Foolish Adventure

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I’m a big fan of editing and keeping only the interesting bits in. ~ Sarah Vowell

If all’s going according to plan, you’ve just about got the raw stuff of a great product right now. Feels great to have it out of your head and onto the virtual page, doesn’t it?

Good editing is one of the key components in getting your message across. If you’ve got your basic product written/produced, now’s when the artistry starts — when you take all the stuff you labored over and groom it in a way that makes it easy to understand, technically-correct, and better able to be digested by your audience.

A good copyeditor is worth his or her weight in gold, by the way. More than just another set of eyes (which we’ll talk about in a few days), a copyeditor’s job is to make your product look like it’s been made by the professional you are.

If you’re lucky enough to know one or have access to an instant one, feel free to skip the rest of this day’s action task and just bribe her with cupcakes (and probably cash) to look at your stuff. For the rest of us, there are some basics that often get overlooked when we’re in the thick of the creation process, and can make a real difference in the end product and the way it’s received.

ACTION TASK:
The editing process is, of course, a multi-step process. It’s also a skill of distance — being able to look at what you’ve just done in a way that removes your own brain from the process. (After all, you know what you meant to write, and you know what you already know…which your readers, with some distance, may not already know.)

If you finished your writing today, put this action away for tomorrow and work on one of the other days first. You need to walk away from the words completely for a day or so to get a little mental distance and see it with the eyes of an observer, rather than as it’s all-knowing creator.

When you’re ready, there are a few big (and semi-easy) things you should do:

1. Spell-check the entire shebang.

I know you can spell…

But typos happen, and it’s better to catch those right off the bat, or it can make you look unprofessional. (Also, while you’re at it, check place names, people names, and any proper nouns. The last thing you want to do is offend someone who let you quote them.)

2. Look at all your content from an actual, physical distance.

Are there paragraphs that are very long? Those can look daunting to a reader…which leads to skimming and skipping over them entirely. Break up your paragraphs, and break up your text in general with some white space in the form of subheadlines and chapters. It keeps your readers from being overwhelmed.

3. Now look at the actual words:

Are there places where you can cut out modifiers or sections that are redundant? Are you using unnecessary jargon or things that a layperson may not understand? Cut anything that isn’t completely necessary, or tailored to the skill/knowledge level of your actual customer.

Once that’s done, I’m going ask you to look silly for a second here.

4. Read the whole thing…out loud.

Yes, the dog will look at you funny. But do it. It’s a necessary step. By speaking the words out loud, you can find places where the narrative is stilted or unnatural, and fix it.

5. Do a last once-over for today.

Check for a feeling of consistency. Do your verb tenses match? Are all of your subheads the same font and weight and size? Are all your quotes set aside the same way? Do you end all chapters with a page break and start new ones with the same type of heading? Doing some of the text formatting during the editing process will save you time and headaches during the layout process.

If you’re a perfectionist or an overachiever (neither of which are bad things, really…), you can even set it aside for another day and repeat this process tomorrow to make double-sure that you got it all, and that you’re projecting the most professional image possible.

TOMORROW:
Now that you have a well-edited diamond full of text, it’s time to move on to laying it out in a way that your customers will be impressed by. (It’s starting to look like a product now, isn’t it? Awesome.)