Editing in Layers: Seven Things to Search For In Your Manuscript

by Stephanie Morrill

Stephanie writes young adult contemporary novels and is the creator of GoTeenWriters.com. Her novels include The Reinvention of Skylar Hoyt series (Revell) and the Ellie Sweet books (Playlist). You can connect with her on Facebook, Twitter, Pinterest, and check out samples of her work on her author website including the free novella, Throwing Stones.

For the duration of this series on editing, Jill and I have had the ebook version of our editing book, Go Teen Writers: How to Turn Your First Draft into a Published Book, on sale for $2.99. Today will be the LAST DAY for that sale. So, if you want it, now's the time.

Previous posts in this series:

How to Edit Your Novel In Layers

Editing in Layers: The Big Picture of Your Scene

Editing in Layers: Drawing out Emotion and Tension

If you've edited a scene in layers thus far, you've fixed your point of view inconsistencies. You've clarified your characters' goals. You researched your setting and filled in those missing details. Your bland nouns and verbs have been replaced to better draw out emotion.

Now we do the nitty gritty stuff. Or, in keeping with our cake-baking metaphor, now we frost.

Why's all this boring stuff I'm about to list considered the frosting? Because this is the layer that's going to create the cohesive package of your book. These are the details that make a book so smooth and effortless to read, you forget it's  not real. A poorly frosted cake is going to look terrible no matter how amazing the layers underneath are, and if you don't take care of these details, you risk your readers not being able to experience the rich emotions and twists you've created.

Here are seven things to search for in your manuscript:

1. Dialogue tags

As I do my other layers of edits, I remove as many dialogue tags as possible but inevitably a few have escaped my notice. At the end, I run a search in my manuscript for my common tags—said and asked—and evaluate them one-by-one. Sometimes the tag inexplicably works best, and I allow them to stay. Normally I try to replace them with an action beat or emotion beat.

2. Was

Or "is" if you're writing in present tense. Was is the phrase that hints you've lapsed into a passive voice. Not all wases (boy, that's strange looking) are passive but many are.

3. Pointless adverbs

You can do this by running a search for "ly" words. Not all adverbs need to be destroyed. Just the ones that can be replaced by a stronger verb. Instead of my character "walking quickly" to the door I might have her "race" to the door. That kind of thing.

Sometimes adverbs are used in dialogue and those I tend to leave. Occasionally, I use an adverb for voice purposes. One character might describe another as "horridly slow," and I'll keep that because I like how it sounds for that character.

4. Pet words

Every writer has words that they tend to overuse, and sometimes the list changes with each story. "Quirk" is a big one for me. People's eyebrows and mouths do a lot of quirking in my early drafts. I know to search for that one.

When you've chosen a unique word, you want to be careful to not keep repeating it. That's very noticeable to readers. 

5. Pet punctuation

That might sound a little weird, but many writers have a form of punctuation that they overuse. Mine are ellipses and em-dashes (These guys: —) Yours might be exclamation points or parentheses. Whatever they are, keep a close eye on them during edits.

6. Weasel words

These are words that sneak into sentences without you realizing it. Just, little, very, so, suddenly. They're not bad words to use, but you do want to make sure you're using them intentionally.

7. Your common typos.

I've noticed that I have a few recurring typos. Often I type "think" for "thing" or "image" for "imagine." And a really bizarre typo that I've found twice now in a manuscript of mind is "heart over her hand" instead of "hand over her heart." 

Here's a list of Jill's and my "weasel words" that we've made available for you to print out.

Once I've exhausted my search and find feature, I like to either read my book out loud or, better yet, have my book read to me. I've used the free version of Natural Reader, and I really like it. Supposedly my Kindle will read to me, but I haven't tried that out yet.

This gets tedious, and I don't always have time for it, but I love the results when I do. Not only does it prevent me from finishing the work day with a sore throat, but the monotone computer voice helps me to catch what I'm looking for. Which is:

• Patterns in my sentence structure: It's tough to notice that you've started four sentences in the same way unless you're reading outloud.
• Repetitive words: Like using the word "door" twice in one sentence or that you used a noticeable word multiple times too close to each other.
• Pet phrases: This is when you'll hopefully notice phrasings you tend to overuse or that multiple characters unintentionally have the same catch phrase or mantra.

After I've done all this, I feel pretty confident that I've caught everything I'm capable of seeing. Then I trust my editors to help me find the rest.

I've had a few people email me to ask how you know when you're done with story edits, so we'll talk about that next Monday. If you have other editing questions you'd like answered, you can ask them below!