Self-Editing Checklist

Before you give beta readers your manuscript, you’ll want to make sure your content is complete and has as few errors as possible. Too many errors can become distracting and frustrating to beta readers, and you certainly don’t want that when you’re depending on them for a helpful critique of your story!

Critiques are usually more positive if the writing is technically sound and polished, even if the readers don’t care for certain characters or parts of your plot. It’s just one of the reasons why knowing how to self-edit matters.

Becoming a self-edit pro takes a lot of practice. The checklist below will make learning the self-editing process faster and easier.

Self-Editing For Fiction Writers Checklist

1. Did I Use Correct Capitalization Everywhere?

It’s common to forget circumstantial rules for capitalization, like when to write “President” or “president,” “chairman” or “Chairman,” “grandma” or “Grandma.” Double-check that you’ve capitalized words being used as titles and any brand names.

When in doubt, search online for proper usage. Make sure you didn’t incorrectly capitalize words right after an em dash, semicolon, or colon either.

2. Am I Missing Any Punctuation?

Scan closely for missing periods, quotation marks, and commas, and for any misplaced apostrophes.

3. Did I Catch All The Typos And Misspellings?

Typos and misspellings get tricky, because a lot of times, a spell checker won’t pick up on them. For instance, you may have typed “night” when you meant to type “might,” or you wanted to say “whether” but said “weather.” Occasionally, I’ll hit keys in the wrong order, so a sentence that was supposed to read “from him” will read “form him.”

For me, these errors are the hardest to find. I really appreciate a second set of eyes on my work when it comes to catching all of them. That’s why you can’t beat having a real person edit your work when you get close to publishing.

For early rounds of edits though, it’s great to be able to quickly fix the more obvious mistakes with editing software like Grammarly or ProWritingAid. Both are said to catch more errors than Microsoft Word’s spellchecker.

4. Have I Overused Any Words?

Using repetition as a literary device is perfectly OK, but otherwise, we want to avoid using the same word or phrase over and over. I’ve found that reading my work aloud helps me pick up on overused words and phrases more easily than when I read in my head.

I recommend always reading each chapter of your book aloud when you feel you’re near completion with your edits. Not only does it help you notice overuse and redundancies, but it helps identify areas where the flow and rhythm of your writing might be off.

Notice the repeated words in this passage, shown in red. I’m not a fan of using the same grouping of words more than once per paragraph in a story, or even per page, unless for effect, so I would change up one of the sentences here to eliminate the repetition.

While editing my manuscript, I also used AutoCrit to track repetitive language, and I’d absolutely use it again. You have to buy a membership for access to this service, but you’re able to cancel at any time. So if you’re trying to save money, you can keep the subscription just for the editing phases of your books.

With my AutoCrit account, I’d simply paste a chapter of my book into a blank document, then run a “combination report” with the boxes checked to look for overused words and overused phrases. The report would highlight everything I wrote repeatedly, making it easy to go back through the chapter and change up my word choices.

5. Did I Accidentally Omit Any Words?

Catching word omissions is another tricky part of self-editing for fiction writers, because our brains like to make us see what we intended to type.

Mental clarity is key for finding omissions. I recommend doing this part of the self-editing process early in your day, before you’ve started feeling any mental or physical fatigue from work. Once you get that hazy, overloaded feeling in your head, stop. Come back to your story after a nap or the next day.

Here’s an example of an accidental word omission that can be easy to skip over.

Again, it’s still beneficial to have someone else give your book an edit after you’ve done your own. I’d love to become your editor! View my rates for manuscript editing services.

MJ Biggs is the author of the novel A Wonderful Place To Die.