. The tools are blunt. They’ll cut your voice if you let them. Your job is to look at every flag and decide whether to act on it.

Pass 4: Copy and Proof

Different brain mode entirely. You are not reading for story now. You are not even reading for prose. You are looking for typos, missing commas, wrong-word swaps (“the” for “they”), broken format (random italics, inconsistent en/em dash use, double spaces after periods), inconsistent character names (“Mariah” vs “Maria”), and the small mechanical errors that look amateur on a Kindle screen.

Best practices for the proof pass:

• Wait 1–2 weeks after the line edit. Cold eyes catch what warm ones miss.
• Change the format. Read in a different font. Read on a different device. Print it. Read on a Kindle if you wrote in Word. Pattern-blindness is real.
• Read backwards. Sentence by sentence, last to first. Forces you to read the actual words, not your memory of them.
• Read out loud. Slow. Every sentence. Your mouth catches what your eyes don’t.
• Search for your top 10 known errors. Everyone has them. Mine: “the” instead of “their,” missing “and,” “form” for “from,” the random three-period em dash. Yours are probably different. Make a list. Search for each one.

Use a copy edit tool here, not before. ProWritingAid, Grammarly, /apps/grammarchecker/. They catch most of the mechanical stuff. They miss context-dependent errors (“their” vs “there” when the sentence makes grammatical sense both ways). That’s why you still read.

I’ve made every one of these mistakes. The first novel I self-edited still has a typo on page 47 that haunts me. Every printed copy. Every Kindle download. There it sits. So. Be more careful than I was.

AI Editing Tools (2026) — An Honest Comparison

The tool marketplace exploded between 2023 and 2026. Most of these tools overlap by 80 percent. Here’s the honest version:

ProWritingAid (best paid pick for fiction). Strongest at structural prose reports — pacing, dialogue analysis, sticky-sentence flagging, repeated-word maps. Integrates with Scrivener, Word, Google Docs. Expensive but worth it if you write fiction seriously. The reports take getting used to, and you have to ignore at least 30 percent of the suggestions, but the other 70 percent are gold.

Grammarly (best for non-fiction and email, weakest for fiction). Catches mechanical errors fast. Bad at understanding fiction voice. Will smooth your style flat if you accept everything. Use it for the copy/proof pass, not the line edit.

AutoCrit (the fiction-specific one). Compares your manuscript to bestsellers in your specific genre. Useful as a rhythm benchmark — am I writing romance pacing in a thriller? Limited features outside that. Cheaper than ProWritingAid, narrower in scope.

Hemingway (free, blunt, useful). Highlights long sentences, passive voice, adverbs, and complexity. Crude tool, but free, and the blunt scoring forces you to look at flabby paragraphs you’ve been protecting.

Creativindie /apps/grammarchecker/, /apps/editorproofreader/, /apps/aichecker/. Free tools I built into the site. The grammar checker handles a fast mechanical pass. The editor/proofreader does a deeper read. The AI checker — and this is the one most authors skip — flags AI slop patterns in your manuscript even if you didn’t use AI to write it. (We all read AI-flavored content all day. The patterns leak in.)

ChatGPT / Claude / Gemini (ad-hoc). These models can do a passable developmental read if you prompt them like a beta reader: “Read this chapter as a first-time reader. Tell me what’s confusing, what’s boring, where the stakes drop.” They cannot replace a human dev editor. They will hallucinate scene details. They will smooth your voice. They are decent at flagging plot holes and weak motivation if you give them the full manuscript and ask the right questions.

The honest meta-take: tools are a microscope, not a brain. They tell you where to look. They don’t tell you what to do.

The Original 25 Self-Editing Tips, Updated for 2026

the original 25 (above) still hold up — every one of them is still good advice. But the 2026 manuscript has new failure modes that weren’t a problem in 2018. Here are 10 additional checks to layer on top of the original list:

1. Scan for AI tells before you publish. Even if you didn’t use AI, our reading diet is AI-flavored, so the patterns creep in. Look for “dig,” “mix,” “navigate the challenges of,” “the realm of,” “.” Run /apps/aichecker/ for a faster diagnostic.
2. Em dash overuse. A human writer averages 2–3 em dashes per chapter. AI-influenced prose hits 20+. If you’re punching emphasis with an em dash every other paragraph, switch some out for periods or commas.
3. Three-item lists that always come in threes. “Bold, brave, and brilliant.” “She was tired, hungry, and afraid.” Three-item lists are a default LLM rhythm. Mix it up. Use two. Use four. Break the pattern.
4. Uniform paragraph length. Every paragraph the same size is lullaby prose, and it reads as machine-flat. Vary aggressively.
5. Every chapter ending with a question. Cliffhanger questions are a cheap LLM trick. Land some chapters on a statement, an image, a silence.
6. Repeated structural openings. Five chapters in a row that open with “When [character][verb-ed]…” or “It wasn’t until…” — break the pattern.
7. Auto-summary final paragraphs. Don’t end a chapter with a paragraph that summarizes what just happened. Trust the reader. AI-influenced prose loves recapping.
8. Names check. Make a list of every named character. Search the manuscript for each. The minor character whose name changes spelling between chapters 4 and 19 is real, and a copy editor or an AI checker will spot it before a reader does.
9. Timeline check. Make a one-page timeline. Match every chapter against it. Multi-POV books especially.
10. Read the first three pages to a real human. Out loud. If they tune out before page two, your hook is broken. Fix that first.

AI Slop Patterns to Strip From Your Manuscript

This applies even if you didn’t write a single word with AI. The patterns leak in because you read AI content all day. Strip these before you publish:

• Banned vocabulary. “dig,” “mix,” “navigate,” “detailed,” “proof to,” “in the realm of,” “key,” “compelling,” “specific,” “multi-layered.” Search and destroy.
• Phrase tics. “It’s worth noting that,” “in essence,” “ultimately,” “” “navigate the challenges of,” “stand as a proof to,” “this rich history of,” “improve,” “Honestly,” “powerful.”
• Three-item list addiction. Two items. Four items. Sometimes one. Stop reaching for three.
• Em dash abuse. I love em dashes. I’m using them in this draft. But more than 2–3 a page is a tell. Audit yours.
• Sudden topic transitions. “Speaking of which…” “On a related note…” These are filler bridges that LLMs love and human writers should not.
• Every paragraph the same length. Vary. 1 sentence. 5. 12.
• Auto-balanced takes. “While X has its merits, Y also has strengths.” If you actually have a take, take it. Bland balance is the AI default.
• Recap closers. Don’t end every section by recapping what you just said. Trust the reader.

Run /apps/aichecker/ on a chapter at a time. Flag the top 20 hits. Decide which ones to fix and which ones are fine in context. Most AI-flat prose comes from rhythm, not vocabulary, so don’t just search-and-replace. Read the flagged paragraphs and rewrite for cadence.

When to Stop Editing (Diminishing Returns)

There’s a trap most thoughtful writers fall into. The book is done. They know it’s done. They keep editing anyway because shipping a real book is scarier than rewording paragraph 14 of chapter 9 for the eighth time.

Here’s the rule. After five complete passes, you’re not improving the book. You’re shifting commas. The tenth pass is not better than the fifth. Often it’s worse, because you’ve started over-thinking sentences that worked.

Set a hard deadline. Tell five people the publish date. Build a launch calendar around it. Make stopping more painful than shipping.

If you’re three months past your planned ship date and still “polishing,” the book isn’t broken — your launch confidence is. Different problem. Different fix. (Read every Creativindie post on positioning, audience, and platform. The fear that nobody will buy the book is not a writing problem.)

When to Hire a Professional Editor

The honest decision matrix:

Definitely hire a developmental editor:

• Your first novel.
• Traditional publishing submission.
• Multiple POVs, multiple timelines, present/past structure.
• Sensitive topics (trauma, illness, identity, religion). Hire a sensitivity reader on top of the dev editor.
• Beta reader feedback was contradictory and you can’t reconcile it.

Maybe hire (judgement call):

• Experienced indie with 3+ published novels.
• Genre fiction with a clean structure (cozy mystery, contemporary romance, simple thriller).
• Strong, consistent beta reader feedback.

Skip the dev edit, do it yourself:

• Short stories, novellas under 30K.
• Blog posts, even long-form.
• Intermediate-stage drafts you’re going to rewrite anyway. Don’t pay a dev editor for a draft you know is broken. Fix what you can fix first.

Always hire a copy editor before publishing. This is the cheapest professional pass and the one with the highest reader-perceived ROI. A typo per page is the difference between “this looks indie” and “this looks amateur.”

2026 cost guide:

• Developmental edit: $0.04–$0.10 per word ($3,200–$8,000 for an 80K novel)
• Line edit: $0.02–$0.06 per word ($1,600–$4,800 for an 80K novel)
• Copy edit: $0.01–$0.03 per word ($800–$2,400 for an 80K novel)
• Proof: $0.008–$0.02 per word ($640–$1,600 for an 80K novel)

Senior editors with full books charge at the top end. Newer editors with portfolios you’ve actually checked charge at the bottom. Both can be excellent. The biggest variable is fit: how well does this editor read your specific genre, and does she actually like the book.

For a referral path to vetted editors I trust, see the list at the end of this post.

Beta Reader Workflow (Before You Edit)

This is the step indies skip most often, and it costs them six months. Beta readers go before any structural edit. Their feedback tells you what to fix. Otherwise you’re editing in the dark.

The workflow:

1. Find 5–10 beta readers. Mix of people who read your genre and people who don’t. The non-readers catch confusing parts that genre readers will gloss over.
2. Send them a clean draft, not a polished one. No copy edit. No line edit. Just a structurally complete first or second draft.
3. Give them a structured questionnaire. Don’t ask “what did you think?” Ask: Where did you stop reading the first time? At what page did you most want to put the book down? Which character did you connect with? Which felt flat? What did you predict before it happened? Were you ever confused? Did the ending land?
4. Wait 2–3 weeks. Don’t bug them. If a reader doesn’t finish, that’s data.
5. Aggregate the feedback. Look for patterns, not single complaints. If 1 of 8 readers hated the protagonist, ignore. If 5 of 8 stopped reading at chapter 4, fix chapter 4.
6. Then do your developmental pass. With the beta data shaping your priorities.

If you can’t get 5 beta readers, /apps/betareader/ runs an AI beta read that’s not as good as a human but better than nothing. Useful for a sanity check before sending the manuscript to humans, or for solo writers without a workshop.

Self-Edit Checklist (Printable)

Save this. Print it. Tape it next to your monitor.

Pre-edit (1–2 weeks rest):

• [ ] Manuscript saved, backed up, closed
• [ ] Calendar blocked for editing weeks
• [ ] Beta reader feedback gathered if possible

Pass 1 — Developmental (story-level):

• [ ] Protagonist’s want is clear in the first 10 pages
• [ ] Protagonist changes by the end
• [ ] Climax pays off the inciting incident
• [ ] Pacing breathes — no dead 30-page stretches
• [ ] Stakes escalate
• [ ] Theme is doing work
• [ ] Ending is earned, not tepid
• [ ] Subplot threads resolve or are deliberately left open
• [ ] Antagonist has a coherent goal
• [ ] You’d recommend this book to a friend

Pass 2 — Structural / Scene:

• [ ] Every scene has a goal
• [ ] Every scene has a conflict
• [ ] Every scene has an outcome
• [ ] Every scene changes the situation
• [ ] Yes-but / no-and structure throughout
• [ ] First and last lines of each scene do work
• [ ] POV is intentional in each scene
• [ ] Emotional beats vary scene to scene
• [ ] Subplots advance, don’t stall
• [ ] No scene is a filler-summary

Pass 3 — Line Edit:

• [ ] Filter words audited (saw, heard, felt, watched)
• [ ] Passive voice intentional, not lazy
• [ ] Sentence openings vary
• [ ] Weak verbs replaced
• [ ] Show beats tell on emotion
• [ ] Adverbs cut where the verb can carry the load
• [ ] “Said” 90 percent of dialogue tags
• [ ] Distinctive words don’t repeat in close range
• [ ] Cliché phrases removed
• [ ] Paragraph rhythm varies
• [ ] Internal monologue trimmed
• [ ] Dialogue earns its space

Pass 4 — Copy and Proof:

• [ ] Spelling pass complete
• [ ] Grammar pass complete
• [ ] Punctuation consistent (em dash style, comma style)
• [ ] Format consistent (italics, scene breaks, chapter headings)
• [ ] Character names spelled the same throughout
• [ ] Top 10 personal-error list searched
• [ ] Read-aloud pass complete
• [ ] Final cold-eye proof on a different device

Final:

• [ ] AI slop scan via /apps/aichecker/
• [ ] First three pages read aloud to a human
• [ ] Pub date locked

FAQ — Self-Editing (Detailed)

Q. How many drafts does a novel need? A workable answer: a discovery-draft writer typically needs 4–6 full passes (rough draft, structural rewrite, line edit, copy/proof, plus one or two cleanup passes). An outliner can sometimes get there in 3. Anyone doing the math on “1 draft, ship it” is either a savant or kidding themselves.

Q. Should I edit while drafting or after? After. Edit-as-you-go writers usually never finish, because every editing impulse stalls forward momentum. Get the messy draft done first. Edit after a 1–2 week rest gap.

Q. What’s the single biggest self-editing mistake? Mixing the four passes. Trying to fix typos and rebuild plot in the same sitting. The brain can’t do both well. Do them separately.

Q. How do I edit my own voice without flattening it? Don’t run a single AI tool, accept all suggestions, and call it edited. Tools smooth in one direction — toward generic register. Read flagged sentences, then decide whether the suggestion improves the voice or kills it. Most line edits should keep your weirdness. Cut the laziness, keep the weirdness.

Q. How do I know when the book is done? You don’t, completely. But after five passes you’re past diminishing returns. If two more passes only swap commas, ship it.

Q. Can I skip the developmental edit if I outlined? No. An outline is a hypothesis. The book that comes out is the test. The dev pass checks whether the hypothesis held up. Sometimes it doesn’t.

Q. Do agents and traditional publishers expect a polished manuscript? Yes. They’re reading your first 50 pages with their bullshit detector at maximum. Sloppy mechanical errors in the first chapter are an instant pass. Submit nothing that hasn’t had at least one pro pass.

Q. What if I can’t afford a professional editor? Trade. Three serious indies can swap full edits — you read mine, I read yours, third writer reads both. Cost: time. Beta readers, writing groups, and Reddit’s r/PubTips also fill gaps. The free path is slower and rougher. It’s not impossible.

Q. Should I edit on screen or on paper? Paper for the developmental pass — distance from the file matters. Screen for the rest. Always print the first chapter once before publishing — typos hide in screens.

Q. What if I hate editing? Most writers do. The trick is structure, not motivation. Block calendar time. Run the four passes as scheduled work, not inspired bursts. Treat editing like running a business, not waiting for a muse.

Related Reading (Internal Links)

• The 25 best writing apps and tools — see /best-writing-apps/ on this site
• AI writing generators (and what they’re actually good for) — /best-ai-writing-generators/
• Where to find a vetted book editor — /best-book-editors/
• How to outline a novel — /how-to-write-a-book-outline/
• Beta reader process and questionnaire — /beta-reader-process/
• Plot generator — /apps/plot-generator/
• Storyboard tool — /apps/storyboard/
• Beta reader AI — /apps/betareader/

Where to start

If you want a faster mechanical pass, run your first chapter through the free tools on this site:

• Grammar checker — /apps/grammarchecker/
• Editor / proofreader — /apps/editorproofreader/
• AI slop checker — /apps/aichecker/

Use them as a microscope, not a brain.

If you’re serious about turning the book you self-edited into one that actually sells — covers, positioning, launch, list-building, the whole ugly-beautiful business of being a working indie — the Bestseller Blueprint bundle is what I’d hand my younger self. Years of stupid mistakes compressed into a system you don’t have to invent: /book-design-marketing-bundle/

The book you finished isn’t done until somebody buys it.

Derek Murphy

Derek Murphy has a PhD in Literature, is a USA Today and Wall Street Journal bestselling author, and has spent over a decade helping authors write, publish, and sell books through Creativindie. When he’s not critiquing manuscripts or building writing tools, he’s probably in a castle somewhere with cats.