The Third Edit

OK, so you’ve made it through your first draft and second edit (a.k.a. the structural edit), where you’ve done a ton of heavy lifting like moving plot points around and checking for continuity in your story. Now it’s time for my favorite edit: the third. At this point, you have a better handle on the characters’ motivations, you are more secure with the setting, and you can better understand your book’s themes. To me, the third edit is more about massaging your story.

Here’s how I do it:

This edit is done on the computer and takes me the longest. I work linearly through each chapter and wordsmith the sentences. This is an extremely fun part of the process for me. I love testing out new words, feeling the flavor of a sentence, and generally indulging in my own curiosity about how certain phrases sound. This is not to say you should go overboard and rework every sentence in your novel. However, this is a wonderful opportunity to represent your character better.

During this process, certain aspects of the story will develop, some will remain the same, and some will need to be cut. Often a character’s plan does not work out, or what they think they want isn’t actually what they need. This is where I make assessments of how a character would react according to previous actions or beliefs to ensure their wants or needs will be met at the end of the story.

Finally, I will work on a scene, mark it as ‘edited’ in the chapter heading, and the next day I will go back and review what I did. If I’ve added to a scene or embellished some dialogue or description, I will check to make sure it’s not too over the top. This is just a quick review. It is not meant to be an entire separate edit on that section. Once complete and I am satisfied with the story, I send it off to beta readers. At this point, I am usually too involved in the work, and I cannot see the forest for the trees.

In addition to editing the actual text, I’m usually very excited during this review of the work. I often make a lot of decisions regarding promotional material, cover design, and social media themes. I will pull quotes from the book because it’s easier to think of promo quotes when I’m working in the manuscript. I also have art commissioned, which goes a long way in the promotional process. I set a pre-order date around this time as well, because I am confident that I will be able to meet the required deadline.

Next up: beta readers.