In the first of my previous blogs on editing, I looked at the lessons that I had learnt a long time ago from the world of business book publishing. In the second blog I looked at what I had to learn more recently to adapt to publishing fiction.

In this blog I want to look at the editing tools and techniques I use. It is not meant to be a comprehensive review of all the software tools available. It is my personal choice of what works for me.

I retired from the accounting profession in March 2011 and decided to write my first novel. One of my first decisions was to buy an Apple MacBook, and the application Scrivener that I had heard so many good things about. I wasn’t disappointed. The software is amazing. After using Microsoft’s Word for over two decades I had finally found my ideal writing tool for writing books. I published my first novel, Collision, in October 2012; my second Alien Hothouse in November 2015; and my third AndroDigm Park 2067 in April 2018.

There are many powerful utilities in Scrivener, but for me the most awesome is that you write in scenes and can move the scenes about by dragging and dropping them. And as each scene has it’s own summary card you can easily switch presentation to a cork board mode, or outline mode and see your story set out in a visual way. For planning purposes, you can map out the major scenes of the story to see the cards across your screen. And when you have completed your first draft you can export a scene list to a spreadsheet file for further analysis of the scenes. This is invaluable when trying to carry out a development edit. It gives you a scene list and the key actions, features and turning points of the story.

It follows that my next important tool is a spreadsheet. I have a great love for the power of Microsoft’s Excel (as most accountants do!). But these days I can accomplish most of the scene analysis I need to do using Apple’s Numbers.  By visualising the story in a columnar way, you can see all the important elements of the story set out.

Now for detailed editing. I perform all detailed editing in Scrivener, so the in-built  spellchecker is the starting point for any edit. However, spellcheckers don’t pick up all errors such homonyms (eg to, too, two) which may be spelt correctly but used in the wrong context. And they don’t pick up a host or errors such as poor grammar, inconsistent use of  hyphenation, capitalisation, punctuation marks and poor style. There are programs that can help the writer identify these issues. The major ones are ProWritingaid, AutoCrit, and Grammarly, but there are many more. Some of these applications have free on-line versions with limited functionality (e.g. ProWritingAid, EditMinion, Grammarly, Ginger and Hemingway).

My preference is the premium version  of ProWriting Aid. Like many of the systems it has a version that works by uploading files onto the internet. But I prefer the standalone version that works with Scrivener. To me, the ability to edit Scrivener files directly gives the system the edge over other applications as I don’t need to convert files back and forth.

Edit software will never replace the need for a professional editor. But such software can help the writer to identify potential problems, inconsistencies and poor style. But not all suggestions generated from this type of software will be appropriate. It is up to the writer to determine how they deal with them.

However much you use these software aids there is a still need to carry out the most detailed review of the text as objectively as you can. This is best achieved by leaving the manuscript for a period of time before undergoing this review. It can also help to use different reading mediums: screen, paper and audio (getting the software to read to you). And by changing fonts and page sizes.

You will also need a good dictionary and style manual for reference. I personally use the Oxford English Dictionary and New Oxford Style Manual for reference, as I write British English rather than American English. But I have at least another ten books on grammar and editing to refer to where necessary.

Editing is an intensive process. It is difficult to look for all types of problems in one pass-through of the text. A different approach is to focus on different types of problems  in each pass-through. For example, the final pass might just look at punctuation problems. As explained in the quote from CJ Webb in the first of these articles.

Edit your manuscript until your fingers bleed and you have memorized every last word. Then when you are certain you are on the verge of insanity… edit one more time.

If you want to be writer, you need to be able to edit. Successful writers are all re-writers.