What methods are there for self-editing? Does editing larger

>>9166253
What's he reading
It could be complimentary analysis

>>9166253
In my experience, another set of eyes is the best thing. It's easy to understand your writing when you've written it. Your readers won't understand it as easily as you. Leave a few days at least and perhaps write another story, short of not. You want your attention to not be on the writing your project so you can properly edit. First, just read. If there are story problems write them out and see what is necessary or not. Then, if needed, sound out sentences and dialogue to check if they sound natural. You may be repeating ideas in different words unintentionally. Third, the micro edit. You should be happy with the majority of your work. Read through and measure sentence flow. Pay attention to the first and last lines/paragraphs of every chapter. Make things sound interesting. Every page needs the reader to want to carry on. Obviously correct spelling and grammar errors. Then run it through a friend or, if you can afford it, editor. You are almost done. Eventually you will refine to a point where editing would change the meaning and nature of your writing and that means you are ready. Accept that it won't be perfect.

Hope this helps.

>>9166253

For simple grammatical errors and the like your software might not be picking up, scramble your story paragraph by paragraph so that in a contextual manner the overarching story makes no sense. Read your paragraphs backwards in full sentences to make sure they read correctly on their own. Because you are the author, and you have the general gist of how your writing goes, another set of eyes will always be your best editor- but if you force your brain to look at it critically and analytically instead of artistically via scrambling and backwards reading you can find a lot of errors.

File: 1402762728287.jpg (118KB, 1280x849px) Image search: [Google]

118KB, 1280x849px

>>9166260
We Wuz Kingz by Dr. Russell Jones, Professor Emeritus, Xavier University

>>9166779

HA HA HA HA

FUNNY GUY!

>>9166779
It seems almost oxymoronic to post this alongside a picture of Doom.

>>9168294

Some younger kids don't have the best grasp on sarcasm. They get too excitable and overdo it.

>>9168294
How So?

>>9168305
>implying i was being sarcastic
lolwut

>>9166405
I think it is much simpler to just run each paragraph through a free text to speech program. Bad sentences won't sound right and the program will not know how to pronounce misspelled words and will just stumble over them.

>>9168294

Just because a coon rhymes good it doesn't mean he's smart.

It helps that I used to be a sub-editor. I shared this advice in a different thread yesterday: read the work like a reader, not a proud author. If you've written something particularly ostentatious that you believe displays your skill as a writer, most of the time it will need to go. Don't obfuscate the story with irrelevant passages or words that will frequently send a person for a dictionary when a simpler word will do. Did your character perambulate around the eminence when he should have walked around the mountain? If yes then you've got problems.

File: 1487583614547.png (514KB, 1047x709px) Image search: [Google]

514KB, 1047x709px

Thanks to everyone for the advice

>>9170503

My friend says the biggest issues I have are verb-tense agreement and some inappropriate commas, but that they weren't really that common. I also feel I might be abusing a [dialog-action-dialog] sentence structure, but my current work is very conversation heavy so I think it might be unavoidable to a degree. I'd also say I might be treating it more like a movie (I'm visualizing what the characters are doing, which is making its way into the writing more than maybe is needed?) than a story or book. It might not even be a problem, who knows; I'll be sending my stuff to a few more friends once I hit 25-30k words to get more eyes and opinions. At least word choice and pacing seem to be on point so far.

>>9170706
Are you friends with other writers? I find non-writers often don't give good critiques. It's better to find a writing group. Critiquing is a skill that needs to be developed.

>>9170706

The thing with dialogue-action-dialogue is that, if you leave out the less essential actions (he wiped his mouth, he scratched his head, etc) the reader will actually litter the scene with body language and actions through the overall tone of the dialogue. But then of course there are the critical actions that advance the scene that must be included, like a character pulling a gun or two characters parting at a street corner, a character running away, and so on.

>>9170757
You need both honestly, or you might find yourself essentially trying to please your writers friends particular pet peeves instead of actual objective flaws in your writing.

>>9170757

The primary friend isn't a writer (she actually is more into painting )but does read a lot and her minor was writing. I am also going to send it to another friend who actually is a writer so with those two I hope my bases are covered in regards to the more technical aspects of things.

I'll be facing different challenges for each of my ideas as I complete them. With this novel I think the material has given me an accessibly challenging starting point where I can learn how I write, my strengths/weaknesses, the reality of things, etc. without being discouraged by taking on some more of the research-intense ideas I have for further down the line.