To be honest, I don't do a lot of editing on my fics, but I've played around a lot with editing original fiction so I reckon this advice can carry over to fic easily. The number one thing I look for on an edit is continuity. I find that keeping a separate document for the timeline is helpful, but also making bullet point list of important moments and threads of information, and noting down stuff as you reread. It's good to keep track of where you disclose certain information, whether it be about character or plot, to make sure you don't do anything twice, or in the wrong order, or miss something out entirely. This really helps with internal consistency, and streamlining the narrative!
For word-level edits, my best friend is CTRL+F. I like to reread and, if I find a good phrase, I CTRL+F it to make sure I haven't gone mad with power and repeated it. Other things to CTRL+F are filler words, and any other words you know you tend to overuse that are in danger of making the prose clunky and repetitive. Or if you find a nice, unusual word, search for that too to make sure you've used it sparingly, for impact.
If you want to bring out the big guns, nothing helps me quite like printing it out and going through with a brightly coloured ballpoint pen. It just changes my mindset somehow, to see it in print, and the act of editing by hand helps with physically internalising changes. This is not great for continuity edits, since you can't search/cross-reference easily, but it's really good for sentence- or paragraph-level edits. Moving stuff around, crossing stuff out, and rewriting sentences is a really visceral process that always leaves me with a stronger story afterwards. If you don't have access to a printer (I don't right now, stuck at home!) then changing the font is a really good alternative. Just forcing yourself to look at something as though it's new.
If in doubt, just keep rereading. New stuff will jump out at you every single time. Sometimes it's hard to know when to stop tbh - I come back to things I wrote months or years ago and keep tweaking. The only thing I can do to get myself to stop playing around with something is to post it haha
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timeasmymeasure
no subject
Date: 2020-04-23 01:07 am (UTC)For word-level edits, my best friend is CTRL+F. I like to reread and, if I find a good phrase, I CTRL+F it to make sure I haven't gone mad with power and repeated it. Other things to CTRL+F are filler words, and any other words you know you tend to overuse that are in danger of making the prose clunky and repetitive. Or if you find a nice, unusual word, search for that too to make sure you've used it sparingly, for impact.
If you want to bring out the big guns, nothing helps me quite like printing it out and going through with a brightly coloured ballpoint pen. It just changes my mindset somehow, to see it in print, and the act of editing by hand helps with physically internalising changes. This is not great for continuity edits, since you can't search/cross-reference easily, but it's really good for sentence- or paragraph-level edits. Moving stuff around, crossing stuff out, and rewriting sentences is a really visceral process that always leaves me with a stronger story afterwards. If you don't have access to a printer (I don't right now, stuck at home!) then changing the font is a really good alternative. Just forcing yourself to look at something as though it's new.
If in doubt, just keep rereading. New stuff will jump out at you every single time. Sometimes it's hard to know when to stop tbh - I come back to things I wrote months or years ago and keep tweaking. The only thing I can do to get myself to stop playing around with something is to post it haha