"How do I edit my book when I can't afford an editor?"

The 4th instalment of my FALL WRITING TIPS series, from an award-winning, Simon & Schuster novelist

This fall I’m hosting a FALL WRITING TIPS SERIES to get you writing in these cosy colder months. Each post answers a real question I’ve been asked recently, by a real person, about writing.

First, I answered the question “I feel intimidated by, or unworthy of, writing a novel. Can you help me?”, which I think a lot of people struggle with, particularly people from backgrounds not usual for novelists, like mine (I’m from Grimsby). My second essay answered a question from someone stuck right at the beginning of the journey, “Should I write my book in the first person? Third person? Historical tense? Present tense? There are so many options.” And my third, helped out readers in the middle of their project.

Today’s question was asked by a young writer working on their first novel. Anyone can ask a question—I have a few to answer already, but I’ll do my best to answer yours—feel free to comment on any paid or unpaid post with your question. I’ll see it. Subscribe along here to read all the answers.

Without further ado, let’s get to it!

Love, AJ xo

You’ve begun to write your novel.

Maybe you’ve even finished a draft.

You read it back—is it good? Is it bad? Did you get your points across? How do your characters come over?

You have no idea! It’s your book! You’re reading it for the 20th time not the first!

You’ve heard most of writing is editing, but how do you come up with editing notes when the manuscript is yours in the first place?

You need outside or/and a more experienced perspective, and all you have is you. So, how do you edit your book when you can’t afford an editor?

I shouldn’t be writing this advice column—because I am a freelance editor. It’s a small but necessary part of my income, and I love doing it.

First off, because I enjoy helping writers to find their voice and to communicate with it what they want to say. It’s beautiful to see young writers—or writers of any age, for that matter—come into their own, gain confidence, and create incredible work.

Secondly, I really believe writing can impact the way we live. Editing feels productive. Last year, one of my clients, hilarious lesbian comedian Rosie Wilby, published a palindromic memoir, called THE BREAK UP MONOLOGUES, that argued that break ups help us grow into our ability to form lasting partnerships. I was honoured to work on it. I can only write one book of my own at a time, but I’m pleased to aid the birth of revolutionary work into the world, so that it can be changed for the better.

If you would like to work with me as an editing client, please comment below and I’ll get in touch. I don’t work on every project, preferring pro-LGBTQIA and feminist work, and I offer sliding scale rates, depending on your circumstances, and the length of your book.

If, however, it’s not possible for you to hire an editor right now, it is completely possible to complete a book without a private editor. I sold all of my books before receiving notes on them, and am not using an editor with my current novel.

Firstly, I’m going to suggest a really simple solution, which you probably have thought of, but I’ll add a few tidbits of advice to go with it. This is what I do, and I totally understand if you think it’s cheating on my whole, “I don’t use an editor” thing.

I have a friend. I met her when I was 21. She read my first novel, FLICK, when it was a manuscript and not yet sold to a publisher. Since I met her, she has also become a writer, alongside her day job.

I have a second friend. I met her when I was 28. She’s a writer, too! So I asked both of them to read my manuscript for my 4th novel (the one funded by Arts Council England) when I finished it last week.

The reason I send it to these two friends is because they a) have similar taste to me, b) I believe they know very well what I’m attempting to accomplish, and c) they know me enough to be totally frank with me.

So, I suggest you send your novel to a friend or two. I strongly suggest you DON’T send it to someone who isn’t within the target audience and doesn’t have similar taste to you. I can’t send my novels to my mum, for instance, who is very smart and who I rely on for many other things, because she doesn’t quite have the same taste as me and doesn’t like it when I write about “grown up stuff” like sex.

I also can’t send work to e.g. older, straight male friends of mine, because as much as I love them, they’re absolutely not my demographic or who I am talking to when I’m writing. It’s really important not to focus on the opinions of people who are NOT your audience. Particularly because, some (even most) of the time, one writes to say things that aren’t accepted ideas within society, ergo, people are going to disagree with you.

So, think about this, and ask around. See if you can roughly agree a timeline for when they will get back to you. I wouldn’t ask for in depth edit notes, because that’s not really fair and takes HOURS. I’d ask for rough notes. An idea. A feeling.

You could even prepare questions to ask, like,

What did you think the central theme(s) of the book was?

Can you summarise the story in your own words?

Was there anything that confused you?

You may have already thought about this, feel that you don’t have anyone you can send your book to, and be cursing my name. But, I think someone amongst the people you know WANTS to read your novel.

I’m always worrying people don’t want to hear from me, or will find requests annoying, or will tire of hearing about my books. But it never happens! People are so kind, encouraging, and supportive. I think people really will find it inspiring that you’re writing a book, and that someone you know will want to help.

Ask around. Post on your Instagram stories. Ask your parents and friends about their friends who love reading.

If you can figure that out—great. Let them read it, hear their feedback, then ask your questions and maybe have a little face to face interview with them about their read of the book. Try to really consider their points.

I think, though, once a manuscript is finished, it’s much easier to edit. If you are privileged enough to have time, dedicating a week or two full time to working on the notes you’re given should enable you to figure out a new draft.

Really don’t worry about the time taken though — it’s important to get the book right, and there’s no point pressuring yourself with an artificial deadline. I only gave myself a deadline in the last couple of weeks, where I saw that it would be possible, if I cracked on, to finish by the end of October. I went one hour into November… but I still consider that a win!

But what if you really don’t have someone else to read your manuscript?

Well, then you only have you.

The good news is, you’re that much more experienced now you’ve finished a book!

When I don’t have readers—and there are many times I don’t—I use myself as a “new reader”. I do this by giving myself a break of at least two weeks away from my book. a month is better. Then, I do a full read.

I believe a full read is better done NOT on a computer. But that depends on you, and what you prefer. In the past, I’ve always printed off my manuscripts and read them with a red pen in hand. This is a really efficient way of making notes. It always seems to be quicker than other options.

However, I now use Scrivener and don’t have a printer at home. With this manuscript, I often “compile” it and send it to my phone. Reading on my phone sometimes feels a lot more like reading a book in my hand or an ebook reader, and therefore I feel a little bit less like the person who wrote the book.

But when you “compile” on Scrivener, I do think the resultant PDF looks very book-like, and so really helpful to look at even on a laptop screen. I work on a small MBP, and so it was fun this time, before I sent the manuscript to my friends, to read it through, looking like a real book, with the pages displayed as they would be on opposite pages.

Reading a manuscript close to how it would be in book-form gives a more accurate impression of how an agent or publisher or reader will absorb the book, and I think it really helps me to feel the arc and how smooth it is, the pace, and where to iron out the bumps.

But what are you looking for?

Okay, here’s where I really go into what I do for my authors in my editing practice. And so, here comes the paywall. For just $5, you can break through, and read the rest of my advice. I hope you think it’s worth it. I am a full-time working writer, and I really hope to be able to continue that into the future, so I really appreciate your support.

There are several things that come up very commonly, and that I look out for when I edit a manuscript.

One note about all of the below: it can be very helpful to find a book or two that your book would sit on a shelf next to, that you can use to compare your work to. You can use this as a guide to refer to while editing. Don’t be afraid to borrow! You can borrow a structure or a specific way to open a novel, for instance.. your voice is going to make your book different from any other work.

Firstly, let’s look at our story. Describe the central story of your book. Now pinpoint where this story begins in your book. Often I find people wander around a bit before the story takes off. You want to find a way to begin your story at the very beginning. Don't be afraid to cut everything you’ve written that happens before your story kicks in. Your story IS your book. Look for holes in your story—meaning places in the book that act as large gaps in the development of the central story. Do these add to the book? Take away from it? Maybe delete or condense them.

Theme is closely related to story. What’s the theme of your novel? If it’s giving us a message, what message is that? A common thing new writers do is to try to say too much (actually, I also do this). If you’ve made five points, sometimes that takes away from the power of each point. Try to consider if there were one theme or message of your novel, what it would be. I literally did this last week. I decided my book was about two particular things, and I deleted big chunks of text that “pondered” on other topics.

Secondly, let’s look at the structure. Few books are written all in one chunk (although some are, like LILA by Marilynne Robinson). Most are divided into chapters. These affect the pace of the story. Some books (mine included) are also divided into parts, which can help indicate beginning, middle, and end. But even if you have not literally divided your book into parts, look at the length. I write books that are 100k long. I tend to think about them, while writing, as about 90k, because that makes it easier to think that the beginning, middle, and end should each be 30k.

Try and pinpoint the beginning, middle, and end of your book. Are they the same or similar length? If you have chapters, is there a similar amount in each? Are your chapter lengths similar? This isn’t necessary—you can have some long chapters, and some short chapters, but are they relatively even? For instance, 10 long chapters and 20 short, and not 3 very long chapters and 27 short. Unless that works for you! There are no rules, these are just pointers. I have 36 chapters in each part of my book—that actually happened without planning. By now, on my fourth novel, I have a “feel” for pacing, and that’s how it came out. Another little personal preference—I like the final third to be a little shorter. It makes the pace pick up at the end!

Third, let’s go to chapter level. Something I often see here is that in a chapter, the narrator will be thinking about things—this may be wondering where another character is, thinking about the central themes of the novel, worrying about something that’s happening around them, or just observing their surroundings. One thing I often find, however, is that while thought is happening, we sometimes lose our location. This is so common, I think I’ve said it to every writer I’ve worked with. We need to be GROUNDED in a reality. “Pondering”, “worrying”, “remembering”, all need to happen in a physical space. Because when we are reading, we imagine ourselves with the character, and we can’t imagine someone who isn’t anywhere.

I also want you to think about limiting the number of locations your novel’s reality travels to within a chapter. I often see things like this:

I walk into the market. I am remembering my father. He lived in Mongolia. What a place Mongolia was in 1950 when he was born there. But in 1995 when we left I remember it had changed. I wish my sister had left with us. I don’t know where she is now.

So, I don’t know if you felt this way, but by the end of that paragraph, I am struggling to remember we’re in a market—and a chapter is several pages long.

How would I fix something like this? There are several ways and no one right thing to do. Firstly, you could cut down on the references—is it necessary to refer to Mongolia in the 1950s? Is it important we’re in the market at all? What are we doing there?

If all of the above is important to the plot, you could have a Mongolia chapter in the 1950s (remembering there are no rules, and a chapter can be a short paragraph about 1950s Mongolia), a chapter in the market where something happens because otherwise there’s no reason to go to the market, and then a chapter set in 1990s Mongolia. You could even then pop back to the market, buy something, do something, wrap up there, and then drop in the comment about the sister.

Now, we’re going to zoom in and look at your paragraphs and sentences.

This is such a common issue I find when editing: you’ve written two gorgeous paragraphs. But the second undermines the power of the first. It’s too much prose, too much description, and too much for the reader to take in. Delete the least impactful paragraph. I’m so sorry. But delete it. If you’re sell this book because it’s well-edited and pithy, then you’ll be writing more beautiful paragraphs (some of which you will also end up cutting. Them’s the breaks).

On a sentence-level, I commonly see something really similar to the note above. Check out this sentence:

The austere hall loomed high above our heads as, surrounded in its solemnity, we walked deeper inside and everything around us darkened.

There are two issues with the above sentence. I think whoever wrote it (okay, it was me), was trying to sound clever. People think you have to sound clever to write a book, and people think cleverness is being verbose. My hot take is that intelligent communication is just being very clear. And brevity makes things clear. The second issue with the above sentence is that it’s referred to the people in the scene thrice. Often, people do write like this. Just move the sentence around in your head like a puzzle until you need only refer to any object once.

Try this on for size:

Solemn and austere, the hall loomed high above, darkening as we got deeper inside.

Lastly, this is something I’ve spoken to several clients about in the last few years. I’m very sensitive to this, and let me just say why. I’m not offering the world this advice because I want to save problematic people from being cancelled. What I’d like to do, and why I mention it to clients, is to prevent readers from coming across something problematic, that makes them feel like crap. So: if you have characters that you have put in your novel to represent marginalised groups… please take care that they are not just token, that they are well-drawn human beings and not defined by their marginalised characteristic. Think about the politics of your book. What is it saying to your audience? If your readers are young, are you being responsible with what you’re telling them? Some writers may say this isn’t important to think about. I happen to think it is.

Later on, you can check for typos, repeated word use, better ways to phrase things, etcetera. All this is more helpful to do later on, when your text is more finalised. I do an edit however where I go through the whole manuscript and keep trying to tighten it up a bit here and there, that I think is worthwhile to think about when you’re doing this edit.

My instinct though, would be to do the edit for the above, more “headline”, topics, and then to go back over what you’ve done, and tighten your paragraphs. Sometimes, just looking at the page can indicate whether you’ve over-written (basically used too many words, said things in a longer way than you needed to) and whether you need to edit for that. And you can compare it to books you have! Is there a book that you think your style is broadly like? Have a look at its pages, and see whether yours have roughly the same amount of spaces/gaps/dialogue.

Good luck with your edit!

Let me know how it goes in the comments, and if you have any questions you would like answering in this fall writing tips series. I’m wrapping up by the end of the year, so get them in fast!

AJK Tarttelin, Nov 2024