Creative Writing Exercises For Dummies

Part V

Polishing Your Product: Revising and Editing

Top five ways to rewrite, edit and polish your book:

• Read your work aloud so you can hear what it sounds like and come to it afresh. You can even ask a friend to read it to you if it helps.
• Leave as much time between the writing and the editing as you can to help you get distance from your work and come to it as a reader would.
• Don’t be afraid to throw away large sections if they don’t fit in – you can always file these away for future stories. In particular, cut any redundant scenes and repetitions.
• Weed out any glaring clichés and sentences that don’t make sense. Look out for continuity errors and fix them. Spell-check your work and punctuate properly!
• Format your manuscript according to usual publishing conventions – double-spaced, with wide margins and paragraphs indented.

Check out www.dummies.com/extras/creativewritingexercises for an extra article on rewriting and editing your work.

In this part …

• Discover all the stages of rewriting your book – from a complete restructuring down to a final polish. Most pieces of creative writing need a lot of restructuring, rewriting and editing before you can send them out into the big, bad world to make their way.
• Get familiar with the skills you need to check the spelling and grammar, and format your book properly before handing it over to a professional agent or publisher.
• Find ...