Our Editing Team’s Top Advice for Aspiring Authors
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Writing and editing are two separate functions of the brain. Just because you’re good at one doesn’t mean you’re necessarily good at the other. However, every manuscript intended for public consumption needs editing to be its best and most polished version. As you prepare your manuscript for publication, you’re likely going to be handing it off to an editor for review, assessment, and (hopefully) professional editing.
What can you do to ensure the manuscript is ready for a productive editor’s manuscript evaluation?
Well, we asked our team of editors what they think makes a better manuscript! While they work in a wide range of genres for a wide range of audiences, there were some pieces of advice that were nearly universal. These are practices that new writers, or authors who want to write multiple books, can embrace to improve their craft, polish their manuscript, and engage the constructively critical side of the brain.
Here are the top 6 tips our team of professional editors wish every author knew.
Professional editing reduces distractions that diminish your book's readability, such as convoluted content structure, incorrect grammar, and persistent typos. From developmental editing to proofreading, our vetted editing team will match you with the editorial services you need to create the best book possible.
1. Whatever genre you’re writing, read extensively in that genre to understand its conventions.
I’m amazed at how many authors of a novel, for example, have never read a novel before. Each genre has conventions and reader expectations, from language, pacing, point of view, and certain story beats that it’s good to get comfortable with.
— Kevin
2. Read craft books to learn more about how effective storytelling works.
You can’t effectively break rules until you know how to follow them. Every literary rule has exceptions, but to be one of those exceptions, you need to understand why those rules exist in the first place. Two of my most-recommended craft books are Sin & Syntax: How to Craft Wicked Good Prose and How Fiction Works.
Be careful of any writing advice that gets too prescriptive (like “never use adverbs” or “always show never tell”), as this can be too reductive and miss the point of why that advice exists in the first place. For instance, overuse of adverbs can reveal a tendency for using weak verbs where a stronger one would be more effective. Showing can increase emotional resonance or bring a scene to life, while telling can provide clarity or progress the story more efficiently. Learning how techniques work will improve the impact of your writing.
— Astra
3. Format your manuscript to ensure your editor can focus on your substance, rather than on how it’s been presented.
Use simple, easy-to-read fonts, like Times New Roman, Calibri, Arial, or Garamond. Keep your fonts consistently sized. Use Microsoft Word’s Styles to build a clean hierarchy (sections, chapters, subheadings, etc.), and tools like Footnotes for live references. Consider image tagging your manuscript and keeping your photos separate to cut down on file lag. Don’t worry about trying to format your file for print; your designer will handle that. For now, we need to be able to assess the text and make changes to it (with Track Changes and Comments) before it’s ready for any layout.
— Janet
4. Ensure your story has a narrative arc.
A narrative arc involves a setup, a problem, and a solution. That doesn’t mean that something terrible needs to happen in your story! There are lots of low-conflict stories (check out “cozy fantasy” to learn about the new trend in that genre!). But your characters need to face, and then overcome, a challenge. It helps the reader feel invested in the story and the characters. For children’s authors especially, it can be easy to accidentally write a book that has no narrative arc, which makes your book feel aimless. For longer novels, you may have several arcs within one book, but there’s also often an overarching arc that lasts from the first chapter right to your conclusion.
— Wren
5. To determine what information to include, pay attention to how you think about the news.
Which stories do you resonate with and which fade from your memories as soon as you see or hear them? This will help you understand which of your scenes your readers will connect with and which they will skim. If you read a news story about a complicated political situation in a country you have no knowledge of or investment in, you will not retain much information. If you take the same situation and read about a parent’s struggle to feed their family, starving due to the political strife, you are more likely to connect with the story.
This is how you create effective worldbuilding, by remembering that readers respond to characters in a world, not to worlds with characters in them.
— Alex
6. The basic goal of a citation is to provide enough information for the reader to find the original source.
Instead of worrying immediately about including all the details — especially if you find that citing perfectly off the cuff is interrupting your writing flow — you can make a note of this information and clean up the details later. Be sure to record your sources, including URLs, the author’s name, the title of the work (be that article, book, journal, podcast, etc.), and the date it was published.
— Adam
You’ll notice that most of this advice boils down to approach. How you approach the craft of writing with intent, self-awareness, and conscious regard for the legacy of the writing tradition you are joining.
Some of this takes the form of preparation before drafting: reading widely in your genre to get a sense of conventions and audience expectations, reading craft books to learn more about the mechanics of writing, and learning about the structures used to construct an effective story.
Some of this takes the form of organization while writing: keeping track of sources to make citations easier later, assessing what information is crucial to deliver to readers, and setting up the manuscript in a clear and accessible way.
By getting curious about how books work, you’ll develop your writing skills and improve the presentation of your story so that your editor can focus less on the quirks of presentation and more on the substance of your manuscript. Every editor wants to help a good book become great — and with these best practices incorporated into your writing practice, your manuscripts will soon level up.
