How can you improve your self-editing process? How can you find and work with professional editors and beta readers? How do you know when editing is done and the book is finished? With Joanna Penn In the intro, Poetry craft and business [The Indy Author Podcast]; A Mouthful of Air; How to get your book featured in local media without a publicist [Written Word Media]; thoughts on faith and code; Wild Dark Shore – Charlotte McConaghy; Bones of the Deep – J.F. Penn. Today's show is sponsored by ProWritingAid, writing and editing software that goes way beyond just grammar and typo checking. With its detailed reports on how to improve your writing and integration with writing software, ProWritingAid will help you improve your book before you send it to an editor, agent or publisher. Check it out for free or get 15% off the premium edition at www.ProWritingAid.com/joanna This show is also supported by my Patrons. Join my Community at Patreon.com/thecreativepenn Joanna Penn is an award-winning New York Times and USA Today bestselling author of thrillers, dark fantasy, short stories and travel memoir under J.F.Penn and also writes non-fiction for authors. Overview of the editing process Self-editing How to find and work with a professional editor. My list is at www.TheCreativePenn.com/editors Beta readers, specialist readers, and sensitivity readers When is the book finished? These chapters are excerpted from How to Write a Novel: From Idea to Book by Joanna Penn, available direct or on all the usual stores. Overview of the editing process “Books aren’t written. They’re rewritten.” —Michael Crichton Thomas Hardy’s Tess of the d’Urbervilles is a classic of English literature. I studied it at school and the scene at Stonehenge still haunts me. Hardy’s Jude the Obscure influenced my decision to go to university in Oxford, a city Hardy called Christminster. His novels are still held in great esteem, which is why it’s so wonderful to see his hand-edited pages in the British Library in London, displayed in the Treasures collection. You can visit them in person or view them online. Thomas Hardy's edited manuscript of ‘Tess of the D'Urbevilles, one of England's greatest writers While his handwriting is a scrawl, it’s evident from the pages just how much editing Hardy did on this version of the manuscript. There are lines struck through, whole paragraphs crossed out, arrows moving sections around, words and sentences rewritten, and comments in the margins. Even the title is changed from A Daughter of the D’Urbervilles to Tess of the D’Urbervilles as we know it today. Those edited pages gave me hope when I saw them for the first time as a new fiction author. Not that I thought I could write a classic of English literature, but that I could learn to edit my way to a better story. There are several stages in the editing process, which I’ll outline here and then expand on in subsequent chapters. As you progress in your craft, you won’t need every stage every time, so assess with each book what kind of editing you need along the way. Self-editing The self-editing stage is your chance to improve your manuscript before anyone else sees it. For some authors, this stage might mean rewriting the entire draft. For others, it involves restructuring, adding or deleting scenes, doing line edits, and more. Developmental or structural edit An editor reads your manuscript and gives feedback on specific aspects, character, plot, story structure, and anything else pertinent to improving the novel. It is sometimes described as a manuscript critique. You will receive a report, usually ten to fifteen pages, with notes on your novel, which you can then use in another round of self-editing. While this is not always necessary, it can be a valuable step and something I appreciated particularly for my first novel when I had so much to learn. Copyediting and line editing This is the classic ‘red pen’ edit where you can expect comments and changes all over your manuscript. This edit focuses on anything that enhances the writing quality, including word choice and phrasing issues, as well as grammar, and more. Some editors split this edit into two, and there are differences between what this edit is called between countries. For some editors, a copyedit includes only attention to grammar and correctness, while a line edit focuses on improving and elevating sentences. Be clear about your expectations and that of your editor upfront. You will usually receive an MS Word document with Track Changes on as well as a style guide or style sheet and other notes, which you can then use to make revisions during another self-edit. This is the most expensive part of the process, as editors usually charge per 1,000 words based on the type of edit you want. If you need to cut your story down by 20K, then do it before you send your manuscript for a line edit! Beta readers, specialist readers, and/or sensitivity readers Some authors use different types of readers as part of their editing process. Beta readers are often part of the author’s community and are certainly fans of the genre. They read to help the author pick up any issues pre-publication. Specialist readers are those with knowledge about a topic included in the story. For example, a vulcanologist read specific chapters of Risen Gods to check that the details about volcanic eruptions were correct. Sensitivity readers check for stereotypes, biases, problematic language, and other diversity issues. You will usually receive comments or an email with page numbers or chapter numbers, or sometimes an MS Word document with Track Changes, which you then use to make revisions. Many readers provide services for the love of helping their favorite author with a novel and a mention in the acknowledgments, but there are some paid services for specialist and sensitivity readers. Proofreading Proofreading is the final check of the manuscript pre-publication for any typos or issues that might have been introduced in the editorial process. For print books, this can include a review of the print proof with formatting. You should only fix the last tiny changes at this point. Don’t make any major changes this close to publication or you may introduce entirely new errors. Do you need an editor if you intend to get an agent and a traditional publisher? You will go through an editorial process with your agent and publisher. But if you want the best chance of getting to that stage in the first place, it might also be worth working with an editor before you submit your manuscript to an agent. Look for an editor who will help you with your query letter and synopsis as part of their edit. Self-editing I love this part of the process! My self-edit is where I wrangle the chaos of the first draft into something worth reading. I have my block of marble and now I can shape it into my sculpture. The mindset shift from writer to editor, from author to reader In the idea, planning, discovery, and first-draft writing phase, it’s all about you, the writer. You turn the ideas in your head into words that you understand, characters that come alive for you, and a plot that you’re engaged with. In that first rush of creativity, you can banish critical voice and ignore any nagging doubts. But now you need to switch heads. That’s how I prefer to think about it, but you might consider it as changing hats or changing jobs. Anything to help you move from the creative, anything goes, first-draft writer to the more critical editor. There is one overriding consideration in this shift. As Jeffery Deaver says, “The reader is god.” With the editing process, you need to turn your story from something you understand into something a reader will enjoy. Writing is telepathy. It connects minds across time and space. You are reading these words and the meaning flows from my brain into your brain — but only if I craft the book well enough. The same is true of your novel. Yes, of course, you want to double down on your creative choices and make sure you achieve everything you want to with your story. But you also need to keep the reader in mind as you edit because the book is ultimately for them. Will your story have the desired effect on the reader? What might help improve their experience? How can you make sure that they are not bored or confused or jolted out of the story? What will make them read on and, at the end, close the novel with a sigh of satisfaction? My self-editing process At the end of the first draft, I print out my manuscript with two pages to each A4 page, so it looks more like a book. I put it in a folder and leave it to rest. You need fresh eyes for your edit and this ‘resting’ gives you some emotional distance. In On Writing, Stephen King suggests leaving a manuscript to rest for at least six weeks. While that is a great idea if you have the time, most authors work to deadline, whether externally set or their own timetable. Many authors — including me — are also impatient! I love this first self-edit, and as I’m still crafting the story as a discovery writer, I usually rest the manuscript for a week or two. I schedule blocks of time for editing in my Google calendar and (when not in pandemic times) I go to a café when it opens first thing in the morning. I put on my BOSE noise-cancelling headphones and edit by hand with a black ballpoint pen from page one to the end. I usually manage ten to twenty pages per editing session of a couple of hours each, but it will depend on the amount of restructuring I need to do. I scribble notes in the margins, draw arrows to move paragraphs around, write extra material on the back of pages,
