Use ‘was’ only twice per page. This includes ‘were’ and ‘is’.
Limit adverbs. Search for ‘ly’ endings and get rid of as many as possible.
Watch out for bouncing eyes–He dropped his eyes to the floor. His eyes roved the room
Use gerunds sparingly. Search for -ing endings and eliminate as many as possible.
Eliminate ‘very’.
Eliminate ‘not’ and ‘n’t’–switch them to a positive. Rather than ‘he couldn’t run, he was so tired ‘. Instead say, ‘he stumbled forward, his legs so tired they refused to obey’.
Eliminate dialogue tags as often as possible. Indicate a speaker by actions. Those you keep should be simple, like said.
Be specific. Not ‘the car’, but the red Oldsmobile convertible’.
Eliminate but, the fact that, just, began to, started to. Rarely do these move the action forward.
Use qualifiers sparingly. This includes a bit, little, fairly, highly, kind of, mostly, rather, really, slightly, sort of, appeared to, seemed to–you get the idea. These make you sound unsure.
Run your manuscript through an auto-editor like Autocrit. It’ll find problems like sentence length variations and repetition of words so you can fix them.
Run your manuscript through a grammar checker like Grammarly or Hemingway.
Don’t have too many prepositional phrases in a sentence. There’s no set rule, but if you get lost before the sentence ends, you have too many.
Secure each chapter in place and time. A quick reminder of where characters are and whether it’s in the present or past is good enough.
Don’t repeat yourself. It’s tempting to retell events when a character is talking to someone who didn’t live through the last few chapters, but summarize instead–briefly. Your audience already knows this material.
Verify that time tracks correctly in your novel. Make sure the day is correct and that characters have enough time to get from here to there in the timeline.
Verify that your characters are wearing the correct clothing and have the right reactions for their position in the timeline. For example, if they were in a car accident, when they appear again in the novel, make sure they act accordingly.
Describe with all senses. Add what your character smelled or heard along with what s/he saw.
Don’t tell what you’re showing. Use one or the other, preferably showing.
A great way to find these miss-writings is with Ctrl+F, the universal Find short key. It will highlight all instances of whatever you’re searching on the page.
What these don’t address is character development, plotting, or living scenes so you’ll still have to deal with those prior to sending it to your editor.
What are your secrets to self-editing? I’d love to add it to this list.
Source: I don’t remember exactly where I found these tips, but probably Writer’s Digest.com & Writing Forward.com
All excellent advice, especially describing with all senses. Some of this reminded me of Strunk & White’s The Elements of Style or Stephen King’s On Writing, which pair well, I think, when introducing writing. I like rule seventeen from The Elements of Style: “Omit needless words.”
LikeLike
Pingback: What an awesome list of tips by pen and paper!! Must read! – Didi Oviatt
Hi Didi, Thank you so much! I think they are too! Karen 🙂
LikeLike
These tips are great, so helpfull!! I’m sharing 😊
LikeLike
Didi, oh yes, please share and if you find any other good tips, please share those too! K. D. 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Excellent tips! I ran my manuscript through Gramercy recently. It was a frightening experience 🤔
LikeLike
Grammerly *
LikeLike
Hi LIsa, yes the tips are good. How did you like Gramercy? Did they do an excellent job? Was it expensive? Let me know, I might want to use them in the future!
LikeLiked by 1 person
Yes, I think it was worth it. I just bought the 1 month pack just to see if I liked it. I did, I’ll buy the 12 month pack when it’s on sale.
LikeLike
I see… buying something sight unseen is frightening because it could have been money down the drain, but as it turned out it was well worth! That sound great to me!! Thank you Lisa! 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
No problem. You can download a free version of it too. It’s the same functionality but with reduced features. But it shows you what the full version would find.
LikeLike
Great…I will do that first, but if you were happy with it…I will be too! 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
What was frightening about it?
LikeLiked by 1 person
The amount of ‘critical’ errors it found over 2000. Some I could ignore, because I wrote in Australian English instead of American. Some were genuine and would have been embarrassing mistakes.
LikeLike
Great tips thank you 🙂
LikeLiked by 1 person
Thank you Amy I am glad you found them useful, I did too. Karen
LikeLiked by 1 person