An author recently asked me why they would employ a professional editor. The skills and insight an editor can bring to your writing are complex and involve many years of courses, reading and learning. When you begin the editing process with a professional, you’re opening a dialogue, so the relationship represents much more than simply entering into a professional relationship. You’re collaborating with someone who wants to make your book the best it can be. Obviously this shouldn’t mean them rewriting your book and losing your author’s voice but the process should provide you with a set of suggestions and questions which will tease out the best version of your story. The technicolour version you have hidden inside yourself. I love collaborative writing and essentially that is the relationship you should achieve through working with an editor.

Some of the biggest mistakes made by authors are in overwriting, which can include too much explanation – it is so important to trust your reader to be on the same page with you (pun intended!). So, for example, if you’ve mentioned a route to a place then you don’t need to revisit it in its entirety the second time it is mentioned. Make it memorable the first time round. Use all of your senses to bring it to life and create powerful visual imagery through verb choice and your reader will remember it. Be aware of how much detail to include – think about what’s important not just for the reader but also at this point in the story; most importantly keep it concise.

Overwriting also includes something called: body parts in action, essentially telling us which body part you’ve used to do something when it’s obvious, for example: Ellen sat on her bottom. It is much more interesting to tell us something about Ellen that will give us some idea of character, for example: Ellen slid into the chair as if she wished it would absorb her whole; her legs crossed and wound around each other. I half expected her to spring from the chair like an overwound child’s toy. For more on this, see my blog

The examples of show and tell working together in the sentence above shows the importance of balancing these two description devices. It’s important though to recognise when to stop and to cut something back that has been shown in the action, for example: Jane flushed red to her temples; she felt so embarrassed. In this example we’ve been shown that Jane is embarrassed, so we don’t need to be told this additionally. Jane flushed red to her temples, is enough for the reader to understand. Often too, less is more. By not spelling everything out for the reader, the author is letting the reader make up their own mind. Trusting your reader is so important.

Additionally, overwriting can include overlong sentences which simply take too long to get to the point. Every word in your story must drive your story forward. Readers will skip sentences and even sections of your writing to get to the action more quickly. This could result in them missing vital clues which would tie together your incredible denouement.

Sentence length can be a powerful tool in story writing. Longer sentences at the beginning of a scene will help to ground your reader and the same is true of scenes where you want to slow the reader down or create mood. Short sentences have the effect of creating almost breathlessness in your reader – perfect for those action scenes and to create a feeling of tension and impending doom. To engage readers, you need to use a variety of sentence lengths and to save the use of all of one type of sentence length for effect only.

Using tags to overexplain what is obvious in dialogue is another form of overwriting and it’s often better to use some form of action to accompany your words. Grab the opportunity to develop character or relationships, for example, ‘Will you just shut-up!’ John shouted, furious at having been caught out. Could become: ‘Will you just shut-up!’ John wished he had checked his phone before sending Marie’s text to his wife, but it was just too late now. His fists momentarily clenched, the cords in his neck bulged, his breath caught in his lungs.  

Use of adverbs and adjectives is something that can tie your sentences in knots when a powerful verb will do the job so much more visually. For more information on this, see my blog. Additionally, directional adverbs are often unnecessary, for example: Jane looked down at her feet, Alice looked up at the clouds scudding across an azure blue sky, Jack sat down. You can immediately see that: Jane looked at her feet, is more concise and direct.

Head hopping isn’t often just a case of switching perspective between characters in a scene. If an author writes a series of short scenes – of around 300-400 words or less – and then uses a scene break to switch perspective then this will likely still come across as head-hopping. In this instance you are switching scenes too quickly for the reader to keep a track of whose perspective we’re seeing. Additionally, if you have too many perspectives in a scene then you’ve got a danger of the reader not knowing who to care about. The reader won’t get to know any of the characters in any real depth and there’s a danger of them not caring about any of them sufficiently to finish your book or to give it a good review. I’ve written a blog, which explores head hopping in greater detail.

Be very careful too about accidentally getting a character to share information they couldn’t possibly know. Also, in having the narrator interrupt with something cryptic, for example: Jane threw back the last vodka shot, it would be something she’d regret in the morning. If Jane’s going to suffer a humungous hangover or wake up to find she’s misbehaved then either have Jane’s thoughts responsible for the interruption or show the scene the following day – think whether there’s an opportunity to show us what’s going to happen or to develop character a little more. 

Finally, using an editor will help to get your writing in the best place for submission to a literary agent or for self-publishing. Tales of agents and publishing houses working on manuscripts are rife; they will edited and honed before reaching our shelves. The competition for agent’s though is huge. Some agents will receive up to 500 manuscripts a week and therefore yours needs to stand out.

If you’re self-publishing then it is of equal importance to use an editor, how many times have you read a book that you’ve hated and vowed never to read anything by that author again? How many times have you been jarred from your immersion in a story by a series of mistakes or by inconsistencies in the plot? An editor will help you to hone your writing to create the best version of your story, whatever your aspirations.

I hope this blog has been helpful and has helped to uncover a few of the ways your editor can help you to improve your storytelling. Have a look at some of my other blogs for additional support. Additionally, I can give you an appraisal of your first thousand words – don’t ask yourself whether you need an editor, email me with details of your writing history and with your thousand word sample and let me show you some of the ways we can work together to improve your writing.