Hi,
I was wondering if anyone has any advice or guidelines on self-editing a story. I don't mean it as a substitute for having it read and critiqued by someone else, just as a step in the whole process.
What I usually do after writing the first draft, is put it away for a while to gain some perspective. What are your methods?
Also, do you write the first draft and then edit it, or do you edit the work while writing? I usually do the latter, which can be quite problematic sometimes, as I find it very time-consuming and I tend to focus too much on polishing certain fragments and get distracted from finishing the story...
I have to keep the flow going while I'm writing and rarely even correct my typos. This is mainly because I will sometimes lose whole swathes of the story in an edit and there's no point in perfecting a section destined for my deadfile.
When I'm finished I read through to correct obvious mistakes and put in the punctuation I've quite often skipped altogether during the first draft. I then look at the amount of dialogue to narrative in each chapter, whether characters are consistent and if any sub-plots are accidentally dropped anywhere. It occurs to me now I could save time further if I cut unnecessary sub-plots before I correct them as that is what I tend to do next! This is also the time my beta readers get a copy. I like to discuss the various sub-plots with people as knowing what to keep and what to lose is traditionally where I have needed the most help.
After any and all rewriting/correcting I'm down to my final proof read. That's where I tend to get stuck because I'm never quite happy with everything and want to endlessly tweak.