Grab the EI Self-Editing Checklist
You’ve finished a draft. Maybe a second draft? Could be you’re feeling those final vibes… amazing!
There are a few things you can do to make sure your book or story is in tip-top shape before you ship it off to an editor… and we’ve put them together in a handy-dandy downloadable checklist for you!
CMOS is the bible
We edit according to the rules set forth in the Chicago Manual of Style - unless authorial style overrides in some case. Chicago has historically been the fiction industry’s style of choice, and having a uniform style guide to refer to keeps some semblance of order through all published works, which gives readers a sense of comfort, since they know what to expect. Of course, the 17th Edition of CMOS is a hefty 1145 pages (whew!) and it’s difficult to navigate at times. You can also subscribe to the online version, which is far more searchable. But there are some key elements to master, since they’ll come up again and again. And that’s what we’ve assembled into a quick-hit self-editing guide.
Here are the things we recommend you check when you decide you’re done:
1. In the first ten pages, did you make something happen? (If not, you may not be starting where the story really starts!) Your goal in those first pages is to:
Show the reader what the story will be about
Hook the reader
Show the story problem and inciting incident
Save inner monologue, backstory, and description for later
2. Do you vary the sentence format?
Look for your writing crutches and eliminate them. (Don’t reuse words and phrases).
Watch for sentences all starting with the same words
Adjust the sentence lengths to match the tone and achieve the proper cadence and pacing.
3. Eliminate “That” and “Just” where possible - there’s no hard and fast rule about this, but they rarely add much.
4. Keep punctuation inside the quotes - please: “like this.” NOT “like this”.
5. Moderate your adverbs. You don’t have to buy into the whole Stephen King philosophy, but you probably don’t need them. And if you’re telling me he said something sweetly, why not show me instead?
6. Know if it’s “It’s” or “its”
Apostrophe = It is
Possessive = Its
7. Use ellipses appropriately and sparingly
CMOS is happy to have you use the word symbol for the ellipse, which Word usually autocorrects to. That symbol can’t be broken across lines, and that’s a good thing. Now you need a space on either side of your ellipse, but regular spaces CAN break over lines, which might end up having your ellipse starting a line (and that looks weird.) So insert NON-BREAKING spaces on either side of the ellipse. On a Mac, you do this by hitting shift+option+space. On a PC, it’s ctrl+shift+Space.
8. Format em dashes correctly (It’s this guy—)
For an em dash, you don’t want a space on either side. You can make an em dash with two hyphens, and if you add a word on the other side without hitting space first, Word will format the mark correctly. Doing it after the fact is less fun. It should look like this—see? (This is also CMOS style) On Mac, you can also use shift+option+hyphen
9. Analyze your dialogue for fluidity and realism.
Read it out loud. Is it pretty close to the way people actually talk, or are your characters saying each other’s names a lot or conversing like robots?
10. Run spell check!