As an aspiring writer, you should know the importance of self-editing, which is a series of revisions and edits, before submitting your manuscript to a professional editor.

Understandably, the editing process can be overwhelming for writers – especially – if it is their first time writing a book.

Before shipping their manuscripts off to a professional editor, let us jump into the essential self-editing tips that all writers should know.

Keep reading!

Edit Chapter by Chapter

The first tip that you want to follow is to edit chapter by chapter. Of course, you will be revising an entire book, which is why you will want to break the big task into manageable chunks – ideally – by focusing on one chapter at a time.

A lot of newbie writers get over the hump of crafting the first draft of their manuscript, and then they simply give up, which is something you will want to avoid at all costs – especially if you want to publish your book successfully.

You will want to roll up your sleeves and fix the first chapter – mark the milestone – and then fix another chapter next week. If you work strategically, you will be surprised how quickly you can fly through your edits when you only look at them one chapter at a time.

You will also want to use the right tool, such as PDFescape, to simplify editing. This way, you can resume your editing task wherever you left it and have the mental peace that your manuscript is protected, which means no one can make changes other than you, which is specifically crucial if you are working on a shared computer.

Look From the Professional Lens

While self-editing your manuscript, you might want to aim to do what the pros do. Now, this aspect doesn’t indicate that you have to be as qualified as a professional editor – but – you should try to follow their process.

If you are unfamiliar with how professionals edit a manuscript, you will want to start with the developmental edits, including storyline and content edits. Then you will want to proceed to line edits, which include editing paragraphs and assessing the style and flow.

Subsequently, you will want to move on to copy editing, which is where you look at your work on a sentence level and assess punctuation and grammar. You will want to wrap up the editing session by proofreading your document, which is where you look for any potential mistakes that might have slipped through the cracks.

Visual Editing

If you are a visual learner, you can immensely benefit from the editing strategy of color coding. When you focus on one chapter at a time, you will find issues that are easy to address; at other times, you will see challenging issues.

If you encounter a mistake that is challenging to address, you will want to use color code to highlight the issue based on its kind. You can choose any color coding method based on your style, strengths, and weaknesses.

Color coding will allow you to easily scroll through your document and look for specific errors to address.