Self Editing for Fiction Writers by Renni Browne & Dave King, Morrow, 280pp.
Subtitled ‘How to edit yourself into print,’ this is a book written by two professional editors to help writers apply their editing techniques to the writer’s own work.
Chapters on dialogue, exposition, point of view, interior monologue and other techniques show you what a professional editor would work on to perfect your manuscript.
Each point is illustrated with examples, many drawn from the hundreds of books Browne and King have edited.
I found the book very useful for helping me grasp concepts that are not easy to pin down, and to see how my efforts could be improved.
Why edit? Any manuscript will benefit from editing. Nowadays publishing houses are unable to devote much effort to editing a book before publication, with the result that a strong manuscript will be published as-is, and a flawed manuscript with potential will be rejected.
Some writers pay a professional editor to look over their MS before they attempt to get it published, but this while worth doing is an expensive exercise. Better to have a go yourself before considering this route. Why pay for editing you can do yourself?
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