The manuscript is finished, you’ve completed all your self-edits and revisions, the characters have a relatable growth arc, the bad guys have been vanquished, and now you want to go through it one…more…time…to make sure it’s as clean and engaging as possible before you share it with your readers, your editor or even an agent.
Here are my top ten editing tips for Microsoft Word users!
1. Delete extra spaces
If you double space after a period and just can’t retrain your thumbs to stop doing that, it’s okay! We’re going to delete all those double spaces in one fell swoop. If sometimes you press the spacebar as you think and end up with 31 spaces at the end of a chapter, don’t worry. We’re going to get rid of those too.
And for the sneakiest of them all, if you sometimes add a space after you press Enter to start a new paragraph, we’re going to remove those as well.
Go to the Replace function in the Editing button on the Home tab, put two spaces in the Find what: section and one space in the Replace with: section then press Replace All.
Hint: you won’t be able to see the spaces in the Find & Replace box, but I promise they are there. You can move your cursor between them.
Now do that again.
And keep doing it until Word finds no more double spaces.
To delete any sneaky spaces that sneaky-snuck their way in front of your paragraph indents, you’re going to add a tiny bit of code that directs Word to look for pilcrows, or paragraph marks. In Find what: you’ll add ^p and then a space, and in Replace with: you’ll remove that space so only the ^p remains. Then hit Replace All.
2. Chapter numbers
The navigation pane is quick and easy to scan
I recommend using numerals when you title your chapters to make it easier to see at a glance if you have any numbers missing or out of order.
Use Ctrl/Cmd+F and search for the word “chapter,” then you can quickly scan the results in the Navigation pane to see any mistakes that may have been made when numbering.
3. Exclamation points
It hurts my soul to say this, but you can probably delete at least half of your exclamation points. And believe me – I love them myself! If you ever receive an email from me, there will be way too many of them in there.
But when it comes to writing, too much emphasis will eventually de-emphasize everything (think of the boy who cried wolf) and exclamation points can be a sign of lazy writing.
“You can’t do that!” he yelled.
In this example, even with no context of the story whatsoever, we have three different clues that the character is emotional – the italics on “do,” the exclamation point, and the dialogue tag of “yelled.” And if we knew what the story surrounding this little line of dialogue was, we would likely already know what the character was upset about too.
All of which tells me that this exclamation point is redundant.
Use Ctrl/Cmd+F to search for exclamation points in your manuscript and see which ones are just repeating what other formatting or descriptions have already told us about the strength of feelings in that section.
4. Filler words
We use filler words in our speech all the time, but they can often be cut from our writing without changing the meaning of the sentence at all. Of course, most of us don’t include “um” and “uh” in our writing like we do when we talk in real life, but words like just, really, so, actually and very are the empty calories of sentences.
Use the search function to find these words in your manuscript and see if their inclusion (or deletion) makes a difference in the meaning or flow of the sentence.
A note of warning:
Other than double spaces, I never recommend just mass deleting all of a particular thing, such as removing every instance of the word “just” from your manuscript. But I do want authors to be intentional with their language. So with all of these tips, choose your deletions and inclusions carefully.
5. Dialogue tags
This one’s a quick tip about something I catch all the time. A dialogue tag describes how the dialogue is being said. Tags include words like said, asks, screamed, whisper, cried, and even words like wondered or continues.
An action beat, on the other hand, is a movement the character makes while they are speaking the dialogue. Action beats include smile, smirked, nodded and shrug.
We can’t smile a word or smirk a question. But we can smile while we talk or smirk as we ask. Be sure that your dialogue tags are punctuated as part of the dialogue and that the action beats are separate sentences.
“What are you doing?” he asked.
“Why do you care?” she replied with a smirk.
“Just wondering.” He smiled.
6. Adverbs
This is another search-and-don’t-destroy-indiscriminately mission. Adverbs that modify verbs commonly (<- that’s an adverb) end in -ly. Consider if you can elevate your writing by choosing stronger verbs instead of using adverbs to describe the action.
For example, “run quickly” can be changed to dart or sprint or hightail. “Say quietly” may flow better as whisper or murmur. To easily find these in your manuscript, just search for ly (with no spaces around it) and scan through the results to see which verb+adverb constructions you may want to switch out for a single verb that will pull more weight.
Other adverbs, like today, more, never and everywhere aren’t what we’re talking about here (<- also an adverb).
7. Filter words
In some genres of fiction, such as romance and women’s fiction, there is often an unspoken reader expectation of the story being told from a limited or deep point of view (POV). That means that the narrator of each scene is a single person’s perspective and the story doesn’t “head hop” between the thoughts of several characters. This limited point of view allows readers to experience the story as that one character rather than as an omniscient narrator who knows the thoughts and feelings of all the characters in the scene.
To maintain and enhance that point of view, you can remove the words that “filter” the character’s POV and add some space between them and the reader. If you’ve ever heard the phrase “show don’t tell,” this is the other side of that coin.
Filter words “tell” the reader what’s happening rather than allowing the reader to experience or imagine it themselves (aka, “show”). These words include (regardless of tense) think, wonder, feel, see, watch, hear, decide and plenty more. And luckily, it can be a pretty easy process to get rid of them and deepen that POV by one more level.
Here’s an example with the filter words included: The sun felt hot on my arm as I sat next to the window. Ow, I thought, that’s a little too hot. I decided to move across the room to a cooler corner.
And without the filter words: The sun burned my arm as I sat next to the window. Ow, that was a little too hot. I moved across the room to a cooler corner.
It’s not the most evocative writing, but you can see how even a mediocre sentence can become a little less mediocre when the filter words are removed.
8. Spelling and grammar check
Okay, we’re back to an easier tip now. There are plenty of free spelling and grammar checks out there, such as Editor in Word, ProWritingAid and Grammarly. Though these tools can sometimes display errors or mark correct grammar as incorrect, they are also good for catching the mistakes that we naturally miss when reading our own writing. I use them when I copy edit, and while I do ignore the majority of issues they point out, I also appreciate the typos and mistakes that they do catch for me.
9. Read aloud
This one requires a dedicated chunk of time, but it can be a really helpful step in the process. Once you’ve written and revised and polished as much as possible, I recommend you either read the manuscript out loud to yourself or have it read to you using Word’s Read Aloud feature or a voice reader/accessibility app (I use the text-to-speech function on my Kindle Fire). Hearing the words can activate a different part of your brain than reading them for the three millionth time, and you may catch clunky or difficult phrasing, missing words and confusing passages.
10. Track your writing habits
Take some time with each manuscript to note your writing tics – the crutch words, overused sentence structures, and weirdly specific words that you repeated too many times. You can reference that list when you start the next manuscript and promise yourself you’re not going to make those same mistakes again.
As with all writing advice, take what works for you, adjust it as necessary, and leave the rest.
If you’d like to see some of these editing tips in action, sign up for the free online course version of these ten hacks, including an over-the-shoulder recording of some revisions, such as deleting the extra spaces. Once you’re at the point that you need to hire an editor, check out our series on finding the one who will fit you best.
You can also join our newsletter list, where I share even more business, writing and editing tips about twice a month.