A Simple Guide to Editing Your Work

_{By Matt Wildig}

If you’re reading this, you’re probably at the stage where you need to start editing your work, and if that’s you, I want to offer you a pat on the back. Congratulations! You put in the time, put words on the page, and now you’ve got a baby.

Now comes the hard part.

I admit, it’s daunting at first, but once you’ve developed a method to refine your work, you’ll come to enjoy this part as much as the writing. Whether you like it or not, your story will probably be full of things you can cut, and Stephen King’s, part memoir, part writing manual, On Writing, advises to kill your darlings. You can, and should delete pointless words, and while I believe every piece requires different amounts of cutting, the overall aim of editing should be to get your piece to a level where the lines are lean, mean, and don’t cause the reader to stumble.

The first thing I do when I begin editing my work is look for redundancies. For those who may not know, these are repeated and often unnecessary words, phrases, and ideas. Here is an excerpt from a current piece that I’m working on, and I’m going to run through the steps required to get the best out of the work.

I pushed my body away from the wall, walked a few metres, and gazed over the river’s water. My eyes lingered on The Barges. The Barges floated were as alive as always, the glitter of string lights that criss-crossed the span of the floating vessels, illuminating the workers as they hauled their cargo back and forth. I could clearly see that they were arguing. Despite the time of night, they didn’t stop and neither did the odour. ‘I hate the smell of fish,’ he said angrily. Thankfully the breeze was pushing it away from my perch, and the stench of gutted fish wasn’t as overwhelming as usual.

Identifying and Removing Redundancies:

1. There are two redundancies in the first sentence: ‘my body’ and ‘water.’ A river is water; and the act of pushing away from the wall already tells the reader that the body is moving. When I remove these redundancies, the sentence now reads more strongly: ‘I pushed away from the wall, walked a few metres, and gazed over the river.’
2. ‘My eyes lingered on The Barges,’ tells the reader that the protagonist is looking over the water. This sentence repeats the same idea and should be deleted.
3. The word ‘floated’ lacks a conjunction. Two options to solve this could be: add an ‘and’ or remove the clunkiness of the word, ‘floated’.
4. In the sentence, ‘I could clearly see that¹ they were arguing,’ the reader understands that the protagonist is watching the workers and the use of ‘clearly’ is redundant. There’s no reason to include the adverb.
5. Although people may think the opposite, the word ‘angrily’ in the 6th sentence, is a redundancy. You can fix this easily in the dialogue, but you should ask yourself: how can I show my character is angry? You should also ask yourself why he’s angry. Would someone hating the smell of fish warrant an angry statement?

Now that you’ve identified the redundancies, your paragraph might look like this with all the track changes:

I pushed my body away from the wall, walked a few metres, and gazed over the riverwater. My eyes lingered on The Barges. The Barges were as alive as always, the glitter of string lights that criss-crossed the span of the floating vessels, illuminating the workers as they hauled their cargo back and forth. I could clearly see that they were arguing.  Despite the time of night, they didn’t stop and neither did the odour.  ‘I hate the smell of fish,’ I said angrily. Thankfully the breeze was pushing it away from my perch, and the stench of gutted fish wasn’t as overwhelming as usual.

When I’m editing a piece, the first round – depending on the length – can vary from a single session to days, weeks, and even months. Hypothetically, let’s say it’s been a week and you’re happy with what you’ve written. Well, it’s time to put it away for another week – let yourself forget it.

Now that it’s been a week since you’ve finished, it’s time to dig in, and look for ways to make the paragraph read as smoothly as possible. I generally do this by removing clunky bits of prose that don’t read as well as I’d like them to or re-write them in other sentences.

Removing Clunkiness and Re-Writing:

1. The first sentence still does not read well as I want it to. The phrase ‘walked a few metres,’ is abstract, vague. Walked metres to where? A cargo ship? Maybe a railing. Let’s see: ‘I pushed away from the wall, walked to the railing, and gazed over the river at the Barges.’ Ah, yes, that’s better.
2. What if I used the phrase that mentions the workers arguing in the same sentence as them hauling cargo? It would mean re-writing and rephrasing the second sentence so that it reads better. Something like this: ‘String lights crisscrossed over the floating shanty town known as the Barges, and its workers argued among themselves as they hauled their cargo.’
3. In changing the structure, I’ve now created a redundancy in the original 5th sentence (‘they didn’t stop’) and while it’s easily fixed, it creates a problem with the whole sentence because there’s still an issue with the dialogue.
4. If the three final sentences are combined it could fix the issues. An example could be something like this: ‘The stench of gutted fish wafted through the air, and I gagged—this is why I stayed away from the river.’

On re-writing and removing any clunkiness, your paragraph might look like this with all the track changes:

I pushed away from the wall, walked a few metres, and gazed over the river at the Barges. String lights crisscrossed over the floating shanty town and its workers argued among themselves as they hauled their cargo. The Barges were as alive as always, the glitter of string lights that criss-crossed the span of the floating vessels, illuminating the workers as they hauled their cargo back and forth. Despite the time of night, they didn’t stop and neither did the odour. ‘I hate the smell of fish,’ I said. Thankfully the breeze was pushing it away from my perch, and the stench of gutted fish wasn’t as overwhelming as usual.

As with the previous paragraph, put this one to the side for another, possibly final round of edits; but for now, accept the track changes and compare both paragraphs.

The edited version of the paragraph is lean, lacks redundancies, and reads better than its original. We get a clear image of the barges. We have sight, we have smell, we have the impression of sound from the argument, and we have some exposition in the protagonist’s final thought. All in all, I think this is a very successful edit of the paragraph and all it took was a few tweaks.

When you’re editing your own pieces, you may have less work, you may have more, but if you follow this rough plan, editing your work should be a piece of cake.

1. EXTRA NOTE: The word ‘that’ is generally a filler word in fiction and can sometimes be removed, especially in this case. ↩︎