Based on books, articles, blogs, podcasts and forums, I consider editing to be the ‘marmite’ of the writing process. Some people love it as, for them, the first draft is nothing more than a splurge of ideas, ready to be chiselled into a masterpiece. Others see the purpose but find the effort of reading, sculpting, checking and re-reading their manuscript a tedious necessity. Of course, it has to be done. Beyond the obvious grammar and structure issues needing to be ironed out, the finished work needs nurturing, as it will represent a part of you that you care about. For me, though, editing is a hard slog. Perhaps it reminds me of marking schoolwork on a Saturday night when I was a teacher, inserting full stops, capital letters and comments on thirty pieces of concentration, never to be looked at again. This left a scar: physically, from the four carrier-bags of exercise books digging into soft hands on the way to the car; and mentally, watching peers set aside work until Monday morning, when a glance at emails on Sunday night is all the prep they need for the week ahead – teachers of the world unite.

What does the editing stage entail? I researched that question as the process doesn’t come naturally, unless it’s reading passages repeatedly, getting more disheartened with every jarring paragraph, feeling overwhelmed and wanting to discard the whole manuscript to start a new project, in which case I’m an expert! The four stages of the process are:

·       Developmental (story) editing

·       Line editing

·       Copyediting

·       Proofreading

Each stage can be purchased, and the comfort in a professional viewing your work and not being disgusted cannot be underestimated. It will cost, of course, and that has to be weighed against the benefits. Spending an afternoon whittling down prices to quotes, I found most people with credits after their name charge £1000 for developmental edits, £400 for line or copy editing, £300 for proofreading, and £300 if you’d like help with your submission to agents and publishers (letter, synopsis and the first three chapters). Therefore, for my 50,000 word children’s novel, I would need to spend the best part of £2000 on manuscript edit, line edit and publishers pack. And there lies the dilemma. If I don’t spend this, is there no chance of getting my work published? But if I do, will I be able to claw the money back in sales? Will I be better equipped to go alone on future projects if I traverse the editing process once with a professional editor? I don’t know, but while I mull it over, here are my thoughts on each section of the process.

Developmental editing:

Referred to as ‘story editing’ or ‘the big picture’ edit, it’s looking at your novel in terms of the story arc, the genre, plot, setting, pace, conflict resolution, timelines, themes. Have you created emotion? Are your characters real? Is it boring, or would an audience take the time to invest? This is what I considered in the planning stage, and it terrifies me a professional (often a published author in the genre) will give their opinion and suggest cutting or moving scenes, rewriting large sections or changing the plot. But if a family/friend had an input, would I respect their opinion enough to make changes? I don’t know. Maybe professional judgment is welcome then. After all, if you move on to line editing or copyediting, but your story is rubbish, you’ll either end up with a lovely, coherent pile of dung you’ll wish you had a second chance at years later, or you’ll make those changes further along the pipeline and waste the hundreds you spent on editing words you then cut. It would be a straightforward decision if I had a spare £1000 - and corresponding with an editor over my work sounds like the life I dream of. But part of me thinks, if I’ve performed the planning stage well, would this be a waste of money? It’s the part that debates value versus branded items on the supermarket shelves…

If you decide to go it alone, ‘The complete guide to editing your fiction’ by Michael Seidman is an old book, but I still revisit it from time-to-time to give me the inspiration to fight on. ‘Solutions for Novelists’ by Sol Stein is another book I’d recommend. And for an in-depth analysis of your manuscript, Fictionary produces all kinds of graphs and charts on your work for £25 per month.

Line editing and Copyediting:

Going through your manuscript line-by-line, for in-depth feedback on techniques, grammar, spelling, sentence length, adverbs, passive language, consistency, repetition, clichés, sentence structure, dialogue… you get the picture. There’s nothing more amateurish than reading a book and finding a spelling mistake, or someone’s name changing halfway through, and this is the place to eradicate those errors. The points I remind myself are:

·       Show don’t tell - the big one

·       Be specific – I’m terrible for ‘thing’ in a first draft

·       Eliminate passive voice

·       Less is more – if you can do it in fewer words, it’s stronger

·       Avoid clichés, ‘that’, adverbs, adjectives… needless words

·       Check the flow of the sentence/paragraph – is it overcomplicated?

I tried ProWritingAid, and I loved it; not only did it improve my writing, but it did the impossible and got me interested in editing. After uploading a document, it underlines words/sentences akin to Word, but with so much more to play with. It analyses sentence length, structure, grammar, style, readability and more – I don’t know how it does those last two? It’s easy to use, and it focused me on being ruthless rather than aimlessly reading the entire chapter. A great layer of support, short of working with a human, and nudging the readability to 100% becomes addictive. Having a professional involved is second-to-none, but using a programme like Grammarly or ProWritingAid is an extra filter to producing your best piece of fiction.

Proofreading:

The last edit, therefore the least expensive because the novel should be 90% ready by now. Still on the hunt for typos, spelling and grammar errors, formatting mistakes, etc. You wouldn’t expect too many plot-changing suggestions at this stage, unless you didn’t do the proceeding edits. If I’m feeling brave, this is where I release my words into the world, to a hand-picked audience who has my best interests at heart. If I’m really brave, on social media. But at this point, I’m confident I’ve created the best product I can - at this moment in time.

What to do then? To pay for an editor or not? I’m not sure. But I do know the first draft is exactly that: the first of many. If I perform two edits in ProWritingAid and have a final read-through – after inputs from friends – before considering anything else, at least the manuscript will be in a good state to populate someone’s inbox. From there, who knows…