The Editing Process

No one writes a perfect story with their first draft. That first finished document is the skeleton of the true tale it will become. The books in the bookshops? They've all gone through many rounds of rewriting and editing to make them as good as they are.

If you enjoy writing but feel disheartened when you finish your story and read it back, remember, you've only just begun. No one will see that scrappy first version unless you show it to them.

Improving a first draft is a skill. Anyone can learn how to do it, it just takes time. 

The basic process sounds simple… write, edit, proofread. But it's a little more complex than that. The writing (getting the story down on the page) is the straightforward part because your mind is bursting with ideas and characters are talking in your head. You might even be a writer who sees a scene like a movie in their head and writes what they see, hear, smell, etc. One thing is for certain: no matter how you get it down on the page to start, it will need more work.

Here is the basic framework we used for editing Safia's Archaeological Adventures. You can use the menu to have a look some examples from the books of how this process was implemented or click here to look at examples from Book One.

Put your manuscript away for a while. Don't look at it, not even a peek. You want fresh eyes. 

Stephen King, in his book, On Writing: A Memoir of the Craft, suggests we should set aside the first draft for a minimum of 6 weeks after completing a first draft, but every writier is different. You need to do what feels right for you. We let things settle for several weeks.

Read the manuscript. Don't make any changes.

At this point, you simply want to get the feel of the novel as a reader and to refamiliarise everying to prepare for an overall editing pass.

The Big Picture

After you've completed you read through, you should be able to answer a few questions:

• ​Can you identify a clear beginning, middle and end?
• Are the characters 3D and know what their goals are?
• Does the story move at a nice pace or does it slow down and get boring in places? The middle is notorious for this.
• Have you spotted any holes in the plot or places where things are inconsistent - a side character's brown eyes suddenly becoming blue...

Breaking It Down

Scene editing

• look at each of the scenes and make sure each has a reason for being there.
• Does the dialogue in the scene fit each character and sound like a real person talking or a stilted robot?
• Have you integrated the setting into the scene?

Line editing - expression

• Get rid of words and phrases that are not needed. The word THAT is a great example of this. If a sentence makes sence without it, you don't need it - e.g.:

'I told Bob that I was going to the library after school.'

'I told Bob I was going to the library after school.'

• Make sure your sentence structure is varied. You can make a scene speed up or slow down based on your sentence length. 

Bob lounged in his comfy chair, feet propped up on the coffee table, arms dangling like wet noodles across the back.

Bob's trainers dug into the dirt. He stopped. Pain cut through his knee and he went down screaming.

• Use strong verbs, not weak ones where you can. Strong verbs use the inside of the word to change to past tense rather than the end of the word:

I run for fun / I ran for fun

I walk for fun / I walked for fun.

• Show, don't tell where it is appropriate. This is where a writer uses the characters' actions, the setting, and dialogue to make the reader feel like they are really inside the story. Have a look at the example below. They both essentially say the same thing, but you decide which one gives a better visual and more insight into the characters.

   

  Telling 

Sally unexpectedly tripped over a rock in the middle of the path while walking to school with her best friend, Bob.

Showing

Sally's arms pinwheeled as she tried to keep her balance. Pain from her big toe throbbed up her leg and her eyes stung.

   'Hey, watch out,' Bob said, grabbing a wayward arm.  'You don't want to visit the school nurse before class, do you?'

   'That'd be the worst!' Sally limped forward a few steps, glaring with watery eyes at the rock over her shoulder. 'Thanks. That rock came out of nowhere.'

• Avoid the passive voice unless it is needed. Use active voice instead. In the passive voice, the subject receives the action of the verb. In the active voice, the subject performs the action of the verb. Words like was or by often identify passive voice.

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​Passive - Mary was being chased by the dog.

Active - The dog chased Mary. 

• Get rid of adverbs if you don't need them.

Bob jumped athletically across the stream.

Bob leapt across the stream. OR Bob launched himself across the stream. 

• Avoid cliches (tired, overused phrases). Come up with a new way of saying something common.

Bob's toungue felt like a desert by the time he found a bottle of water.

Bob's tongue felt like a dried up lizard tail by the time he found a bottle of water. 

Copy Editing - punctuation, grammar and the nitty gritty.

• You can use the editing function in Word to check for basic spelling, grammar, and punctuation mistakes. Unfortunately, it doesn’t pick up an error if something is an actual word, e.g.:

Nigel spat on the carpet and crossed his lugs.

• You can use other editing apps that go deeper into sentence structure and context. We like to use ProWritingAid (no, they didn't pay us to say that). However, these apps are not perfect. With the above example, ProWritingAid picked up on lugs, stating it was possibly a confused word, but then suggested lungs instead, which makes no sense. It also thought it was fine to spit on the carpet - ewww. Apps and programs can help, but they cannot replace human eyeballs with knowledge behind them. 
• Dialogue tags - make sure you don't have too many. When you read dialogue back to yourself, is what the characters trying to say swamped by said, yelled, whispered, screamed, choked, babbled...? You really only need to use the word said, and even then sparingly. Use it when it is unclear who is speaking. It's actually an invisible word. Readers don't even see it most of the time. Your dialogue will sound more natural without the clutter. If you do want to add something extra, you can use an action tag to identify who is speaking.

   'Are you serious?' Mary slammed the door behind her as she entered the bedroom. 

   'Why wouldn't I be? It's my wedding, not yours.'

• Make sure you are not switching tenses in the middle of a scene or jumping the point of view from one character's head to another.You can change POVs, just save it for a chapter break. 
• Make sure characters don't magically know something they shouldn't. For instance, don't have Mary go to the hidden space in the wall of the abandoned house to get the key to a mysterious lock box when Mary was twenty miles away having coffee with a friend when the reader found out about the hidden space.  
• Use a style guide to make sure you are consistent and correct with your punctuation and grammar. We write in British English so use the Oxford New Hart's Rules. If you write in American English, The Chicago Manual of Style.

The Next Step - Proofreading

Proofreading is very different to editing. Here, you just want to go over the whole manuscript without making major changes. You look for things like:

• Formatting errors - chapter breaks, spacing, margins, scene breaks, special characters.
• Typos - there will always be a few that get by everything so far. 
• Consistency - make sure the spelling of names and places are consistent through the text. 
• Timeline - make sure there are no glitches in the timeline. 
• Niggly things - you may come across a word you don't like and switch it for a better one. You might still find an extra word here of there where a sentence will be clearer without them.

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Change Formats

It is a good idea to edit your manuscript in different formats as this is like having new eyes. Things will jump out you haven't noticed before. Try proofreading:

• on screen (computer)
• using an ereader or tablet
• reading out loud - either in your own voice or get your device to read to you.
• a printed copy

Some writers even read their manuscript backwards to force their brains to see things differently. 

Do It Again

You may wish to do several proofreading runs to make sure you are certain you have made your manuscript as error free as you can. For us, we know we've reached the end of this stage when reading the manuscript feels like reading any good book we've bought from a store. 

Beta Readers

At this point, you may wish to share you manuscript with a few trusted people to act as beta readers. By reading your manuscript, they can help give a different perspective or spot things you never thought about. And those pesky typos. This helps make your story stronger.

Professional Editing

While you think you may have done an excellent job of doing your own editing, nothing can compare to a professional editor. This will cost money (unless you know someone willing to do you a huge favour). Even if you regularly edit work for others, it is always useful to have someone else go over your manuscript. Remember, you are not forced to make suggested changes.

As of February 2025, the current suggested minimum rate for copy editing in the UK is around £34.70 per hour (Chartered Institute of Editors and Proofreaders).

Please do your research on finding a professional editor. There are plenty of cowboys out there on the internet willing to take advantage of a new writer. Make sure you check their qualifications and recommendations. 

If you are thinking about writing or just developing some story ideas, we hope this page has helped you understand what happens after you finish a first draft.