The Editing Process

[malenkayacherepakha]

Editing my own works isn't something I do very well - I read things over of course and make the odd minor change, but I've never done a proper critical edit of my fic. I want to improve my writing though, and I've got a couple of fics in the pipeline that I hope have the potential to be really good, and good editing is going to help a lot with that.

So, I thought I'd see what wisdom all the brilliant writers on here have to share!
What do you look for when you edit (or beta!)?
How does your editing process (or beta process) work?

Any thoughts are massively appreciated!

Comments

[malenkayacherepakha]

Hi!

That's a really good idea - I'll have to see if our printer has any ink, but if not a different font is a good idea. It's definitely really easy to just kind of read what you want to read when it's in the same format, rather than actually reading what's on the page. I've done the reading outloud thing before, especially when I wrote essays at uni, and it seems to work alright for me, so I'll try that too.

That's a good thought - I am keen to get more critical beta work done on my fics as I'm sure it will help me get better at self-editing.