Catt Editing

View Original

What Is Line Editing?

Line editing is the second of three stages of editing. If you’re unsure what line editing is or if your book needs it, keep reading!

Is Line Editing Important?

Imagine someone telling you a story at a party. It would be a hilarious story—except that they suck at telling it. Their words are jumbled, and they’re so long-winded, and they messed up the punchline. It’s just a mess.

This is what line editing fixes in your story. Line editing makes sure what you’re saying makes sense and that it’s told with the best words possible. This is where you create drama and tension in dialogue. This is where you make really powerful, uplifting, inspiring moments in memoirs. This is how you compel your readers to do what you want them to do in self-help books.

 

When Should I Hire a Line Editor?

Line editing comes after developmental editing and before copy editing. (Learn more about those here.) Make sure the story, scenes, chapters, and organization are all set before moving to this step. Since this step focuses on the wording of things, you’ll have to redo all the work you already did getting the words just right if you then decide to go back and change a whole scene or chapter in developmental editing. So do this one after developmental editing.

 

What Can a Line Editor Help Me With?

Engaging dialogue

Bored or awkward dialogue is the worst! Natural, fast-paced dialogue is hard to achieve though, so editors can help.

Powerful dialogue tags and action beats

Nothing pulls me out of a book more than being annoyed with the dialogue and getting caught up trying to read weird dialogue tags (“she shouted angrily,” “he whispered in his most quiet voice”). No. Just keep it simple and quick to read so readers don’t trip on the words.

Another thing editors can help with is the frequency of dialogue tags: Are there too many or not enough? When readers have to go back and reread the conversation, counting the lines of dialogue to figure out who said what, there’s an issue. Of course, you as the author know exactly who said what, so you might not see when extra tags are needed.

Sentence length, flow, and rhythm

Whether you’re going for a poetic, formal feel or a conversational, over-coffee-with-your-bestie feel, this is where that comes out.

“Show and tell”

Paint a picture of the scene in the reader’s mind. Can they see, hear, smell, taste, and feel what’s going on? Those things are important for fully immersing the reader in the book. Learn more about this here. I end up working on this one with writers all the time.

Writing techniques

This one is pretty general but so important. One mistake I find often in fiction is head-hopping. You can learn more about that here. In nonfiction, one example of a bad writing technique is lots of redundancies and repetition that just isn’t working. Sometimes reminders are good, and repetition can show relationships between things—as long it feels like it’s on purpose. But sometimes it feels like an accident, and then it’s clear the book hasn’t been edited much.

Reduce bias and clichés

Clichés are just so . . . cliché. They’ve kind of lost their meaning because they’re so overused. What’s another way of saying this that is more meaningful to the reader? Regarding bias: Everyone has bias. It’s inevitable. Some biases are more harmful that others, but all biases are hard to detect when they’re your own. Editors can point them out and help you find a better way to say whatever you’re trying to say.

Clarity and word choice

This is pretty self-explanatory. If it doesn’t make sense, the reader will stop reading your book. If they can’t understand it, they aren’t getting what you want them to get from your book. It can be hard to know if your own writing makes sense to other people because obviously it makes sense to you—you wrote it.

Point of view, perspective, and tense

Whether you’re telling stories that happened in real life or fictional stories, the tense, point of view, and perspective make a huge difference. Learn about tense here and perspective/point of view here.

Mood, voice, tone

Drama. Humor. Romance. Inspiration. All of that is created with mood, voice, and tone. If something just isn’t hitting the mark, editors can help you find a better way to create whatever mood you’re looking for.

 

If your book needs line editing, contact me!

Not sure if line editing is right for you? Ask for a sample edit!

 

To get updates about more free tips and advice from experts (like this), make sure to subscribe here!

Email me with any questions you have. You can also find me on Facebook or Instagram