Writing Real Talk: Why You Can’t Just Edit Your Own Writing

Imagine this…

The writer, a solitary genius, sits alone in a damp attic as magic pours forth from their fingers onto the typewriter. They need no company—just the pitter patter of rain against the windows and the gray darkness of a moody day.

Writing groups—hogwash! 

Feedback—absolutely not! 

Genius is a solo act. 

The true writer needs no one and nothing. Other people are just noisy impediments to the literary art. 

If that’s your image of a “great” writer, you’re not alone. It’s a mythic image that’s been ingrained in the western consciousness. According to this myth, the true literary master must be alone to perfect his (let’s be real, in this story, it’s always a man) craft. Words flow from the pen and go straight to the presses. If there is struggle, it’s only in finding inspiration, not in revising their work into something publishable or (gasp!) marketable. 

Here’s the thing, that image is a big fat lie. 

Here’s the truth: all writers need feedback. 

Seriously.

Every. Single. One.

Why? 

Our brains just aren’t that good at critically evaluating our own work. And that isn’t a flaw. It’s by design. 

Let me explain. 

The Problem With Our Brains

Our brains are pretty damn magical. Every day, we’re inundated with information. Countless sensory details are hitting our brains every second that we’re awake, but most of that information passes by without our conscious awareness. Why? Because the brain knows that we would be overwhelmed if we had to consciously process every little thing.

So what does it do? It filters. It takes shortcuts. It looks for patterns and then starts making automatic associations so that we can do more, faster. 

For the most part, that process is a net positive. We see a red light and we automatically hit the brakes. But it can also be a negative when we automatically and subconsciously make assumptions about people based on their race, gender, disability status, or sexuality. 

Now, what the heck does this have to do with editing your own writing? 

When you sit down to edit your own work, your brain is going to automatically incorporate all the background knowledge that you have about your story even if you never put that information on the page. 

In other words, you know too much about your characters, your plot, your story world, and the connections between them to edit your story objectively. As you read, your brain understands what you meant to say, even if the words on the page say something entirely different. 

Ever wondered how an egregious typo slips by even when you’ve read your work multiple times? This is it. It’s not because you’re a bad reader or a bad writer. You’re actually too good at reading. So good that your brain has converted reading into an automatic process that relies on mental shortcuts. You didn’t see the typo because your brain filtered it out and literally replaced it with the word you meant to use. Your brain is that powerful. Awesome, right? And a little scary. You can read more about the psychology of typos in this Wired article.

So, What Do I Do?

Now that you know why these mistakes happen, what you can you do about it? 

First and foremost, get feedback. I’ll say it again: no matter who you are or what you write, you need feedback. 

You can get feedback from critique partners, from beta readers, from a professional editor, or a writing coach. The specifics of who, how, and when, will depend on your writing goals and the amount of time and/or money you have to invest in getting feedback (you can read about the different types of editing here and how to know if you need professional editing here). No matter who you choose, you need help from someone else to make sure that you’ve told the story that you meant to tell in a way that makes sense to another reader.

Think about it: when you write a book, you take complex mental images and disparate feelings out of your brain, translate them into words on a page, and hope that they will reappear as mental images and feelings in someone else’s brain. You need help to make that herculean task just a little bit more doable. 

Now, don’t get me wrong. Self-editing is still possible.

You can absolutely make your book better on your own. You just can’t take it all the way to the finish line. To help you with the self-editing part of the process, here are five trouble spots to look out for and suggestions for overcoming your brain’s natural programming so that you can make the most of your revisions: 

Trouble Spot #1: Character Motivations 

You know your characters inside and out. Their actions are clear to you because you know their history, the painful secrets and preoccupations that justify their actions. In contrast, your readers don’t have that insight. You need to supply that information for them.

If you think your characters’ motivations are implied, your brain may be stepping in to make an implicit connection between what happens on the page and what you imagined for them when you were filling out their character bios. Put enough information on the page that readers can make inferences about the reasoning behind a characters’ actions, otherwise they’ll be scratching their heads wondering about the why behind all of your characters’ choices.

Trouble Spot #2: Worldbuilding Infodumps

This one can be sneaky. See, you’re putting more information on the page. Isn’t that what you’re supposed to do—give readers the information they need to understand the world you created in your imagination? And yes, that is absolutely your goal. But you need to do so with restraint.

Info dumping happens when you give readers too much information, too fast for them to process OR when you give readers information that doesn’t feel important or relevant when it’s presented. Unfortunately, it’s not always possible for you to know that you’re info dumping. 

Why? Because you know what’s going to happen next.

You know that the secret side gate in the castle is going to be super important in the final battle. Your reader doesn’t and they’ll simply be bored by your three-page long description of the secret gate and the courtyard that it leads to. Without the benefit of knowing what’s to come, your reader has no context for that information, no signal that it is interesting or worth paying attention to. 

So, if you need readers to know about that side gate before it saves the day, what can you do? Simple. Add in small action or conflict that includes the gate up front. On page 4, perhaps the princess meets a secret lover at that side gate and whispers to him that no one but the royal family even knows this gate exists. When that same princess uses the side gate to sneak out of the castle and ride off to get reinforcements, readers will recall that earlier scene and accept the gate’s existence as a fact of the world and not a convenient escape.

As you develop the world of the novel, don’t shy away from exposition. Just make sure that exposition feels important for readers in the moment. That will keep readers turning pages, eager to experience the story and get to know the story world at the same time. 

Trouble Spot #3: Vague Visual Descriptions

Imagine a dog. 

Seriously, close your eyes and picture it. 

What do you see? 

A chihuahua? A golden retriever? A black lab? Were you imagining a specific dog, maybe the one curled up next to your chair right now or the dog you had as a kid? Maybe your image of dogs is negative and you’re imagining the Rottweiler who bit you or the yippy Pomeranian who antagonized you every time you walked by. 

The point here is that every single person in the world will come up with a different mental image when they read the word “dog”. If you give readers a sentence like, “Jane’s dog lay curled up on the mat by the door,” every reader will imagine a different dog and perhaps make different inferences about Jane as a result. 

As writers, we sometimes include these vague labels, assuming that readers will just swap in an image of what “normal” looks like. A normal dog. A normal suburban street. A normal house. A normal school. 

The problem? Normal is relative. There is no absolute standard, no common set of images that you can assume all readers will bring to your book—even if they grew up in the same country. Having lived on both coasts of the United States (California/Washington State in childhood; Connecticut/Rhode Island as an adult) I can attest that a “normal” school on the West Coast is very different from a “normal” school back East (not to mention the difference between suburban and urban schools even within those states). 

As you revise, look for the places where you are leaning on assumptions and generalizations and replace them with specific images that will bring the specific setting of your story to life. Make sure your readers see the images you want them to see, not the images conjured by their own expectations and associations.

Trouble Spot #4: Character Emotions 

On a similar note, don’t assume that readers will be able to infer a character’s emotions based solely on the conflict in the book. Different events mean different things to different people. Don’t assume that readers will know how your character is feeling just based on their actions. We need their thoughts, their visceral reactions, their sensory experiences, and occasionally even a direct dose of telling to let us know what the events of the story mean to them.

Without that information, your story will lack stakes and clarity.

Be careful though, that doesn’t mean hedging your bets and restating emotions that have already been made clear through context. “I hate you!” she yelled angrily” is overkill. It’s not an easy balance to strike, but err on the side of clarity.

Trouble Spot #5: Similar Looking Words & Frequent Misspellings

Finally, we get to the classic typo. You already know that you should look for surface errors in your writing, but short of hiring an editor, what can you actually do to ensure your piece is as error free as possible? Here are a couple of tricks you can try: 

• Use text to speech technology to have your work read out loud to you. A TTS software will read exactly what’s on the page, allowing you to hear mistakes that your eye (and brain) will miss completely.

• Use ProWritingAid or Grammarly. These grammar checkers are more advanced than built-in spell checkers. They can sometimes identify typos or misused words that other spell checkers miss.

• Read the pages in reverse order. This suggestion literally makes my brain hurt, but I’ve heard that it works. By reading your pages in reverse order (as in, read your story backwards, not each individual page) you detach yourself from thinking about the narrative as a whole and instead force yourself to consider each word and sentence out of context, thus changing your mental relationship to the text.

• Change the font or text color. This one is more of a brain hack. By changing the presentation, you can trick your brain into thinking you’re looking at something new. That novelty will reinvigorate your text processing capabilities and might help you find typos you would have missed otherwise.

• Finally, print out your work and go through it with a pen. It’s old-fashioned, but it works. Reading on paper is another way to trick your brain into thinking that it’s looking at a something new so that you see it with fresh eyes and catch any lingering mistakes. 

I hope these tips help you overcome the inherent limitations of editing your own work. Don’t forget, you’re not a failure for needing feedback, you’re just a writer.

Looking for a developmental editor who can help find the gaps in your story? Check out my editing services here or book your sample edit here!