A Self-Editing Exercise

“Hunt down your habit, and train your mind to flinch at it.”—Susan Bell

Every writer, like every human, is a creature of habit. We all lean on favorite words, turns of phrase, and sentence structures (my name is Heather, and I love an em-dash). These tics are often invisible to the writer until someone helps us see them. In every project I edit, I keep a list of words or sentence structures on which the client leans too heavily.

The easiest way to hunt down your linguistic habits without an editor is to read your work aloud. It is also, in my humble opinion, the best self-editing tool in your arsenal. We all sound brilliant in our minds. I fill in gaps and assure myself that my fancy word choices are perfect when I’m typing. But when we read our work out loud, those missing words become glaring holes and my clever words sound weird and unnatural.

Take your current project (or a section of a longer manuscript) and read it aloud to yourself. I find this is usually enough for me to catch unclear language or awkward structure. However, you may find you hear the work better if you record yourself and then listen back to it a little later. Without the words in front of you, you will be less likely to fill in the gaps or be enamored with your purple prose. For the truly brave, ask a friend to read the work to you.