How I Am Editing My First Novel

This week marks the beginning of the editing process for the first draft of my first novel, The Cogsmith’s Daughter. I have already explained my inspiration behind the novel, as well as how I plotted and wrote the first draft. In this post, I am going to share my strategy for approaching the editing. I will let you know how successful I find it in a future post.

Actual edits on my manuscript

Step One: Print the manuscript

I do my best planning by writing by hand in a physical journal. Likewise, I do my best editing with physical paper and a red pen. I know plenty of writers who are just fine editing in the same word processing document in which they wrote their manuscript. However, at least for this first novel, I want to edit in the form I am most familiar. For me, it is easier to edit when I can see all the pages in front of me and write on them freely.

Step Two: Do it one chapter at a time

To keep myself from becoming overwhelmed, I will be printing my manuscript one chapter at a time. Likewise, I will be editing it one chapter at a time. In each individual chapter, I will look for several elements: sentence structure, dialogue, plot advancement, character development, etc. Basically, without going into the nitty-gritty, I will make sure each chapter is well-constructed, important to the overall story, and entertaining to the reader.

Step Three: Look at sections together

To me, my novel has clear “phases” in the overall journey. Therefore, at the end of each phase, I will make sure that the information is consistent, the plot is advancing at the proper pace, and the characters are growing as they should. I am hoping that this thoroughness will help me ensure that the development of my story is solid and allow me to avoid the cost of a developmental editor.

Step Four: Review the entire manuscript

Once all the chapters have been printed and edited, I will lay out my manuscript and consider it as a whole. Does the story flow properly? Are all necessary questions answered? Are my details consistent?

Step Five: Research specific details

Because I wrote my novel during NaNoWriMo, I allowed myself to skip on research. For example, my novel takes place in a desert landscape. My characters mention specific foods that they eat; however, I honestly don’t know if it would be possible to grow these foods in a desert (or even in a greenhouse in the desert). Therefore, I will be taking the time to research and adjust details like these as necessary.

Step Six: Type up the changes

Once I have run my red pen out of ink and researched my “minor” details, I will make the changes in the Scrivener documents. By waiting to type out my changes until the end, I hope to keep myself from having to go back into the early chapters and revise a second or third time. Likewise, this allows me another full look through my manuscript and provides a good opportunity to do more thorough proofreading.

Step Seven: Seek outside help

If I stick with the above-mentioned process, I think I will have done about all I can do for the first go-round. At this point, I will hire a professional editor and send my manuscript out to a handful of beta readers. Hopefully, these individuals will catch what I have missed and help me whip my manuscript into a final, publishable shape.

The idea of editing my manuscript makes me really nervous. I am terrified that when I look at the words I’ve written, I will realize that my NaNoWriMo writing frenzy resulted in a ginormous pile of trash. However, I keep trying to reassure myself. In university, I always felt this way when I went to edit a first draft, and the process was never as arduous as I expected. Plus, as I’ve written before, IT’S OKAY if my first draft sucks. Heck, I hope my first draft sucks, or I am planning to waste the next few weeks of my life by editing it.

Regardless, the time has come. I have taken a month off from The Cogsmith’s Daughter, and now I must edit it. Hopefully it goes smoothly and I have enough time leftover to work on my second novel. Either way, wish me luck!

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What are the steps in your editing process? Do you have any tips to make this journey go smoothly for me? I’d love any help you have to offer!

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Unrelated, I hit the 250 total followers mark yesterday! Thank you all so much for your continued support and engagement! It means so much to me!