Editing your own work can be tiring and a little difficult when you know it all so well, but it is important to be able to evaluate your own work and notice errors yourself.

Self-publishing authors especially know the challenges of doing everything yourself when working on a novel, so here are some tips that will absolutely improve your editing process. So, below are three of the strategies I use most while working on editing and publishing my own first two books.

Paper and pen is best

If you can, print out your work and use a pen to read over it. Go line by line and read it how a reader would.

You will find all the little errors that you don’t want your readers to see! You’ll be able to fix all the extra spaces, missing letters, and apostrophes in the wrong places. In addition, you’ll be able to improve so many repeated words or dialogue tags, and find sentences that don’t fit very well or sound wrong.

I find that it allows me to be a bit more creative too, offering the chance to add in new ideas or cut things out that don’t work at that point in the story. You’d be surprised what ideas come to you while you are editing…

Additionally, I like to make annotations as if I am a new reader, connecting the foreshadowing or the clues from earlier in the book to the big reveals later, to make sure it works. I also like to add in new revelations or clues as I go to make the reading process even more fun!

Read it aloud

One of the easiest ways to check if your writing flows well is to speak it aloud as you read through.

This method absolutely takes longer to do, but I have found it invaluable in cutting down awkward paragraphs and making my sentences fit together better. You can hear the errors or repetitions, and you’ll hear the awkward stops and starts too.

Writers, this works especially well for dialogue! Read aloud what your characters are saying in their voice to ensure you have caught the emotion correctly. You may also find yourself gravitating to saying things in another way too, as it might fit better – try it out!

Check your dialogue tags to see if they are accurate to how your character is speaking and check if their speech actually flows! Does the phrasing make sense? Is there a better word that your character can use to make the sentences sound closer to their voice? How loud or quiet do they need to be? Have you communicated all of this to your readers?

Trust me: Read your writing aloud and act it out to help improve your editing.

Notice your reactions

When editing your own work, it can be difficult to stay focused because for the most part, you know pretty much everything that happens in your story.

Even so, it is important to notice your own feelings and reactions while reading your manuscript. Notice when you feel like the story has dulled or the characters aren’t doing anything interesting. Notice your own sadness, excitement, or confusion in a scene, because your readers will feel this way even more!

Personally, I use sticky notes to mark the moments where I am feeling bored or for scenes that don’t work. That way, I can easily return to the scenes and work on them in more depth. Sometimes you will need to cut them down, but other times you may be able to get away with condensing it or adjusting it to be more interesting.

There you have it: three simple tips to use while editing your own manuscript to help improve your writing. Let me know what tricks you like to use while editing, I’d love to hear your thoughts.

In the meantime, happy writing/editing/publishing!