How to make the most of the read-through (Editing Your Novel: Part One)

This post is part of the Editing Your Novel series. Click through to read about beta readers, the macro-edit, and the micro-edit.

After you’ve taken a step back from your novel (however long that needs to be for you) you’re ready to jump back into it with the read-through. This step is pretty much summed up in the name: you’re reading through your novel. Seems easy, right?

It might be a little harder than you would think. As you’re reading, don’t stop to make changes. Okay, I’ll admit that I couldn’t keep myself from fixing typos and little grammar mistakes that stood out to me. But other than that, really really really don’t spend time on trying to polish your sentences, fix character arcs, or anything else, big or small.

Why? Because you’ll likely end up wasting time. You may spend hours tweaking and editing a scene, only to eventually realize you need to delete it altogether. Or start trying to correct a character arc at the beginning of the story, and then get to the end and realize it needs something else entirely. Which is demoralizing, to say the least. And not a good use of your precious writing time!

The other reason not to edit as you go is that you’ll inevitably end up getting bogged down. You’ll notice mistakes and want to fix them all, but without a clear plan, you’re likely to get frustrated, become stuck in a cycle of editing and re-editing, and fixing things that aren’t the heart of the problem. And none of that sounds fun!

So how do you create a clear plan to guide you through editing? With lists! (insert cheering sound effects)

As you read, keep a list of all the changes you want to make. I had several categories that I put my notes into: Plot, Characters, Research, General, and Chapter By Chapter. The notes in Plot, Characters, and General were things I noticed that would affect things throughout the story, not just in that scene. Research was full of questions and little facts I needed to double check. Chapter By Chapter had notes about details in each chapter. They may have been as big as “add a scene here” or as small as “why does this character say that.” You might have a totally different way of organizing your notes, but this is what worked for me.

As you’re making your list, you don’t necessarily need to write things like “change ‘but’ to ‘however’ on page 126.” If something comes to you easily as you read, just change it. BUT MAKE SURE you don’t get bogged down in trying to figure out how to fix it! If you have to spend more than a couple seconds thinking about what would sound better, just add a note like “change wording on page 126” so you know to come back to it later.

Once you’ve finished reading through and making notes of what you want to change, it’s time to organize your list of edits. I pretty much left my Chapter By Chapter and Research edits alone, but I compiled my Plot, Character, and General lists into one, giant master list. It’s a little scary to see everything in one place, but it’s an important step to coming up with your plan for editing.

As you’re making this list, don’t just throw everything together willy-nilly. Instead, organize it by size of change, with the biggest things to fix at the top, all the way down to the smallest. Why, you ask? The same reason you shouldn’t edit as you go: this keeps you from wasting time. When you start with big issues like plot, pacing, character arcs, and theme, you may realize that some scenes or even chapters are unnecessary. And when you delete them, you’ll be glad you haven’t spent hours rewriting them!

In the next couple weeks, I’ll talk more about the macro-edit and the micro-edit, but this revisions list is where it all starts. The bigger changes will fall under the macro-edit, and as you get smaller, you’ll transition into the micro-edit. After you’ve compiled your master list of edits, read through your Chapter By Chapter and Research list. There might be things that should fit into your master list, so go ahead and add them in. Mostly, though, they’ll probably work best to stay in their own categories.

The read-through may sound like something to speed through so you can get to “real” editing, but it will form the foundation that the rest of the process depends on. Give yourself however much time you need to read through it thoroughly and make all the notes you can. And, when you finish, be sure to celebrate! Even if you haven’t changed a single thing in your manuscript, you’ve still made a big step toward making your story the best it can be.

Have you reached this step in the editing process? How do you organize your edits? Let me know in the comments!

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Featured image by Nicole Honeywill