Self-Editing Checklist

A Note from Your Editor

You’ve completed your first draft and are ready for self-editing, but where do you start? First, I’d like to point out that I highly recommend walking away from your manuscript for at least a month in order to refresh your perspective and catch more details that need fixing or enhancing.

I also want to mention that self-editing in no way replaces professional editing. The reality is you are too close to your own work to fully edit it yourself. You will miss details, no matter how good of a writer you are and no matter how many times you read through your manuscript. After all, even editors hire other editors for their own writing materials (yes, I hired someone else to proofread my own book Horse Cents)! But by beginning with self-editing, you will push your book to new heights and save you money on professional editing in the long run because you will be making your editor’s job easier and allowing them to focus on things other than the obvious plot hole or missing period. 

And it’s worth noting that it is impossible to focus on everything at once, so during this step, you are going to search for the following subjects over several rounds of self-editing. 

Quick Tip

I like to suggest to my clients to create a “Maybe” doc as they self-edit and work on rewrites. This is a document where you can remove details, sentences, characters, etc. from a manuscript without entirely losing all of that hard work. It can be difficult to simply delete something you like or worked hard on, but if it doesn’t quite work with your current manuscript, it might work better with another one. Creating a “Maybe” doc will help you to polish up your current manuscript without hesitation, while also creating a list of ideas that may spur creative inspiration for a subsequent manuscript.

Okay, let’s dive in! Click a subject below to jump to that point, or just read through the article in whole. Be sure to download the free Self-Editing Checklist at the end of the article!

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Narrative Arc

(Is there a clear beginning, middle, and end?) 

The opening can make or break your book. You want to grab your reader’s interest from the very first sentence. Hook them with immediate intrigue by introducing a key character, using strong imagery for action or the setting, posing a question or building mystery, or jumping right into dialogue.

The middle can sometimes be tougher to orchestrate than the beginning and ending. How exactly do you fill in all those blank pages? It’s vital to remember that you don’t simply fill those pages with . . . well, filler.

Author Kurt Vonnegut said, “Every sentence must do one of two things—reveal character or advance the action.” So as you work on the middle portion, this is exactly what you will focus on—developing character and advancing the story.

The conclusion should end on a bang and leave your reader wanting more. The climax of your book would ideally appear around the 90 percent mark. It should have a fast pace that keeps your readers glued to the page, unable to put it down until they’ve read “The End,” and maybe even make their heart beat faster.

Quick Tip

A good piece of advice is to think of your book like a party. You want to show up late and leave early. In other words, begin in the action and leave before the story fizzles out. But you’ve also got to ensure that there is a journey happening, some sort of arc, so the story doesn’t feel static and pointless.

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Plot Holes

(Does everything follow through to a satisfactory conclusion?)

A plot hole is a gap in the story that ruins the logic. If you hint in the first few chapters at a big past event that affects the way the protagonist behaves or feels toward a certain topic, then you need to make sure you follow through with a grand reveal of the what and why. Or if you mention that your character is job hunting early on and she’s suddenly working at a bank by the end, you need to fill your reader in along the way with the stress of applying and giving interviews.

Plot holes can also be major inconsistencies, like if your protagonist has a peanut allergy, but later eats a PB&J without issue. Or if their personality changes drastically without explanation or reason. Or if they somehow know something that they were not directly part of or that was never brought to their attention.

Quick Tip

Consider creating an outline to keep track of both major and minor plot points. This way, you can ensure everything is consistent throughout and every loose end is tied with a knot by the conclusion of your book.

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Character Development

(Are your characters relatable and believable?)

While not every character needs to be fully rounded, your main characters do. Your reader needs to be able to relate to them, believe in them, and understand their journey.

Quick Tip

Creating a character profile can help you imagine them as real people and envision their full backstory, personality type, aspirations, motivations, and more. Doing this can help you flesh them out on the page, make them relatable and believable, and plot out your story from start to finish.

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Character Arc

(Did your protagonist grow or change in any way?)

While not strictly necessary, a protagonist should typically undergo some sort of growth or change over the course of the book. Consider Ebenezer Scrooge who starts off as grumpy and isolated with only his money to keep him company. By the end, he is transformed into a generous, warm-hearted, and compassionate man who realizes money isn’t everything. It could be something smaller, like starting off shy and finding their voice, or something greater, like the farmer who ends up saving his entire village in an epic battle. It could also be a transformation from good to bad, like Anakin Skywalker. The possibilities are endless, but having a character arc provides some purpose to the plot.

Quick Tip

To understand your protagonist’s goals on their journey from point A to point B and to potentially reveal growth or a transformation, consider these three questions:

1. What does your protagonist want most in life?
2. What is holding them back from achieving this?
3. Is what they want the same as what they need?

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Proper Pacing

(Does the story maintain your reader’s interest?)

The pacing (or how fast the story progresses) can be affected by many aspects, such as the central conflict, raising the stakes, crafting solid scenes, and building to a climax. Having filler, or meaningless content, will slow the pace unnecessarily and bore your readers, while cutting it will help make for a quicker, easier, and more intriguing read. Even something as seemingly insignificant as varying the length of your sentences or paragraphs can affect the pace of your story (shorter length creates more urgency, while longer creates a more relaxed vibe).

The pacing of your book is hugely important to hooking and maintaining your readers’ interest. If you move too slowly, your readers will lose focus and become bored, but if you move too quickly, they will be left confused and lacking important details. 

Quick Tip

To speed up the pace of your story, remove filler (meaningless content), include intense action scenes, and add in more dialogue. To slow your pace, engage the five senses to add detail and length to the exposition/narrative, use inner monologues, and add more dialogue anchors (action beats between dialogue). Read my Proper Pacing article to learn more on this subject.

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Filler Words

(just, felt, realized, really, very, etc.)

Be on the lookout for filler words and phrases (i.e., that, felt, realized, very, just, kind of/sort of, and then, like, a lot, really, etc.). These are words which carry little or no meaning, and therefore, do not contribute to the overall sentence. Although occasional use of these terms is acceptable, they are often unnecessary. By simply removing these words and phrases, you will notice that your sentences become much stronger. Consider the following examples:

EXAMPLES OF REWRITES
Original Sentence	Rewritten Sentence
She felt like a tigress ready to pounce.	She was a tigress, ready to pounce.
The foreign dish sort of reminded him of his mother’s famous casserole.	The foreign dish reminded him of his mother’s famous casserole.
As they walked down the quiet lane, they realized the darkness began to consume them.	As they walked down the quiet lane, the darkness began to consume them.
All that she had to do was hit submit, and then wait for the results.	All she had to do was hit submit and wait for the results.

Of course, there are always exceptions to any rule, and you do not have to eliminate the use of these filler words entirely. In fact, sometimes they can help to add emphasis, variety, or set something apart. Just be sure to use them sparingly.

Quick Tip

Use Word’s Find & Replace feature to pull up a specific word or phrase and see how many times you’ve used it. From there, you can determine which instances could be removed or changed to something stronger.

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Telling vs. Showing

(Let your reader experience it!)

I find that the two biggest culprits of telling vs. showing are said bookisms and using too many adverbs (which can double as filler words). The reader doesn’t want to be told what happened, they want to experience it!

Said bookisms are fancy words in place of said in a dialogue tag (e.g., intoned, hissed, inquired, lamented). Instead, use mostly the word “said,” which the brain registers in the background without feeling repetitive. Too many adverbs (very, really, definitely, obviously) can also weaken your writing. Many adverbs end in -ly, but not all, and not all -ly words are adverbs either (English is confusing!).

Quick Tip

Stick with he said/she said most often and describe the character’s actions instead of using purple prose said bookisms. Also strive to use stronger verbs so the adverb isn’t necessary. (Hint: This is where your thesaurus can be your friend.)

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Organic Dialogue

(Read it out loud to ensure it sounds natural.)

I think it’s fair to say that speaking comes naturally to most of us, but writing it is a whole other story. There are many common mistakes new authors make when it comes to writing dialogue, and as a result, it can often make the dialogue feel forced, awkward, and unrealistic. Familiarizing yourself with the most common dialogue mistakes, such as overuse of names, can help you become aware of these issues so you can overcome this hurdle to writing organic speech.

You will also need to understand the various methods of acknowledging who is speaking. These include the most common dialogue tags (he said/she said), said bookisms (purple prose tags such as he lamented, she hissed, or he grumbled), and dialogue anchors (action beats), as well as when it’s appropriate to use each one and when you can skip them all.

Quick Tip

A great trick to learning to craft realistic dialogue is to watch your favorite shows and movies with subtitles on to let your subconscious soak up natural flow of actual dialogue. Another tip is reading your dialogue out loud to hear whether it sounds clunky or smooth. Read my Writing Dialogue series for more.

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Consistency

(Do details change throughout the story?)

Have you ever read a book and paused halfway through because the protagonist’s eye color suddenly changed or the name of the coffee shop was different? Unintentional inconsistencies can jolt your reader out of the story, and no author wants that.

Quick Tip

Creating a character bible can guarantee that your characters remain consistent from the first chapter to the last (check out my Character Bible Toolkit, linked under Character Development). An outline can help to keep certain plot points on target. And a style sheet can ensure your style choices, like spellings of fictional planets and languages, remain the same throughout the story.

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Grammar, Spelling, Punctuation

(Check for errors.)

If you aren’t an English whiz, it’s okay. Your copyeditor or proofreader can take care of this for you. But if you have a basic command of grammar, spelling, and punctuation, you can reduce the number of errors in your final draft by knocking some of them out before your editor even touches it. Make sure every sentence has the proper concluding punctuation, proper nouns are capitalized, commas are properly placed, and you didn’t accidentally put the wrong homonym in there.

Quick Tip

If you’re interested in strengthening your grammar game, check out the Khan Academy’s free online grammar course.

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What’s Next?

Learn more about what comes after you’ve written your book in The Post-Writing Process!

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Bonus!

I’ve designed a downloadable self-editing checklist just for you!

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Red Quill Editorial LLC