How to Edit Your Novel: The Complete Step-by-Step Guide

By Annabelle Batie

Editing your novel is the most challenging part of getting your book ready for publication. It’s a long process of trying to make your book the best it could possibly be. It’s trying to improve your book without messing up the story while also changing your novel to be complete. It’s trying to search for every little mistake in the whole novel.

I don’t know about you, but to me, that sounds pretty hard.

So when you start editing your story, where do you start? What’s the best way to fix all the issues you may have with your book? How much do you edit? How do you know when you’re done? This article will answer all of these questions.

Just Take One Step at a Time

The best way to edit your novel is by taking one tiny step at a time. There’s no rush. Just edit a little bit each day, and eventually, your book will be ready to publish.

Your book may feel long, and the editing process may look hard, but it won’t take long to finish if you just keep going at it.

“One step at a time is all it takes you to get there.” -Emily Dickinson.

Write First, Edit Later

An essential thing to remember when you’re writing the first draft of your book is to not group writing and editing together. If you try to edit your novel as you’re writing it, it will slow you down. Editing while writing also hinders your creativity, flow, and focus.

You don’t need your book to be perfect on your first draft. If you try to get it perfect, it will only make you second guess your free-writing style. When you write your first draft, you just want to write freely and not think about every word.

When people read your book, they want to see a clear writing style shine through it. They don’t want to see a book that drowned out the writing style because it was so “perfect.”

This is just something to remember when writing your first draft. It isn’t something you need to worry about while editing because you strive to accomplish perfection in editing.

But when you’re writing first, just remember not to destroy your style trying to make your book sound too much like all the other supposedly perfect books out there.

So now let’s get into the actual process of editing:

Step 1: Take a Break

 Before Editing

Taking a break is one of the harder steps of editing, not because it requires more focus but because it requires no focus at all.

I’ve found that when you step away for a little bit and focus on other things besides your book, everything makes more sense when you come back to editing. The longer you step away from your book, the easier it is to picture yourself reading it for the first time.

Most writers take a break for one to two months, which I would recommend, but you could take a break for up to six months or even a year. The longer you leave your book, the more mistakes will stand out to you when you come back to it.

However, that doesn’t mean to give up on your book altogether or quit writing. While you’re waiting, you can still write other stories or imagine what you’re going to do with your book when you get back to it. Or, if you’re writing a series, you can start writing your first draft of the next book.

The worst thing you can do while taking a break is give up. You don’t want to leave your novel for so long that you move on to something else and never come back to it. Just try to stay motivated.

However you decide to do it, even while letting your novel sit for a while, you can still write and work on your story in other ways and find ways to improve your writing. Write a few short stories, or take a class on how to write better. You get to choose what you do with your writing time.

Step 2: The First Pass-through--The Big Picture

On the first pass-through, try to look at the big picture of your book and notice if there are any significant plot issues you need to fix. 

In this step, you don’t need to have everything perfect. Just focus on fixing the apparent plot mistakes, and don’t worry too much about it.

When doing this, try to think of yourself as your average reader reading your book for the first time. Don’t try to get everything perfect. This step is just trying to get your book to a place where it makes sense.

That doesn’t mean you have to breeze through it, but know that this probably won’t be the first time you go through your book. There is still a lot more to editing than reading over it one time, no matter how thorough you are that first time.

For example, if you leave a huge blank space between two chapters without explaining what happened, or if the main character defeats the antagonist too easily, you would want to fix those. Those are just instances of larger and more obvious plot holes, so also make sure you look at the more minor story issues as well.

This is also the stage where you can improve your story to be better, even if it’s already good enough. If you suddenly get some inspiration on how you could change a part of your book to be better, then go for it!

So, what exactly should you look for when going through your novel the first time? Here is a short list of some things to look for:

Step 3: Second Pass-through--Smaller Mistakes

The second pass-through is probably the more challenging part of editing. You have to really dig into the story and search for all the mistakes you might have missed in the first pass-through. You have to make sure you don’t miss many mistakes in the story.

This is the step where you try not to overlook anything. Again, the best way to do this is to take little steps at a time. Just focus on one paragraph, one sentence, one word, and slowly your novel will start improving. Often, since novels are longer, you get discouraged looking at the big picture of your book. But if you just hone into tiny bits of your story, the editing process will go by quickly.

You have to pay attention to quite a few elements in your story, and sometimes it’s hard to remember everything. Here is a list of some of those things to help you remember:

All this is up to you as the writer. You get to decide how much you want to edit before you publish. It depends on how many minor mistakes you’re okay with leaving in your story.

No book can be completely perfect, no matter how the author edited it. A book may seem perfect to the reader, but readers don’t always pay attention to minor details and imperfections, so don’t stress too much over how “flawless” your book is. A good storyline and plot are really what make a book enjoyable.

That doesn’t mean not paying attention to your book’s other mistakes and elements. The more you invest into your novel, the better it will become. People often dislike books that the author didn’t put a lot of hard work into.

Step 4: Bring in a Proofreader

It’s always better to have someone besides yourself edit your story also. Another person may come in with a completely different perspective than you, which will help them see issues with your novel that you might not have noticed.

The best proofreader to bring in would be a professional editor, but if you don’t have the time to find a good one or don’t want to pay the money, you can always ask a family member or friend to help you. If you don’t think any of your relations would be the best at editing, ask someone online to help you, like some of the great writers here on Kingdom Pen.

It’s also good to have more than one person editing your book so that you can get multiple perspectives and suggestions. It can never hurt to have more than one person helping you.

Just be careful you don’t share your story with someone you don’t trust or don’t know well enough, because if you’re not careful, they could steal your manuscript before you publish it, and they may publish it themselves. So just verify that your editors are trustworthy before letting them help you.

If you need to feel more confident in the person’s trustworthiness, you may be able to have them sign a nondisclosure agreement or some kind of contract.

If you are interested in hiring a professional editor, look in the acknowledgments of books you like and see if they used an editor, ask your writer friends for a good recommendation, or search online for someone.

The price range for editors can be anywhere from $1000 to $10,000 per book, and it varies depending on what kind of editor you are looking for and how much you want them to do.

Also, editors are there to help you, and they do that by criticizing your book. Don’t take the criticism too hard. Remember that these are helpful tips your proofreader is giving you that can be used. 

A good editor tries to see every mistake in your book, not make you feel good by saying your book is awesome. Find someone who will be honest with you, point out errors in your book, and don’t have any hurt feelings if they show you more mistakes than you were expecting.

Step 5: Read Your Story Out Loud

Reading your novel aloud will help you notice mistakes because you can’t read as fast as possible. If you read slower and more carefully, you will see more minor issues.

When you read your novel aloud, you can do it alone, but you could also let other family or friends listen to it. They can give you more feedback on your story, or you can see their reactions if they’re bored, excited, interested, or sad. Seeing that will help you make your novel even better.

It will also give you an idea of what your readers will think when they read your story aloud. It helps you see sentences that are too wordy, places that don’t make sense, or punctuation that is hard to read.

Step 6: Make Sure Everything’s Formatted Correctly

The sixth and last step to the process of editing your novel is checking the formatting.

Are the letters the correct font size? Are your pages too big or too small?

Just verify one more time that everything is ready to submit for publication. Remember, it doesn’t have to be perfect, but it should still be your best.

For most books, the font size is 10-12, sometimes as large as fourteen. What size you choose is your personal preference.

Margins are typically 0.75” on all sides except for the left, which must be at least 1” to make room for the bookbinding.

Also, make sure you number your pages, and the size of the pages is correct. Page sizes vary based on the author's preference, but a common size for a novel is 5.5" x 8.5".

Conclusion:

If you’ve followed all the steps outlined in this article, you are probably done editing your book! Yay! All you have to do is submit it for publication, whether you’re self-publishing or going through a publisher.

Now that your book has been edited and proofread by multiple people, you have increased your odds of getting published, and you can feel more confident in your work and know what to look for when you start writing your next story.

Editing is a complex process, as I said before, but with perseverance and motivation, you can get through it and get your book to a much better place.

Did this post help you? Are there any other editing techniques you would like to share? Please leave a comment below if you have any thoughts!