Wax on, Wax off - 10 Tips for Polishing Your Manuscript by Martha Reed

When I first started writing my stories, I would often despair looking over my draft manuscripts because they seemed so rough, so cobbled together, so bottom line unpublishable. Word choices were poor, verb choices were lame. The plot rambled like goats all over the landscape. There were way too many adverbs and adjectives.

Then, with time and continued practice, I learned an important lesson. At the start of each new writing project, it’s vital to have fun with the raw story and get it down while it’s still fresh, exciting, and interesting. Play with a story idea for too long and it becomes brittle and stale. The last thing you want to do is become bored with it. I needed to give myself permission to just write it down. Editing and polishing the manuscript to perfection came later in the writing process.

“Almost all good writing begins with terrible first efforts. You need to start somewhere. Start by getting something—anything—down on paper. What I’ve learned to do when I sit down to work on a shitty first draft is to quiet the voices in my head.”
― Anne Lamott, Bird by Bird

I think polishing a manuscript must be like the work a lapidary does. You start out with a pretty pebble and with knowledge and consistent application you grind away the cracks and the grit and the sand until you have a gorgeously sparkling gemstone to show everyone.

So, after I’ve typed “The End” or “###” on my draft manuscript, what are my next steps?

1.     I save the manuscript to my computer and on a thumb drive. This way I have backup copies in case I go down an editing rabbit hole and need to return to my original thoughts. (It happens.)

2.     I create a copy, “Rev 1.” This is the version I edit. Some writers print Rev 1 on paper and edit the story from there. Hey, whatever floats your boat, as long as it works. I prefer to stay digital.

3.     Using the “Read Aloud” feature under “Review” in Microsoft Word, I listen to the whole story unfold, editing Rev 1 as I go. I listen for a consistent and interesting narrative tone, slash any duplications, and check for continuity in character names and descriptions.

4.     While I’m listening to the story, my internal editor is also listening in the background to the paragraph and chapter length for pacing. As I go along, I give myself plenty of time to pause the audio and think: would this material work better if I reordered things? If I was the reader, would I get up now and make a cup of tea? What if I moved this section from here to there? Now is the time to make those structural changes.

5.     I remove any tropes or cliches, overused words, or phrases. (What’s your favorite overused word? Mine is “silhouette.”)

6.     Once I cross the 200 page mark, I deliberately shorten chapters and sentences to increase the tension and pick up the pace.

7.     When the initial audio reading is over, I work back to front to identify and reinforce any themes. I know “theme” is a bad word we all learned in high school, but your book is about something. Why not make it a theme?

8.     Your characters have been sharing their story with you. What has been revealed? Add any new and surprising insights that will hook your reader’s interest and their emotions.

9.     When Rev 1 is done, I send it to my trusted Beta readers. After reviewing their notes, I make additional tweaks.

10.  I send the final Rev 1 to my professional editor and make those suggested changes, as needed.

After that, I call this one done and start the next one!

What is your process for editing and polishing? Do you have any tricks you’d like to share?