My last prompt for this month on editing is to ask–writers, what’s your best editing tip?
Mine would be that when you have finished all your big picture edits–smoothing out the character developments, plugging the plot holes, filling in logic gaps–to edit your chapters out of order.
If you read each chapter like it’s a short story, you can pay better attention to the details. When you read in order, you often pay attention to the big picture items, such as how does the end of chapter four flow into the beginning of chapter five. Treating each chapter as its own little story makes you zero in on problems in dialogue or description or pacing. Writers, I’d love to hear from you. What’s your best editing tip?
