The final stage of drafting and re-drafting is both thrilling and gruelling. Your story is all but finished. Indeed, as the author, you might well be tempted to say it is finished. But it’s not. Anyone who has ever attended a job interview knows that it’s not enough to simply be qualified. You need to cut your hair, trim your nails, straighten your tie and generally make a bit of an effort. Aesthetics matter in everyday life.

That’s why we need the editing stage. You’ve already got a great story but now it’s time to make it really beautiful. Here’s a few tips to get you started.

Take a Break Before You Edit

First things first: have a break before you do this. You probably feel like you’re already finished in some respects but you’ve still got quite a way to go so allow yourself a short holiday. Even if you feel pumped up and ready to edit, it’s almost impossible to edit with a dispassionate eye when you’ve just spent the last few months pouring over the same manuscript. Give yourself time to forget the precise flow of your narrative so that when you do come to edit it, you come at it with a dispassionate eye.

Read Your Story Out Loud

The first step in tidying up your manuscript, surely, must be to read over what you have already written and take note of any changes you could make. Don’t ask me why, but you’ll notice things when you hear your manuscript read aloud that you wouldn’t otherwise notice simply reading it.

If you can’t be bothered reading it yourself, there are various apps you can use which will read your manuscript aloud for you. Some are better than others and some cost more than others, but they might be worth looking into (I recommend Natural Reader, though to unlock the best voices you will need to pay a subscription).

Spelling and Grammar

This is so obvious it probably doesn’t need mentioning, but I can guarantee you that your manuscript will be full of mistakes. There will be typos, weird punctuation, dodgy grammar, half finished and sentences that are half finished sentences (see what I did there? I did that deliberately. I’m hilarious).

Yeah, I know, you used Grammarly and I know you’re really good at the old spelling and everything else but… trust me. It’s full of mistakes. I’m not saying you’re a bad writer, that’s just the way writing goes (and there isn’t an editing app anywhere in the world that is sure to make it perfect) so make sure you look carefully for any mistakes.

Cut Out Anything You Don’t Need

As you read through your manuscript, you will probably find plenty of material that doesn’t technically need to be there. There is nothing ‘incorrect’ about what you have written, but it is superfluous. This could include individual words that add nothing to the sentence, or it could be paragraphs or even whole scenes that don’t really contribute anything to the overall story. If it isn’t adding something to your story, it has to go.

What You’re Saying and How You Say It

A lot of ink has been spilled over the years about ‘showing and telling’ in writing. The fact is, there will be portions of your manuscript which require evocative descriptions of the action (‘showing’) and there will be other portions where more direct statements (‘telling’) will be needed.

Showing	Telling
A single tear rolled down Ben’s cheek.	Ben started to cry.

Telling is generally less interesting than showing, but overdoing the flowery language to convey something simple runs the risk of dragging down the pace, so you might want to consider simplifying it if you feel the pace is dragging. On the other hand, if you feel like you’re not able to fully immerse yourself in the story then it might be time to add in more sensory descriptions.