Fine Editing

Fine editing your work should start with reading it aloud. Does it flow properly? Do you stumble anywhere? Does your tongue trip over awkward combinations of words.

Wherever you hear even a mild hiccup, stop and look at what caused it. It may be as simple as adding, moving, or removing a comma. Sometimes a sentence is just too long and unwieldy. Find the natural place to split it in two.

Look for repetitions of the same word close together throughout the work. These make clumsy reading and feel to the reader as though the writer was a bit short of vocabulary.

Have you said the same thing twice or even more often, but in different words? No need to repeat yourself. It takes up unnecessary space and assumes the reader lacks intelligence and requires to hear everything more than once.

Have you made any personal comments i.e. strangely enough….or, sadly….or any similar comments which presume to tell the reader how to feel. This is placard writing and is a sign of inexperience. Readers have their own minds and should arrive at their own conclusions based on the facts. Let them develop their own emotions and thoughts. The writer should only supply facts. He can cleverly arrange them, and offer unusual details which might elicit particular responses but he must not tell the reader what to feel.

Go through your work again carefully and make sure that every sentence adds value to your story. If it doesn’t, throw it out. This can be hard to do until you get used to editing but a shorter, accurate piece of work using clear language is of far more value to a reader than something overwritten.

Done all this? Good. Put your work away in a drawer for a week or more and don’t look at it. Then go through this process again. Particularly watch for logical flow. If you can afford the time, put it away for a second time for a week.

You should have a nicely polished article by now. Next time we’ll talk about getting it published.