The February advice blog comes from a workshop I ran in 2023. Aside from the actual writing, editing is the most important part of completing a book. You can market an edited book, but you can’t edit a marketed book. If you have to choose between paying for editing and marketing, choose editing. This doesn’t mean you send your first draft to an editor; there are many editorial tasks you can do on your own that will benefit your book.

Why is editing your book on your own so important?

While all or most of you will send your manuscript to a professional editor before publication, any changes you can make yourself will help you appear more professional to other publishing industry professionals and will help your work get noticed.

Someone who knows the source material and doesn’t have to guess intent is more likely to revise in a way that benefits the book. If you review and make small changes for clarity throughout, you are more likely to get your point across so your intent is retained with the editor and understood by the reader.

There are many things a typical editor won’t or can’t do to your book. Often, the editor’s review is intended to be a simple grammatical review. If you review on your own to correct certain elements and improve your drafts, the final product you sent to your editor will be better before editing—and thus better after.

Editing can be pricey. The more you can do yourself, the less you would need to pay an editor to do. If you can make global fixes that do not require an editorial eye, you may greatly lower the cost of retaining a professional editor.

Checklists Are Your Friend

You know your writing style, and you know your needs. Checklists help you stay on track and ensure you don’t skip over something important.

In my books, I create a running list of things I know I’ll need to got back and do after the first draft, and anywhere I can I create notes for myself to make sure those things aren’t missed. So, my checklist would include “go back and check for continuity of travel times” and in the manuscript I would have a bracketed note—[check travel time here]. Brackets can easily be searched in Word and corrected en masse.

Images

If you are including charts, illustrations, or other inserted images, you need to make sure that they are prepared for publication. Images for print must be 300dpi or higher. If you include a lower quality image, it will appear blurry. Because images bog down your manuscript file, until you are sure how your publisher wants you to submit them, include all your images in a separate folder and rename each image accordingly. To check the dpi, right click the image in its folder and select “Properties.” In your manuscript, you will include bracketed notes for the interior designer/publisher. It is helpful to include a description for reference until the image is inserted. In my experience, red text is preferred for design notes. I also include highlighting for good measure.

 Nonfiction: References

For nonfiction, the most important element to sort out is often the referencing.

Any time you reference outside material to support or rebut a claim you present in your book, you need to make sure you have a proper citation for each. For each bit of outside information, you just have to provide enough information for the reader to find it in the same source, so they know what you know. Whether or not your source is credible or your source’s source is credible is neither here nor there. All you need is the necessary information for your readers to find the same information where you found it initially. So if a reader says, “Hang on, that bit about ____ seems a little far-fetched” or “Man, I would love to know more about ____,” the reader has the information to go to your source to see why you said what you did.

Make sure you copy the text exactly as it appears in the version you used. If anything is altered at all, you need to identify it. Replace omitted text with ellipses and include altered text in brackets. (i.e. Martineau says, “Any time you reference outside material … [I] need to make sure [I] have a proper citation for each.”)

Research

There are many different citation formats, including MLA (what most of us learned in school, APA (typically for psychology-related materials, and Chicago. Chicago is the publication standard. Full citation information may be found here (https://www.chicagomanualofstyle.org/tools_citationguide/) However, all you need to have to avoid having to pay a fact-checker to research materials you already looked at is basic information about each source.

• Author name
• Book title
• Chapter or article title
• Publisher
• Website link for online sources
• Publication/access date—date the book you read was published, or, if it’s a      website, the date you accessed it (so readers know which version you viewed).
• Page numbers referenced—on your reference page, you would include all pages referenced at any point. Your in-text citations would be specific to each example.

Fiction: Dialogue and Tensing

For fiction, the most important elements to sort out are dialogue and tensing.

Dialogue structure covers outer (external) dialogue, inner (internal) dialogue, dialogue tags, and spacing.

Outer Dialogue

The most common dialogue, outer dialogue is anything that is spoken out loud. Each time a speaker changes, the new   dialogue should appear on a new line. Everything spoken by the same person should appear as one paragraph unless     multiple paragraphs of unbroken dialogue by one person are included, In that case, An open quote would be used for every paragraph with no close quote until the speaker is finished and you move to the next thing. Only the things that are said should be in quotes. Dialogue tags, narration, and action are not in quotes.

Inner Dialogue

Less common than outer dialogue, inner dialogue is anything that a character is directly thinking—anything that would be in quotes if it were spoken. Inner dialogue is set in italics, but it is otherwise structured just like outer dialogue.

Tags

Dialogue tags are connected to the dialogue, indicating how something was said or thought and who was doing it. They can only pertain to how words were said. You can laugh while talking, but you can’t laugh the words. You can whistle  between words, but not as a way of saying the words.

Use one tag per section of speech. The tag should only be paired with one quotation unless it interjects a full sentence.

When a tag appears before the dialogue, a comma should be used to join the two. When a tag appears after dialogue, the punctuation depends on the last sentence of dialogue. A period is replaced by a comma. Exclamation (!) or question (?) marks are retained, but the tag is still lowercased with a period at the end.

Putting it all Together

I hate this, she thought. Why does it have to be so complicated?

“Are you OK?” he asked. “I know I’m not saying much here, but pretend this is a full paragraph. Of many lines.

“This is lengthy for the sake of example. If this were the second paragraph by the same person, the last one would have no end quote.

“This is the end of the second speaker.”

She whistled. “Wow, that is simpler than I thought,” she said.

“Things usually are simpler than we think,” he replied, tapping her on the shoulder, “but you’ll figure it out with practice.”

Tensing

There is no official tense for fiction, but past tense is the unofficial standard. While present tense does work for some   stories, it is usually simpler to align to past tense. Whichever you choose, take great care to ensure that you keep the same throughout. Flashbacks or flashforwards are often set in italics to distinguish them, and those may be in another tense as long as they are the same relative to each other.

Incorrect (mixed): She ran through the forest. “Just try to catch me!” she says.

Correct (past): She ran through the forest. “Just try to catch me!” she said.

Correct (present): She runs through the forest. “Just try to catch me! she says.

Conclusion

While this all may seem like a lot, these rules barely scratch the surface of editorial standards. There are many little revisions that authors can make to polish their books in preparation for editing, but there is no substitute for editorial expertise. Just be sure you review and revise your book to the best of your ability and research potential editors before you select one.