The Novel Editor's Guide To Publishing Standards: Presentation

This set of articles look at the structure of the commercial novel and the different popular categories and genres. Literature can be written in many different ways, each as unique as the other.

Change the way it looks.

When you take a break from your work, you can return to it with fresh eyes. Put it away for a little while, but not forever. Then, read it as if it were written by someone else. It's best to print out your manuscript and read it line by line in a quiet place. It can be nice to see something new. You can go to the library or the park with what you wrote at the kitchen table.

Read slowly and carefully.

Instead of editing for 20 minutes here and there, you should spend a few hours focusing on the whole manuscript. Remember why you wanted to write this book in the first place and the main point you want to make. Put it at the top of your text's first page.

The genre of your book will tell who will read it.

If this is a thriller, are you interested from the beginning to the end? Is the story moving too slowly? How many unplanned things happen? Does everyone live happily ever after at the end of a love story? How hard will your main character's work get to that point in the story? Do they have enough drama and feelings?

The big picture

In the first step of editing, for a Fiction Editor is "structural edit," the big picture is given the most attention. This includes the story's plot, characters, tone, point of view, and pace. It's important to point out apparent mistakes like misspellings and the overuse of clichés or phrases, but keep your attention from the bigger picture. Worrying about punctuation and individual sentences will only help if you cut out big chunks of text.

You can only go right using the story arc as your starting point.

Think about whether the timeline you've made makes sense. Do you need a different plot? Are any essential scenes missing? It's important to remember that you can tell your story in a relaxed order of events.

Conclusion

Having a rough timeline in mind is helpful, but keep in mind that it may take more than one round of edits to smooth out all the bumps. You could do it in stages, focusing on the plot and the characters at different times. Each change will be better than the one before it.

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