For this week's writer roundtable, let's talk about self-editing tips and tricks. What are the ones you use to help you catch as many errors and edits as possible?
Sean Taylor: For me, I use several depending on the story.
1. Shuffle the pages and read them out of order. That takes my brain away from the story and focuses on paragraphs instead.
2. For stories shorter than 5000 words, read them backward to catch spelling and comparably spelled words (or and of, it and is, to and too, for example).
3. Read aloud. Hearing it will often register better than seeing it.
4. Have an app read it to you (this is great for those times at night I can't sleep and just lie in bed).
5. See multiple pages at once on a printout. This forces me to look at pages in context of each other.
Brian K Morris: Me, I use the text-to-speech part of MS Word to read the story back to me to catch misspellings that aren't (from/form or Brian/Brain). after I've visually edited the piece as best I can.
My twist is I use the AI voice that's WRONG for the story. For instance, if I write crime adventure, I find a voice like a little girl to read it back. If I'm putting together a story with some romance in it, I find the deepest baritone I can find. This way, I don't get lulled because someone's reading to me like my mom did when I was a kid.
Danielle Procter Piper: I let the story sit for a month, then review it with fresh eyes. Then it sits for another full month before I comb through it again.
Jim Ritchey: Bono taught me No.3, of all people, or got the wheels turning. Concentrate on the sound of the words. How they fit together. Started noticing it in all my favorite writers. Steinbeck was musical.
John Pence: Reading out loud is great neuroscience. You have to process it on so many levels: symbols to letters to words, motor-speech, spoken language, heard language, grammar, and memory …
That’s the shit, but I don’t always do it.
Time away is always good, too.
Robert Krog: Reread it. Read it out loud. Read it backward. Wait a couple of weeks before rereading by one of these methods. Of course, all of these take the time I don’t usually have, but they all help to catch typos and such and are worth it. Just rereading aloud is good, but I actually have read stories backward a time or two. Another option is having someone else read the story to me. I find that works quite well. I don’t usually have a reader available though.
David Wright: I definitely take my time in walking away from a work and returning to it with fresh eyes. I do that multiple times. I also have four beta readers I rely on to not only catch errors but challenge me on decisions. You gotta have at least one person in your corner that is going to put the quality of your finished work above your feelings. And never, ever let a misspelled word go. If you're ever re-reading something and you see an error, correct it right away because you may not ever catch it again. Typos drive me nuts. Also, if a certain passage or phrasing just doesn't quite do it for you, but you can't think of a better solution, don't let it slide. Dig in and challenge yourself.
Before I get to that point, however, I will re-read following certain sub-plots or character arcs only. For example, When I wrote the Phantom: Checkmate story, I re-read it solely from Phantom's POV, then Diana's, then HIM's. This gives me an altered perspective and helps ensure each character arc and/or subplot works, and I catch typos, etc. in the process I may not have caught otherwise.
Elizabeth Donald: Print it out on paper and read it aloud as you edit with a red pen in hand. Your eye will catch things you’ll never see scrolling on the screen, and your ear will hear the language and the ways it doesn’t quite fit. I have used this procedure for all my own edits, and counsel-urge-beg-plead my students to do the same with their essays. I can always tell the ones who actually try it vs. the ones who run spellcheck and say, “Eh, good enough.”
Ernest Russell: I like to let it sit for a few days. Work on something else during that time.
Then I'll pick it back up and run it through Grammarly. It is a useful tool that can point missing words, duplicates, double words, etc. It is a good tool, but I never use any automated program carte blanche. You can end up with some really weird wordings and punctuation. On the other hand. you have to look at every line, both as part of the story and individually.
Sometimes, I will use Autocrit; it is great at word counts. It lets you find homonyms. Have many times did you use a particular word. Did you really intend to use the word "that" 586 times?
Again, a very useful tool, but a tool.
Printing the draft double-space. Read through it making notes.
When I feel satisfied. My partner, who once worked as a copyeditor for a newspaper, looks it over and tells me everything I missed. 😀
Ron Fortier: Read aloud what I just wrote. Hearing mistakes works.
John M. Olsen: I have a hit list of things I've overused in the past. I have my computer read it aloud to me. I run a few reports in ProWritingAid. I run multiple spell checkers. I run a tool I wrote that graphs the emotional flow to make sure I have the right highs and lows.
Teel James Glenn: I read things out of sequence to not get caught up in the story. I always read my work out loud as I write it so I've done 'that stage'...
Dale Kesterson: I have been known to read segments aloud to some victi--er, friends who are patient enough to listen. I tend to pay more attention to it that way than reading it aloud to myself.
Read it from back to front. That way I focus of the words, not the narrative.
Alan J. Porter: Reading it out aloud is a great way of catching story and pacing problems.
Mark Vander Zanden: Reading aloud and having the computer read it to me are two of my steps. I also use Autocrit as well and that helps me find some of the weak spots in my writing. I take the number rating with a grain of salt but a few of the reports it runs do come in handy. I will have to try the shuffle approach as well.
Bill Craig: I run mine through several layers of PerfectIt editing program
Austin S. Camacho: Reading aloud is a must. and know your personal weaknesses. I do a search for the word "that" because it's seldom really needed, and search for "ly" to clear out adverbs that are clearly and truly unnecessary. 😉 [OR clear out unnecessary adverbs.]
John French: I also read the story aloud. Plus I run it through Grammarly. I don't always agree with its suggestions but I wind up looking at things I otherwise would not have thought about.
Danielle Palli: I have two tricks I use: 1) Everything goes through Grammarly to catch errors my brain auto-fixes. 2) I re-read out loud. Speaking is slower than thinking, so I catch more.
Stuart Hopen: I use checklists, borrowing from my days as a Hospital Risk Manager, imitating the routines of the Operating Room to prevent mistakes. My lists include things like: Do the sentences vary in length and structure? Do the characters make decisions for understandable reasons? Do events unfold as an understandable consequence of character decisions? Are scenes structured around specific character goals? Does the pace contain variations of emotional intensity, humor, peaks, lulls, and resolution? And the like. The checklists vary depending on the project, and they are tailored to alert me to things I know are my weaknesses. At the bottom of the checklist is a reminder -- stop editing and rewriting, or you will never be done. Good is the enemy of Great, but Perfect is the enemy of finishing.
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