When I was a creative writing student, I received a lot of advice on how to get started editing my own work. I loved it. I was in school to learn, so I asked as many professional writers about their process as I could. And there was one piece of advice that I was resistant to at first because it took me a lot of time I could spend toward digging into my edits. But once I committed, I’ve never gone back. This is it:
Boil Each Scene Down to One Sentence
You think you know your story and every movement in it—after all, you wrote the thing! But it’s so large and complex that you have a hard time simplifying it and keeping an accurate sense of what the book is really like on a large scale (which, by the way, is the scale at which readers and agents will experience it).
Before you take on this task, there’s one thing you have to promise me you’ll do. Take a break from the narrative after you finish your first draft. You can’t start this process the day after you write The End. Go take a moment to celebrate this huge milestone. Maybe even consider taking some time to make progress on a different project.
Then come back to it with fresh eyes and read. Really read, and then write out a single sentence for each scene as you read it.
This does three things:
Concentrate Your Story’s Movements
You’ll probably end up with about two-ish pages that cover your whole story. This is a great way to get a glance at your story and how readers move through it. You may be writing a story about a badass detective on a case, but how much of it seems to be dedicated to the romance that bloomed between her and the victim? Maybe it’s actually turned out to be a romance with elements of mystery without your prior consent. Knowing this can simplify your editorial process later by allowing you to follow the true nature of your story rather than working against it to write the story you had mapped out in your head originally. Sometimes characters take on a life of their own and need that nurturing.
Create a Roadmap for Your Edits
Can you find natural paragraph breaks that align with your act breaks? Are there moments where your sentences no longer line up with the rest of the story? Did you get bored reading these two pages? Do some of the sentences feel out of order in their paragraph or like there’s a connection missing? These are great clues to tell you where to start making changes during your developmental edit. Even if you don’t yet know how to fix them, knowing where the problems lie can make an enormous difference.
Simplify Your Querying and Marketing Later
Even if you make big changes during your developmental edit, having your original sentence-per-scene breakdown of your novel can help you connect with readers and agents more quickly. Every query letter has a synopsis within, and your concentrated analysis is basically that already. All you need to do is update it with your changes, simplify some movements, and then you’ll have it. And it can help you build a whole marketing campaign too if you’re self-publishing instead. Pilfer it to write back cover copy and ads without too much thought.
Boiling each scene in a novel down to a single sentence and using that as another means of analyzing a novel is one of the best editorial techniques I learned that just about anyone can do. But that doesn’t mean it’s the right choice for everyone. If you’re needing help getting started self-editing, there’s no shame in learning new techniques from a book coach or hiring a developmental editor to give you access to tools you wouldn’t have otherwise. In the end, it’s still your book!
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