I just started editing my first full length novel. I'm very much better at first draft writing, so when I sat down to evaluate the editing process, I had no idea where to begin. Since then I've managed to get a foothold and move along -- slowly -- but I was about how each of you approaches the editing process. I know everyone does it differently, and one way that works for some may not work for others, but as I've never done this before at all, I wondered how others went about beating sense into their first drafts. Where do you start? How many drafts do you do? When do you solicit outside critiques? When do you know you're done?

Did you just finished the novel and it is already editing?
I recommend you to take a break and "forget" the draft for a week or two. After some time you can see the novel in a more wide point of view.

No, I finished writing the first draft of this novel two years ago. I started editing it then, but my family and I moved, and I was too busy to get back to it until recently. So I've had about a one year gap with no editing in there already. It has definitely helped having that gap, but now I'm really ready to get this editing thing right.

I have never written an entire novel before. Well, actually, I have; but those two don't count, if you know what I mean.

I have, however, edited or critiqued novels (including a 100k word one) for friends of mine. Honestly, having no idea what your story's about, I don't feel I can offer you any exact pointers. However! I glanced at your introductory post and noticed you are part of a group of close friends who are also writers. That is a phenomenal resource. Use them!

If I were you, I would get their critiques on this first draft right away. Personally, I think the more critiques you can get, especially right after the first draft, the better your novel will be. One of those novels I critiqued would have been far, far better if the author had actually gotten input from his writing friends and done another two drafts at least.

When I'm editing a work of mine, I always start at the beginning and read for grammar, spelling, punctuation, and wording. I have a knack for seeing grammatical and wording problems; so those are the first things I fix. Once I feel I've got those little bugs ironed out, I send the work to whichever of my friends are available at the moment for their input; and, in some cases, line-by-line critiques. And then I go on from there, incorporating input into an excellent final draft. (I should mention I'm speaking of short stories; for a novel, it will of course take longer and likely be several drafts).

As to the number of drafts: for a novelette of mine, I did a total of five drafts and still wasn't satisfied (so much so I've had to start rewriting it as a novel to fix the problems). On the other hand, for another novelette, I only did two drafts and was pretty happy with the way it turned out.

Well. That was long post. Hope I helped!

By the way, I should mention that I am available to offer critiques... and if you ask around, you may find several others willing to help you out.

One important thing is that there are a lot of different kinds of editing, and it's a good idea to have them go in the right order if you want to avoid a lot of wasted work.

I haven't gotten entirely through editing with any of my writing but short stories, but I've gotten to various stages in several of my novels.

First off, there is big editing. Huge plot holes that need to be fixed, large sections that need to be removed or added, characters that need to be taken out or added in, structure flaws, and things like that. There are very few people who are good enough that they can write a book and have nothing major that needs to be changed to make it the best it can be, especially people who are fairly new to writing novels (new, as in, they haven't completely written, edited, and published three or four books already–like me ). Whether or not you want feedback for this kind of editing is up to you, really, but it is worth noting that, generally speaking, the published and experienced writers say that they need and use outside feedback for macro editing, and it is the new or unpublished writers who tend to 'not need it'. As I said, this quite generally speaking, not a law or rule or anything, but–it is something to be aware of. No matter how much you know about your novel and about novel writing, outside feedback can be very helpful.

So, that's where I start. I would do macro edits myself, all the ones I know about without telling, before letting anyone else give feedback.

Then the next step I do is basically the same thing, just in more detail...asking questions like 'is this scene optimal' 'is this character acting like he should be' 'is the description in all the right places' 'does the tension have the right pattern', stuff like that.

And then I get even deeper, and start moving towards stylistic stuff rather than story dynamics...whether scenes have good flow, whether the dialogue is good, so on.

And then comes actual copy editing – fixing errors and such. This is one level of editing where having someone else do it as well as you is invaluable, or so I've heard from most of the resources I've found...no matter how good of an editor any one person is, more than one person is essential to getting a manuscript edited well. Some people hire, some people ask friends, but it's a good idea to do it.

And outside feedback is helpful at most of the stages, really. When and how often is mainly up to the author and the novel he's writing.

Very true.

One thing I did after finishing my first draft, was I printed it off and started rewriting it. I had the original sitting by me and I worked off of that, but I added and deleted things as I went. I found that very helpful. Also, once you get to your second or third draft, you could try using www.editminion.com. The website breaks down your sentences into different parts of speech to help your writing be the best it can be.

I usually go back through my story immediately and correct all the things I know aren't right, then I sit on it for a week or so and start reading it correcting as i go. I do this over and over till I get it where I want. (But you have to stop at some point as I could do this forever and never be satisfied.)
I'm not sure this method would work with novel length story. (And it is rather tedious even for shorts. But that's how I do it right now.)

Congrats on finishing your book!
The editing process can be rough. I've finished a few novels and have been through a looot of editing- and I'm still working at it!
But for me, one of the best ways to edit, is to read your manuscript as if you are the reader and just figure out what makes sense and what doesn't. What sounds good, what doesn't, etc. It's really not that daunting a task. It sounds worse than it actually is, most of the time.
I don't really go by how many drafts I have, usually. I think of it more as one, long, continually progressing draft. xD That makes it less overwhelming, IMO.
I usually have my family do some proof-reading while I am in the process of editing, and that always provides really helpful feedback, and it saves you having to go back over the draft 1546412 times. And that's always a good deal!
Hope that helps a bit. :-)

(Snippetty snippety snip. Go and reread her entire post; it's right on target, and spares me the effort of finding the link to a post on Patricia Wrede's blog that said essentially the same thing, except based on her decades of experience as a professional fantasy author.)


Two things, though: First, if the manuscript is full of low-level errors, this is rather distracting to someone who's trying to critique it on a high level, so even if this means you'll have to do the spelling-and-grammar stage over and over again, it's still well worth doing before you send your manuscript out for any sort of critique.
And second, it's important to do everything you (reasonably) can to self-edit before sending the manuscript to somebody. If there's something you could and would have caught, it's a waste of the reviewer's time to spot it, mark it, and explain, and of your time to read that explanation, find it again, and fix it in the middle of other corrections.

A few times in the past few years we've had a "Writing/Editing Circle" here on Holy Worlds, in which each person posts a story or excerpt, then starts with the submission by the person after them in the list, and after a bit moves on to the next, then on to the next, until everything is finished. (It's been intermittent because of lack of organizer effort and time, and because of the time commitment it requires from the participants.)

Good point.

YES.

When you do get to the point where you wish to ask for outside feedback, make sure that both you and your critiquer(s) completely understand what you need advice on. Back when I first started BETA-reading, the critiques my friends were receiving suffered a lot from lack of experience, but the thing I think hurt my critiques the most was that I did not understand what kinds of critiques my friends wanted and gave several suggestions that resulted in more or less a waste of everyone's time.
Now that I (finally) have started to feel more or less comfortable in my role as critiquer and generally understand what I'm doing, a problem that I've run into fairly often is people just posting something and saying "Critique please!" without any kind of hint as to whether they want critiques that are macro-level versus micro-level or style versus technical in nature. Partly because of this, the critique group I was a part of suffered greatly from inactivity and unhelpful critiques.

Wow! People have shared some great advice on here!

I just wanted to chuck in my two cents-worth... I usually had my mom read my first draft aloud to my dad chapter by chapter. She would have a pencil in hand and mark anything (macro- or copy-editing-wise) that jumped out at her, including sentences or paragraphs that just sound downright weird read aloud. (Why do things always sound fine in your head, and then when you hear them aloud, you're like, "What was I thinking?!")

Anyhow, that was super helpful. Once I started rewriting, she was also able to help me spot things like overused words/phrases and my tendency to use a disproportionately huge amount of dialogue.